Abstract
Although listening plays a critical role in communication, it is not an effortless activity for second language (hereafter, L2) learners, as the speech they encounter is generally delivered at a natural speed and includes unfamiliar sounds they may not have learned. Especially for those who have been trained only in scripted English, connected speech (hereafter, CS) which is used in authentic communication is difficult to process without knowledge of and familiarity with the sounds. Some researchers (e.g., Brown, 2023; Brown & Crowther, 2022; Ito, 2024; Levis, 2018) have advocated the importance of CS instruction; however, CS training has not been sufficiently highlighted. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted to investigate trends in CS research and determine whether studies have focused on the reciprocal relationship between L2 learners’ phonological awareness of CS and decoding in listening. The results showed that only 12 studies were extracted for screening to examine this relationship and only two of them indicated a relationship with decoding processing. The present study discusses the trends in CS research and gaps in the research area. This study also has pedagogical implications for CS instruction, and suggests directions for further research on CS.
