Enhancing Students’ Listening Skills through Technologically-Assisted Dictations in English as a Second Language (ESL) Classrooms: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Listening is a sensory skill that transmits linguistic input from the environment to the listener’s brain. When the input reaches the brain, mental operations occur to process language understanding. Overall language development, including speaking, writing, and reading, is developed from the understanding gained through listening. Hence, dictation practices that have long been implemented in language classrooms are explored with educational technologies to improve their effectiveness in listening instruction for overall language development. This narrative review highlights the use of technologically-assisted dictations as a means to enhance students’ listening skills in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. This study aims to explore earlier findings on how technology features can assist the transmission of linguistic input from various media resources to support students’ cognitive processes. Insights from this study may serve as a guideline for teachers in implementing technology-based listening lessons in ESL classrooms. Listening practices in ESL classrooms often focus on surface-level responses with minimal emphasis on targeted listening sub-skills. Consequently, students often struggle with listening comprehension because the cognitive processes involved in understanding spoken language are not sufficiently practised. The discussion indicates that technologically assisted dictation practices provide multimodal learning input, repeated exposure to authentic language, structured support, and clarity of listening for students. This study also highlights the challenges that teachers faced in implementing technologically assisted dictation practices based on previous findings. These challenges include background noise, poor internet connection, visual aids distraction, and accent difficulty. Overall, this study contributes to the ongoing effort to improve the quality of listening instruction in ESL classrooms.