James mannion, bespoke programmes leader, ucl institute of education, uk; director, rethinking education, uk; associate, oracy cambridge, uk neil mercer, emeritus professor, hughes hall, university of cambridge, uk; director, oracy

Article
JAMES MANNION, BESPOKE PROGRAMMES LEADER, UCL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, UK; DIRECTOR, RETHINKING EDUCATION, UK; ASSOCIATE, ORACY CAMBRIDGE, UK
NEIL MERCER, EMERITUS PROFESSOR, HUGHES HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK; DIRECTOR, ORACY CAMBRIDGE, UK
There are four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Of these, it has been argued that listening is the ‘most fundamental’ (Oxford, 1993, p. 205). According to one estimate, humans typically ‘spend 70 to 80 percent of our waking hours in some form of communication. Of that time, we spend about 9 percent writing, 16 percent reading, 30 percent speaking, and 45 percent listening.’ (Lee and Hatesohi, 1993) Despite this, listening has historically received the least attention by teachers and researchers. Perhaps the main reason for this is that listening is invisible – it leaves no paper trail and cannot be detected or recorded in the way that speaking can. As Lund (1991) pointed out, listening is unique because ‘it exists in time, rather than space – it is ephemeral in nature’ (p. 201). Even within oracy education, when teachers focus on ‘speaking and listening’, they typically pay more attention to speaking (e.g. using sentence starters and developing presentational talk) than helping students to develop their listening skills.
This is unfortunate for two reasons. First, as Dawes (2008) suggests, ‘Listening is key to learning in classrooms, and yet how often do we say of a child – or a whole class – they just don’t listen!’ (p. 41) The ability to listen is the gateway to understanding. If we explicitly taught listening skills to every child, we would likely see benefits in terms of their ability to acquire knowledge and skills in a range of contexts. Second, as we will see, listening skills can be taught quite easily. There is therefore a strong imperative for teachers and school leaders to take the teaching of listening seriously. In this article, we will briefly review the evidence relating to listening skills, before outlining a few practical strategies that teachers and school leaders can use to improve their pupils’ ability to listen and comprehend.
Although listening is widely recognised as an important aspect of learning, it remains one of the least understood processes: ‘While the other three language skills receive direct instructional attention, teachers often expect students to develop their listening skill by osmosis and without help.’ (Osada, 2004, p. 54; original emphasis) This idea is rooted in a conception of listening as a passive skill. Yet researchers have understood the importance of active listening since at least the 1950s (Rogers and Farson, 1957). It has also long been established that listening comprehension is a ‘highly complex problem-solving activity’ that can be broken down into a set of distinct sub-skills (Byrnes, 1984, p. 318). Because of this recognition of listening as a multifaceted phenomenon, there has been an increasing understanding that students’ ability to listen and comprehend can be improved by teaching them explicit strategies to improve performance on these sub-skills (Vandergrift, 2004). As a result, it has become clear not only that listening can be taught, but also that when this is done well, students learn more effectively.