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Journal Article 1: Rahimirad, M., & Moini, M. R. (2015). The challenges of listening to academic lectures for EAP learners and the impact of metacognition on academic lecture listening comprehension. SAGE Open, 5.

Abstract: Academic listening skill is an indispensable necessity for English for academic purposes (EAP) students in English-medium universities and also critical for their future success in comprehending conference lectures. But due to the specific nature of such academic lectures, nonnative students all too often face challenges in getting a full command of this task. This study investigates the challenges of listening to academic lectures and the impact of related metacognitive strategies on academic lecture listening comprehension on a group of Iranian learners in an EAP workshop. Fifteen academic staff who took part in two intact classes at the University of Qom, Iran, were randomly assigned to treatment (N = 8) and control (N = 7) groups. The treatment group received 16 hr of metacognitive strategy instruction based on the models proposed by Vandergrift during academic listening instruction, while the control group was just exposed to academic lectures with no explicit strategy instruction. The academic listening sections of the British International English Language Testing System (IELTS) were utilized to measure the listening comprehension of both groups before and after the treatment. The results of the data analysis determined that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the listening posttest. The interviews before and after the treatment revealed details of challenges in academic lecture comprehension and also shed light on the perception of the learners regarding metacognitive strategy instruction and the frequency of main metacognitive strategies used in comprehending academic lectures.

Journal Article 2: Droumeva, M. (2017). Soundmapping as critical cartography: Engaging publics in listening to the environment. Communication and the Public, 2, 335–351.

Abstract: There is a kind of growing new media practice of capturing and mapping sound and an emergent global community of listeners interested in engaging with sounds of the environment, urban space, habitats and biospheres. Between user-driven Instagramming our everyday audio-visual experiences and professionally curated sound installations, there is an emergent space and a global audience for listening to ‘soundmaps’ of local and global environments. Sometimes interlinked and sometimes disparate, these communities connect to wider communities of practice and (environmental) activism in the context of social media, new media production and participatory cultures. There are also growing research initiatives that take up soundmapping as a way of inquiring into pressing spatial, geo-political and cultural issues primarily in cities and also in the endangered wilds. Interest in sound in a variety of interdisciplinary fields has grown exponentially over the last few decades. This article will externalize and analyse the frames of several emergent communities and their organizing themes as nascent in new media culture, and social networks specifically, as they intersect with phonography, creative soundmaking and ‘citizen science. By pointing out normative logics embedded in the practice of soundmapping, I then work towards a language of critical soundmapping by way of three examples that I suggest function as alternative forms of representation of and communication about sound environments: (1) the curated initiative Cities and Memory, (2) the creative research project London Sound Survey and (3) the climate change project Biosphere Soundscapes.

Journal Article 3: Choe, H. (2018). Type your listenership: An exploration of listenership in instant messages. Discourse Studies, 20, 1–23.

Abstract: This case study investigates how people ‘listen’ and act as ‘listeners’ in instant messages. Little research has been done on listenership and listeners in text-based digital discourse; to address this gap, I analyze a group instant message conversation among five Korean young women via KakaoTalk, a free instant messaging application. Demonstrating previous studies on listenership and listeners in spoken discourse and defining ‘listenership’ as the act of giving feedback on prior messages, I identify and explicate four ways of showing listenership in instant message interaction: (1) minimal responses, (2) machine gun listenership, (3) laughing and (4) sticker reaction. My analysis illuminates how verbal and non-verbal forms of listenership are adapted to typed-based online contexts as well as how listenership contributes to the construction of talk in typed-based digital environments.