An idiodynamic investigation of student listening experiences in an English medium instruction political science lecture

Listening to and learning from a university lecture can be an arduous task, particularly when the lecture is given in a second/additional language, which is often the case in English medium instruction (EMI) contexts. Further, listening research has been limited by methodological constraints and has offered few real-time insights into the lecture listening experience. This paper introduces an innovative idiodynamic method for monitoring lecture comprehension with the help of a footpedal device set in an EMI political science lecture. The data set includes the lecture recording, footpedal readings, and stimulated recall interviews with four students (two males, two females; four different first languages). We examine 1) what comprehension challenges students report during the lecture; 2) how the reported challenges vary among the four students; and 3) whether a listening challenge reported at a given time by more than one student has the same reason. Reported reasons for non-comprehension were categorized based on a data-coding scheme including top-down, bottom-up, affective, multimodal and environmental factors. More than half of the reported instances were due to top-down factors, followed by multimodal factors. The findings highlight that each student has idiosyncratic ways of engaging with the lecture content. • Novel real-time data on student comprehension collected during a university lecture. • English medium instruction political science teaching and learning in focus. • Majority of reported comprehension challenges related to student background knowledge. • Multiple streams of input negatively affect comprehension. • Students report similar and divergent comprehension challenges at certain times.