Marc Jones

Presentation: The reported processes of multilingual listeners

At the weekend I went to JALT PanSIG conference in Fukui. Two weeks ago I was at DIELE conference, which was much closer to home, but I think I have to vow to myself not to go to two conferences in a month ever again. I feel like I could sleep for a week; unfortunately, my marking load says otherwise.

Anyway, I was at the conference to present a pilot study that I ran with five students on multilingual listeners and their experiences. To be honest, what I presented barely scratches the surface of the data I collected, which was very rich, considering I only met with each participant for around 30-60 minutes.

Anyhow, there is not a lot of work done on multilinguals, and even less on their listening. I got some nice questions with food for thought about future directions that this research can take.

Jones-2024-The-reported-processes-of-multilingual-listeners-Download

Conferencing, PhDing, Translanguaging

Ooh, exciting times last week. I mean, it’s relative, but my Spring is usually spent catching up on research stuff, thinking about new teaching materials as new ways to generate extra workload for myself. This year, I went to Germany. It was my first time to leave Japan since I went on holiday to Thailand in 2010.

Coincidences being what they are, my trip managed to fall exactly on a German transport workers’ strike. I had my connecting flight from Paris to Düsseldorf cancelled, so Air France put me up in a hotel for the night. I then travelled on to Dortmund, because it was cheaper to stay there and I was going to go to TU Dortmund later in the week to meet my PhD supervisor.

Dortmund reminds me very much of Sunderland in that it is a very industrial town and obsessed with football. I ate a lot of bread and a modicum of cake. I have loved German bread since German class in comprehensive school.

The next day I travelled to Münster for the Foreign Language Listening Comprehension (LiCo) conference. I presented some of my PhD research (and I will share the slides when the research gets published or accepted for publication – it is basically a more finished version of this J-SLA poster presentation). I also saw some great presentations and a workshop by Jens Folkert Folkerts and Christine Goh. Everyone was lovely, but what was lovelier even than that was the cakes and sweets. Even lovelier still was I got to meet my classmates from TU Dortmund, Stewart and Sara, whom I had only met on Zoom before.

On the second day of the conference I attempted to hit up a symposium that my other classmate Raúl Garcia had set up. Unfortunately my superhuman powers of transportation got me there after it was all over. I did, however, get to meet Raúl for the first time, and meet my PhD supervisor Carolyn and also Martina Emke, for whom I had been a research participant before. We chatted about a lot of things. And then the next day I went back to the university and talked about a lot of things, but focused much more on my PhD.

As for the PhD, my publishing schedule (and prerequisite writing schedule) got discussed, as well as how to set up my capstone thesis. I am currently aiming for an August submission, which is considerably less tight than my previous self-imposed deadline of mid-April.

I then went to lunch with Martina and Carolyn, Joanna, a visiting researcher advising Raúl on his project, and most of my classmates, including also Christina, the post-doc in the department. It was lovely and I talked too much so it took me ages to finish my meal (exactly the thing I tell my son not to do)!

So, lots done, and I got to use my German half remembered from GCSE, refreshed by Duolingo and the Goethe Institut and not massively come off like a total idiot – or at least, if I did it probably wasn’t to do with my grasp of the language. There’s an awful lot of English that has crept into most world languages, and German is no exception, and also most Germans speak English in an easy to understand way, so it was a nice experience to believe I had become communicative in a language to meet immediate needs. However, whenever someone answered me at whipcrack speed, I could also roll out old faithful: Tut mir leid. Bitte noch einmal, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.

On the way back, my connection from Paris to Tokyo got cancelled, so by the end, I felt like Homer (the Greek one, not the American one). But yes, fruitful trip, and an enjoyable trip once I got over the jet lag.

Publication: Accent Difference Makes No Difference to Phoneme Acquisition

As of today, my article with Carolyn Blume from TU Dortmund is available in the special issue of TESL-EJ on Global Englishes and translanguaging. It is open-access so it is available for free.

We used TED talks as online self-study, with one group watching talks by speakers of prestige varieties of English (so-called ‘native speakers’) and one group watching speakers outside of these prestige varieties.

The title says it all: there were no real differences between groups. Somewhat worryingly, neither group made gains in vowel learning, which was what we were intending they learned. Both were the same, although a limitation could be learners cramming at the last minute. However, this is something students do!

The article is here, and check out the whole of the special issue while you are there.

New podcast appearance: Lost in Citations

I gave a presentation at JALT Listening Conference (self-embargoed because I intend to sort it out as a paper for my PhD), but I talked about it in a short interview with Chris from Lost In Citations. There are a lot of other fantastic people interviewed talking about listening research, so you should check it out, seeing as you are probably interested in listening.

The link is here: Lost in Citations episode 120.

JALT Listening SIG

JALT Listening SIG logo
JALT Listening SIG logo

Last year, JALT Listening SIG got off the ground. It was during the time that I had let my JALT membership lapse. Perhaps if I had known about the forming SIG sooner, perhaps I would have been less likely to have let my membership lapse. However, I renewed this April and joined the nascent SIG.

Anyway, the coordinator of the SIG, Naheen Madarbakus has done a great job of organizing so much. I got in touch earlier in the year to see if there was anything I could do to help. There was; I am now the SIG’s Publications Chair.

It also gives me a chance to put into practice some good ideas. I am sure that not all JALT members have access to a wide range of journals so the SIG’s website and podcast will have Research Bites, inspired by the original ELT Research Bites.

The journal, The Listening Post, is due to have its first issue in June 2022, and it would be great to have a wide range of submissions to our general call for papers.