A Syllabus for Listening: Decoding is available from Amazon here and the

Bournemouth English Book Center (BEBC) here.

A Syllabus for Listening: Decoding is for teachers, teacher trainers, textbook and course book
authors in English language teaching (ELT). This book will help you add a decoding dimension to all
your listening activities, which means that your students will be better prepared for real-world
spontaneous speech encounters. If you are designing a listening course, or writing listening exercises
for a course book, this is essential reading. There are four parts.
Contents

A Syllabus for Listening: Decoding consists an introduction, four parts and appendices. Each of the
four parts has its own introduction.

Part 1 Decoding and perception – Key ideas consists of ten short chapters which set out in detail the
reasons for the approach to listening and decoding in this book. Each chapter introduces a key idea
(principle) which acts as a foundation stone for what is to follow in Parts 2–4. Together, the key ideas
comprise a framework for understanding the approach to teaching decoding adopted in this book.
They are deliberately short so that you can refer back to them (to remind yourself of the relevant
principle) as you read the other parts of the book.

1. Decoding speech and writing – the differences deals with the fundamental differences
between the sound substance (speech) and sight substance (writing) and the different
decoding requirements of each.
2. Styles of speech – Greenhouse, Garden, Jungle introduces a classroom aid which will make
clear the differences between citation forms, the rules of connected speech and the messy
realities of spontaneous speech.
3. Understanding versus decoding explains how the expert listener’s ability to understand
meanings deafens them to the realities of spontaneous speech.
4. The expert listener and the blur gap explains the problems that expert listeners have hearing
the mess and untidiness of spontaneous speech.
5. The expert listener and the decoding gap explains the consequences for the classroom when
the expert listener cannot hear the mess and untidiness of spontaneous speech.
6. The land of in-between – mondegreens explains that the sound substance is much less clear
than we think it is, and is capable of being heard – quite justifiably – in different ways.
7. The unit of perception explains that the unit of perception is not the word, but the speech unit.
8. Words are flexible forms explains that all words are flexiforms, which speakers can mould or
crush into different shapes.
9. Visualising the issues – three zones presents the issues of the preceding chapters in a visual
form.
10. Diagnosis uses the key ideas of the preceding chapters to diagnose why decoding is so often
neglected in the ELT classroom.

Part 2 A critique of training, theory and practice consists of four chapters which together offer a critical
analysis of what we teach and why we teach it in the way we do.

11. Teacher training describes how our training and early teaching experiences influence the way
we teach listening.
12. Virtuous obstacles identifies things we do in the classroom which, although useful for other
aspects of language learning, are obstacles to effective teaching of listening.
13. Models of speech compares the prescriptive Careful Speech Model (CSM) which currently
dominates ELT materials with the more descriptive Spontaneous Speech Model (SSM) which
we need to cope with the unruliness of spontaneous speech.
14. The when and what of decoding looks at conventional approaches to decoding, what
activities are recommended and when they should be done.
Part 3 A syllabus for listening consists of four chapters which are the central part of the
Syllabus for Listening: Decoding. These chapters train you to hear the streamlining processes
(reductions) that words undergo when they are used in spontaneous speech.

15. Words – describes how all words have multiple soundshapes.

16. Word clusters – describes how words which commonly occur together are blended into
continuous soundshapes which pose decoding problems.
17. Streamlining I – consonant death looks at the typical fates that speech sounds undergo
(blurring, consonant death) when they are streamlined in fast speech.
18. Streamlining II – smoothies to teenies explains ways in which speakers make sounds,
syllables and words disappear.

Part 4 Education, tools and activities consists of six chapters which explain different ways in which we
might set about teaching decoding systematically, using the syllabus presented in Part 3.

19. Learner education and teacher-mindset explains how to manage both learners’ and teachers’
doubts, feelings and frustration.
20. Teacher tools describes tools that you can use at any time to demonstrate the different
soundshapes that words can have.
21. Recordings, extracts and activities describes how to select and use recordings for decoding.
22. Pen-and-paper activities describes how decoding activities can start with written prompts.
23. Visiting the sound substance dimension describes how to build decoding work into any type
of classroom activity.
24. Internet and digital resources looks at four different types of software that can help teach
decoding.