Among the four skills, listening is my favorite one to study and teach. It had a reputation for being the neglected skill, but in the past decade or two it has enjoyed a great deal of renewed attention—and rightly so!

Although listening is one of the first skills our students begin to develop, it is also one of the most challenging skills, particularly at the intermediate level where students have gained an ability to express themselves on their own terms but may lack the fluency and depth of knowledge to keep up with the speed and vocabulary selected by another speaker.

Listening is also one of the most essential language skills. We spend more time listening than we do speaking, reading, or writing, and listening is a key mode for language input leading to further acquisition (Nunan, 1998 as cited in Nation & Newton 2009). If students feel overwhelmed or anxious when listening, it can affect every part of their language-learning experience.

All that to say: you should totally read a book about listening! And there are a lot of them these days. I will briefly describe 15 volumes below. Each one is good, depending on your purpose for reading. I have my favorites, but I'll try to explain each book's approach and its strengths, so you can pick what's best suited to you.

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1. Ashcraft, N., & Tran, A. (Eds.) (2010). Teaching listening: Voices from the field. Alexandra, VA: TESOL Press.

The chapters of this edited volume focus on a variety of specific language-teaching contexts and examine techniques such as conducting needs analysis, using specific kinds of listening texts, reading while listening, and note-taking. There is an introductory chapter by the authors, which considers contemporary practices in listening instruction, and a few other chapters with broader topics such as "Developing a Corpus-Informed Approach to Teaching Academic Listening" (Chapter 3) and "Designing and Integrating Effective Listening Activities" (Chapter 4).

The volume is clearly aimed at practicing teachers, although preservice teachers may also find it interesting and useful. It is less of a "read it front to back" kind of book, and more of a resource book from which any given teacher would likely find several articles of interest. I highly recommend that you peruse the table of contents and see what it has for you!

2. Brown, S. (2011). Listening myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

This book is wonderfully accessible and gives a good overview of conclusions to be drawn from recent research into second language listening, organized according to the principle of debunking myths. It is a great choice for language teachers who want to argue for changes to listening curriculum in their programs; it will give you exactly the ammunition you need to argue, for example, that interactive group work is appropriate in listening instruction, or that it's acceptable to include a mix of authentic and graded listening materials in the curriculum.

For each myth, the author provides a real-world anecdote, followed by brief overviews of current research in several related areas. Best of all, each chapter ends with a section called "What can we do," which includes suggestions on how to update curriculum and activities in light of research conclusions.

3. Buck, G. (2001). Assessing listening. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

As you can tell from the title, this book is about listening assessment, not instruction. The first two chapters provide a concise overview of what's involved in the listening skill, and then the author's attention turns to assessment. He covers the context and purpose for listening assessment, task types and task characteristics, listening texts for use in assessment, and a discussion with examples of how to bring all the elements together into a complete listening assessment.

I was impressed by the degree to which the author managed to make the book applicable to all levels of listening test design, from quizzes to high-stakes institutional tests.

4. Cutler, A. (2012). Native listening: Language experience and the recognition of spoken words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

I didn't read every word of this book, but I sure loved the more-than-half that I did read. It's not really aimed at language teachers; it's an introduction to research on how listening works, at the levels of phoneme- and word perception. The author writes that the book is intended for "young researchers" like her own graduate students. I did find it accessible, despite a complete lack of training in psycholinguistics—I just had to read carefully.

The book is fascinating, and a welcome relief from the implicit assumption in many of the other books described here that listeners either have English as their mother tongue or are learning English. Cutler's main point is that the process of recognizing sounds and words actually works differently in different languages. This has helped me recognize some of the reasons for my students' L2 listening difficulties. If you are curious and academically inclined, and if you have a goodly bit of free time, this book might be for you!

5. Field, J. (2008). Listening in the language classroom. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

In my opinion, this book is for practicing language teachers, rather than trainees. It is a call for a change in how we approach language teaching, from a "comprehension approach" (in which teachers preteach vocabulary, play a midlength recorded passage, pose questions, and move on to a new passage or activity as soon as questions have been answered correctly) to a "process approach" (in which teachers guide students to interact with the listening text more independently, and provide brief, explicit, focused practice in specific listening processes after diagnosing learners' challenges). The author divides listening processes into decoding and meaning-building parts, and lists a great number of subprocesses for each, with suggested activity types.

I read this book before many of the other volumes described here, and it was a real eye-opener for me. I especially liked the author's emphasis on the uncertainty and anxiety that is inherent in listening, at least from the language learner's point of view, and the clarity and force with which he shares his own opinions and assessments of listening approaches and techniques, evaluating both sides and then arguing for his proposed solution.

6. Flowerdew, J., & Miller, L. (2005). Second language listening: Theory and practice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

At the heart of this book is the authors' pedagogical model of second language listening comprehension. The model includes three types of cognitive processing (bottom up, top down, and interactive) and eight dimensions that should be included in instruction, such as individualization, listening strategies, and critical thinking. They recommend that teachers make sure to incorporate all elements of the model, and analyze several classroom case studies and commercial textbooks to show how they include activities to develop some dimensions of the model but require supplementation for others.

On either side of the pedagogical model, this volume begins with an initial section describing historical approaches and pedagogical models for listening instruction and ends with a section touching on several different issues in listening instruction. Here the authors share some information about how listening works and how to assess listening. A unique and wonderful feature is chapter 10, on questioning strategies for listening teachers. Here the authors strengthen the essential distinction between teaching and testing, and describe various question types and questioning contexts, with reference to their pedagogical model.

Teachers and trainees can both benefit from this book, especially those for whom the authors' approach (presentation of an abstract model and then application of the model to specific examples) is a good fit.

7. Flowerdew, J. (Ed.) (1994). Academic listening: Research perspectives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

This is an edited volume of scholarly papers specifically on academic listening, by which the authors mean listening to lectures. If you are preparing international students to study in an English medium university, you are likely to find some useful insights in this book! It includes an overview of the research (Flowerdew's own chapter), and sections focusing on how students understand lectures, how professors speak in lectures, and the cultural aspects of lecture comprehension, as well as a chapter on evaluating lesson comprehension and one on training lecturers for international audiences. The authors of chapters include several who also wrote books appearing in this bibliography.

8. Lynch, T. (2009). Teaching second language listening. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

This book appears to be intended as a textbook for teachers in training. I certainly find it most appropriate to that purpose. It gives a clear, concise general overview of many aspects of L2 listening instruction such as strategies and skills, materials and tasks, skill integration, and assessment. I really enjoyed the author's habit of sharing his own experiences of language learning and teaching. I also appreciated that he included a chapter describing characteristics of spoken language (as distinct from written language) and how it is perceived by learners.

The author's description of the process of listening as recognition, interpretation, and participation is effective, and you can learn a lot about how listening works in relatively few pages.

9. Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. New York, NY: Routledge.

The authors adapt Nation's four strands of effective language instruction (meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, deliberate attention to language, and fluency development) to focus on oral/aural language. The authors suggest a variety of specific task types for each instructional strand, and techniques for monitoring and assessing student progress. A unique feature of this book is its chapter dedicated to beginning-level listening/speaking instruction, as well as a "survival syllabus" listing 120 language items needed for a visit to another country.

It's not easy to separate listening from speaking in this volume, but there is unquestionably a lot to learn about listening inside it! I have found it useful to think about the four strands when planning my listening instruction.

10. Richards, J. (2008). Teaching speaking and listening. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

This booklet is short, and it is free—two excellent qualities already! You can find it on the the author's website. The listening section is about 20 pages and includes Richards' signature insight of applying two separate focuses in listening instruction: supporting students' comprehension by developing their bottom-up and top-down processes and strategies, and helping students use listening as a means to improve their language knowledge through activities that focus on noticing language features and restructuring language knowledge.

A great little booklet, absolutely to be recommended as a starting point for thinking more critically about listening instruction.

11. Rost, M. (2011). Teaching and researching listening. Harlow, England: Pearson.

This is a more academic volume, with its longest section focusing on how listening works on the neurological, linguistic, semantic, and pragmatic levels, for mature listeners, L1 learners, and L2 learners. I can highly recommend it for curious readers.

On the other hand, if you are looking for ideas to improve your listening instruction, you will find that chapters 8 and 9 pack a lot of punch. They give a broad, clear overview of many important topics in listening instruction, and might help you see where you have been missing something in your instruction and need to rebalance it. They had that effect for me.

The final section of the book includes about a dozen suggested research projects, with step-by-step explanations and suggested techniques to help you get started.

12. Rost, M., & Wilson, J. J. (2013). Active listening (research and resources in language teaching). New York, NY: Routledge.

Books from this Research and Resources series are organized into four sections: research to implications, implications to application, application to implementation, and implementation to research. This listening volume is further subdivided to focus on considerations related to affective concerns, top-down and bottom-up processing, interaction, and learner autonomy. The section on research gives a wonderful, brief overview for each of these areas. This is followed by a much longer section with 50 fully described (several pages each, with sample worksheets, scripts, etc.) listening activities that teachers can try with their classes, and a bit of commentary on each one. This section fills most of the pages in the book. The third section of the book focuses on how listening activities fit into the larger language curriculum, touching on topics such as teacher and student talk as input, listening for language acquisition, ways of organizing and integrating listening instruction, and adaptations to various possible constraints. The final section provides an introduction to action research, along with questions and resources for action research in each of the five areas, or "frames" (affective, top down, etc.) with which the authors organize their work. Sound files are available online.

This is a splendidly practical book for the practicing teacher. For me, the research overviews were really fun, and they point me to just the right places in the references to learn more. The example activities really show the variety possible in listening instruction and lead nicely into action research, especially if a teacher finds that he or she has been neglecting one of the five frames.

13. Sepulveda, J. (2012). Fifty ways to teach them listening: Tips for ESL/EFL teachers. Portland, Oregon: Wayzgoose Press.

This slim, affordable ebook (just 16 pages and US$0.99) contains 51 suggestions to help ESL/EFL teachers improve the quality of their students' listening practice. The first 44 suggestions are specific activities such as "Drawing Dictation" or "Inferring Speakers and Settings." The last several suggestions introduce the reader to instructional practices that can be applied in a variety of listening activities. This is a great booklet for busy teachers to skim when they need a new idea or a little inspiration.

14. Vandergrift, L., & Goh, C. (2012). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition in action. New York, NY: Routledge.

This book is clearly aimed at teachers, both pre- and in-service. Rather than a general book attempting to give equal attention to the whole field of listening instruction, the authors argue for an approach with particular emphasis on metacognitive strategy building. For this reason, I think the book might be even better for practicing teachers than for preservice readers, and it would be a good choice for a book group so that teachers can discuss the relationship between their current classroom practice and the authors' suggestions.

The first section describes L2 listening, and there is a short final section covering multimedia listening and listening assessment. The bulk of the book, however, is given to Part II: A Metacognitive Approach to Listening. Here the authors describe three types of metacognitive knowledge that can help students listen more successfully, and then focus on describing student-centered approaches to listening instruction that flow from the idea of building this metacognitive knowledge. I like how the suggestions start broad, with a description of the type of knowledge and competence we want students to gain, and then get more and more specific with a general pedagogical sequence, and a variety of activity types, and lesson-planning guidance. There are classroom scenarios for each chapter, and specific ideas for activities to add variety to your listening instruction repertoire.

15. Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to teach listening. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.

In this slim volume, the author begins from the texts and other auditory input (teacher talk, student talk) that language learners listen to. He then lists a great many possible listening tasks and activities, describing each in a full paragraph. This section includes a chapter for each of the conventional parts of a listening lesson: pre-, while-, and postlistening activities. He completes the main part of the text with two chapters on listening curricula more generally. I especially love the chart on page 144—a web of ideas for professional development that can help anyone become a better teacher of second language listening.

The last section of the book includes tasks for the reader, linked to the main ideas (and keyed to specific pages) in the main text. These are obviously designed to be assigned by an instructor to teacher trainees, but that doesn't mean you can't assign them to yourself. The CD found in the back cover of the book is for these tasks. It has example listening texts (to analyze and to prepare example activities) as well as additional input such as a linguist talking about features of spoken language and teachers talking about their ideas for listening activities. This is a great touch, and unique among the books in this bibliography.

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For teachers, the key takeaways from any book on listening are:

• Listening is a challenging skill, marked by uncertainty and the potential for learner anxiety. Consider affective issues.
• Learners need appropriate instruction in specific listening skills and strategies, not just constant comprehension testing.
• Learners also need enough time and independence to work with a listening text, listening repeatedly, forming and testing hypotheses. It is not always helpful to feed them information so that they will "comprehend successfully."
• Listening texts come in many forms. Be sure to provide appropriate variety in length, speed, accent, genre, and format (but also consider when and how consistency in any of the above features may be helpful). Authentic and graded materials are both useful.
• A wide variety of listening activities exists. Choose wisely, and consider new ideas so you don't get stuck repeating the same things.
• A better understanding of how we perceive spoken language in our L1 and L2 can be useful, as it helps us understand specific learner challenges.
• What has been helpful to you as you study listening and update your instruction? I would love to hear from you.

Beth Sheppard received her MA in linguistics from the University of Oregon. She has taught English in Oregon, California, Mexico, and Peru, as well as teaching German and Chinuk Wawa in Eugene, Oregon.