Interview

Michael Rost

Michael Rost is a prolific author of such global titles as Worldview and Longman English Interactive. He is also series editor of many popular titles in Japan, particularly the English Firsthand series and the Impact series. He has also authored several influential academic articles and books, including Teaching and Researching Listening. Michael has been active in teaching and teacher training for more than 20 years. He has taught in Japan, West Africa, Southeast Asia, England and the U.S. He specializes in oral language development and learner strategies.

He currently teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. He gave this interview by e-mail with ELT News editor Mark McBennett in May, 2004.

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ELT: A large part of your work is focused on listening. Have there been any noteworthy developments in research into listening in recent years?
MR: Yes, there have been a lot. Actually, I'm keeping a database of research related to listening. I'm experiencing "the Red Queen Principle" – remember, the character in Through the Looking Glass who says that it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. The research has been developing more quickly than I can keep up with it.

One interesting line of research is in the area of decoding, work being done at the Max Planck Institute on metrical segmentation. Some linguists, particularly Anne Cutler – are investigating the specific ways our established L1 metrical decoding strategies influence L2 decoding...the kind of phonological mapping processes that underlie listening...and lead to predictable mishearings in the L2. To me this is very important because decoding is the most automated aspect of listening, and the hardest to remedy if there's an interference problem. Another noteworthy area of research is the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening. People like Norman Segalowitz and Jan Hulstijn have been investigating how vocabulary recognition influences comprehension, and is typically the greatest predictor of overall comfort when listening and of ultimate understanding of the speaker's message. Another noteworthy area is the work on listening strategies – the affective, social, and cognitive strategies – that influence the listener's confidence, willingness to participate, and effectiveness in understanding. Larry Vandergrift, for one, has done a lot of work in this area.

These three topics are important pieces of the listening puzzle.

How have global trends and the emergence of many "Englishes" affected the need for, and study of, listening and speaking skills, as opposed to reading and writing?
The emerging trend is for groups of non-native speakers of English, say Japanese businesspeople, to "own" English and use it for their specific communicative purposes. This means that the preponderance of English that's being used every day for communication is by international – non-native – speakers, using English as a lingua franca. By definition, really, all EFL interactions are intercultural encounters. Barbara Seidlhofer actually calls it ELF – English as a Lingua Franca – rather than EFL.

The norms for intercultural encounters are shifting, as Gabi Kasper says, from exonormative, or native-speaker, standards to endonormative standards, defined by the users themselves. The good news for teachers and learners is that the study of English can move toward more practical standards. The purpose of speaking in an ELF situation – or the EFL classroom that simulates it – becomes situationally defined as mutual comprehensibility and communication-effect rather than some abstract standard of accuracy. Similarly, the purpose of listening becomes relevant interpretation and symmetrical participation rather than full comprehension.

One vivid example of the ELF phenomenon for me happened when we were preparing a new edition of English Firsthand. (I'm the series editor.) For one unit in one of the books, in which we talk about international communication, we wanted to add our own and an email exchange link (http://www.efcafe.com) just to see what would happen. Well, this email exchange center has taken off like wildfire – we have Japanese students communicating in English with students from all over the world, Korea, China, Thailand, Europe, the Middle East. And, interestingly, there are a number of native speakers of English who register at the site to meet people from other cultures.

The communication between them, all in English, is driven by mutual curiosity, a desire for self-expression and comprehensibility. It's great. When you eavesdrop on this communication as a native-speaker, of course, you can find "errors", but that's from an exonormative viewpoint. What's happening from a language development perspective, the motivation and purpose for communicating, the dynamics of self-disclosure and comprehensible output, are so much more potent than what we typically can achieve in classrooms.

So I think this shift in perspective influences the way we teach and study not only listening and speaking, but also reading and writing. Focus on realistic communication tasks and mutual comprehensibility, for a start.

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