Our February 2017 meeting featured:
Adam Murray (Miyazaki International College)


In the first part, Adam talked about the impact of anxiety on foreign language learning. He described how he personally became interested in this area of research from his experiences learning and using Japanese. Although the majority of anxiety-related research focuses on speaking, his research is on foreign language listening anxiety. He described a medium-sized study, which he carried out, involving 176 undergraduate students who were enrolled in compulsory EFL classes for non-English majors at four universities.

In the second part, he talked about listening instruction in the classroom, especially about some of the issues that need to be considered when selecting listening materials (authentic vs. textbook). Also, he referred to an ongoing study of students’ perceptions of listening materials in terms of perceived difficulty. Finally, he demonstrated some supplementary listening activities that can be easily adapted for any class.

Find out about last month's presentations