Jack C. Richards' 2005 argument that the dominant model of L2 listening instruction, which treats listening and listening comprehension as the same thing, leaves out a second role listening plays in language development. The comprehension model teaches learners to extract meaning; the acquisition model treats the same listening text as raw material for expanding the learner's linguistic repertoire. Both belong in a general English course.
Richards summarises the consensus that has shaped listening materials for roughly two decades, including his own earlier writing:
Under this orthodoxy, tasks include gist questions, selective listening, picture identification, sequencing, true/false, and summary. Activities that require accurate recall of the linguistic surface, such as dictation, cloze, or spotting spoken-written differences, are discouraged as "listening for words rather than listening for meaning." The dominant lesson shape is John Field's pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening sequence.
Richards accepts this for situations where comprehension is the only plausible goal: listening to lectures, announcements, sales presentations, service encounters. He questions it for general English or integrated-skills courses, where the text has more to offer than its message.
The complementary perspective pulls together four strands from SLA theory:
If these are the mechanisms, a listening class that ends once meaning is extracted has done only half the work. The text was also a carrier of noticeable form and a basis for stretched output.
Richards proposes grafting an acquisition phase onto the comprehension lesson. The listening text used for meaning in Phase 1 is reused in Phase 2 for language awareness and productive practice.
The standard Field-style pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening sequence. Handled as usual: set context, gist task, intensive task, check, functional-language or vocabulary follow-up. See Planning a Focus on Listening for Thornbury's expanded six-stage version.
Two activity types, in order.
a) Noticing activities. Return to the same recording with the learner's attention redirected from message to form.
b) Restructuring activities. Productive tasks that use selected items from the text.
Noticing feeds intake; restructuring pushes the learner toward productive use of what has been noticed.
Richards closes with two practical cautions that are easy to underestimate.
First, the acquisition phase is not a test. Teachers who over-correct this way risk reverting to a testing approach where listening texts exist only to be identified accurately, collapsing the comprehension phase that preceded it.
Second, noticing and restructuring activities bore learners quickly if they run on one format. Richards cites his own As I Was Saying (Richards and Hull 1986), where a cycle of role-play, then listening to native speakers perform the same role-play, then form-identification, lost learner motivation almost immediately. Once learners have done the role-play themselves, replaying it has little pull. The materials-writing challenge is to make noticing tasks as varied and engaging as the comprehension tasks they follow.
Richards, J. C. (2005). Second thoughts on teaching listening. RELC Journal, 36(1), 85–92. See Richards_2005_Second-Thoughts-Teaching-Listening.