Breaking the Status Quo of Non-Authenticity in the Design of Listening Input for the EFL Classroom at the Greek State Primary School

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate various approaches to designing listening input within the context of teaching English as a Foreign Language in Greek state primary education. The research centered on the endeavor of an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher to foster positive motivation among sixth-grade students towards enhancing their listening comprehension skills. Consequently, the proposal to substitute traditional listening comprehension stimuli with spontaneous teacher discourse was advocated as the benchmark for offering authentic listening materials. As a first step, concerns about the adaptation of non-authentic materials were addressed through the evaluation of a specific listening section of the sixth grade’s coursebook. Subsequently, an alternative proposal is advanced, suggesting that fostering new avenues for the potency of storytelling could serve as a solution to enhancing listening proficiency. More specifically, with the focus shifting from coursebook-oriented to teacher-generated listening input, storytelling was pinpointed as the most promising strategy for guaranteeing the English as a Foreign Language listener’s hard focus through listening for pleasure. The transcription of the teacher's discourse for future utilisation constituted the preliminary phase in crafting a design-based research approach aimed at formulating a theoretical framework for investigating processes related to listening input design. The development of a detailed lesson plan idea based on the teacher talk revealed the effectiveness of the adoption of the enriched input approach in the production tasks that were both instructive and entertaining. At the same time, the integration of the remaining skills (i.e., speaking, reading, writing) indicated the possibility for expanding the content and the scope of the available listening material to cater for the role of emotion and creativity in combatting demotivation. The study prepared the ground for perceiving the positive dimensions to spontaneous teacher talk as a medium of personalised storytelling to which students can relate. As a result, this has led to implications regarding the recognition of the teacher's capacity to enact curriculum adjustments informed by personal experience, reflection, and intuition.