The Lecture Buddy Project: An Experiment in EAP Listening Comprehension

This article describes a study of the listening comprehension of first-year, non-native speakers of English (NNSs) in a large North American university. The goal was to find out how the students, all economics majors, were coping with listening to economics lectures and to try an experiment in mentoring by linking them with a "lecture buddy": a native speaker in their course who would meet with them weekly and help them with note taking. The lecture buddies kept journals of their meetings, made copies of their lecture notes, and wrote a final report on their experience. In addition, the author interviewed the informants at the end of each semester, and these interviews were transcribed. The study confirms that these students were having substantial difficulty with their lectures, were taking poor notes, and were doing poorly in the courses as a result. The mentoring project was judged to be helpful to the informants, and the help that the lecture buddies gave went far beyond working on note taking. The article ends with a list of recommendations about what the university and the professors could do to make it easier of the NNS students and what the students themselves could do.