Fifty Years of the Evolution of Listening Comprehension Skill across Different Pedagogical Perspectives in EFL and ESL Contexts: A Theoretical Review

Abstract

Chronologically speaking, the view to listening skill has been changed over the decades of development of the
phenomenon of second and foreign language learning and teaching, as we go through the language centered methods
to learner centered methods and to learning centered methods. In this sense, as we go through the years of the
development of this phenomenon, we can see as the methodology and its underlying assumptions and theories has been
changed, the view to listening has also been changed. Building on these assumptions, the purpose of the paper is first
to review the importance of the listening in different educational and societal settings that has lead to different
patterns taken place in the approaches to listening over the past decades. It will then describe how these approaches
have provided the basis for listening in different types of pedagogical perspectives as in language-centered methods,
learner-centered methods, and learning centered methods. Finally, it will show how this skill has been viewed and
encapsulated in socio-cultural and interactionists’ accounts of the language.