THE EFFECTS OF APPLYING REPEATED LISTENING ON JUNIOR ENGLISH MAJORS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION

THE EFFECTS OF APPLYING REPEATED LISTENING ON JUNIOR ENGLISH MAJORS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT This study investigated the effects of applying repeated listening on junior E glis m jors’ listening comprehension at An Giang University (AGU). In this study, we concentrated on (a) the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors, (b) the effects of pplyi g repe ted liste i g o ju ior E glis m jors’ liste i g compre e sio . In order to collect enough data for the research, a descriptive study was designed to 50 students (25 from DH14TA and the other half from DH14AV). To be more specific, in this descriptive study we designed a questionnaire of 18 questions and an interview checklist of 14 questions for those students so as to receive necessary feedbacks which were about the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors and its effects on listening comprehension of these students. After the long process of collecting and analyzing the data, the results we achieve reveal t t t e stude ts’ liste i g compre e sion s bee muc e ced fter t ey d pplied repeated listening way. Moreover, listening comprehension was not the only skill to be improved, but also others. They asserted that with repeated listening approach they could witness the positive changes of vocabulary development, fluency and high listening motivation.

AN GIANG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All above, we would like to express our most sincere thanks to our supervisor, Mr Phan Van Chi for his devoted instruction and valuable feedbacks end-to-end the entire development of this study Without his great assistance, our study would be worthless and far away from being finished

I also would like to thank DH14TA and DH14AV students for their great cooperation and willingness in helping us to fill in the questionnaires and interview checklist

L st but ot le st, I wis to s y “t ks” to my beloved f mily for t eir gre t encouragement and support while working on this research

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgement i

Table of contents ii

List of abbreviations iv

List of tables v

List of figures vi

Abstract vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Research title 1

1.3 Rationale 2

1.4 Research questions 2

1.5 The aims of the study 2

1.6 Research methodology 3

1.6.1 Research design 3

1.6.2 Population 3

1.6.3 Sample 4

1.6.4 Data collection instruments 4

1.7 Structure of the thesis 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 6

2.2 Definition of key terms 6

2.2.1 What is repeated listening 6

2.2.2 What is listening comprehension 8

2.3 Related studies 20

2.3.1 Related research on listening comprehension 20

2.3.2 Related research on repeated listening 25

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction 27

3.2 Research design 27

3.2.1 Participants 27

3.2.2 Data collection instruments 28

3.2.3 Study time-frame 29

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS 4.1 Introduction 30

4.2 General information 31

4.3 The reality of applying repeated listening on junior English majors at AGU 32

4.3.1 Data collected from the questionnaires 32

4.3.2 Data collected from the interview 37

4.4 T e effects of pplyi g repe ted liste i g o ju ior E glis m jors’ liste i g comprehension at AGU 38

4.4.1 Data collected from the questionnaires 38

4.4.2 Data collected from the interview 41

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 5.1 Introduction 43

5.2 Conclusion 43

5.2.1 The reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors at AGU 43

5.2.2 T e effects of pplyi g repe ted liste i g o ju ior E glis m jors’ liste i g comprehension 44

5.3 Implications 44

5.4 Limitations of the study 45

5.5 Further study 45

REFERENCE 46

APPENDICES 48

APPENDIX 1: Questionnaire for students

APPENDIX 2: Interview checklist

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Information of investigated classes 28

Table 3.2 Time-frame of the study 29

T ble 4.1 Stude ts’ time for pplyi g repe ted liste i g 35

T ble 4.2 Stude ts’ improveme t i liste i g compre e sio 38

Table 4.3 Becoming a good listener 39

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 A ge er l picture of pter 4 “Fi di g d implic tio ” 30

Figure 4.2 Stude ts’ ge der 31

Figure 4.3 Stude ts’ score 32

Figure 4.4 Stude ts’ greeme t levels tow rd t e import ce of repe ted liste i g 33

Figure 4.5 Stude ts’ ttitude tow rd pr ctici g E glis liste i g compre e sio t roug repeated listening 34

Figure 4.6 Stude ts’ time for pplyi g repe ted liste i g 35

Figure 4.7 Stude ts’ w ys of utilizi g repe ted liste i g 36

Figure 4.8 Stude ts’ ctivities w ile liste i g 37

Figure 4.9 Stude ts’ improveme t i liste i g compre e sio 39

Figure 4.10 Becoming a good listener 40

Figure 4.11 Stude ts’ flue cy improveme t, voc bul ry developme t and listening motivation 41

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of applying repeated listening on junior E glis m jors’ listening comprehension at An Giang University (AGU) In this study, we concentrated on (a) the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors, (b) the effects of pplyi g repe ted liste i g o ju ior E glis m jors’ liste i g compre e sio

In order to collect enough data for the research, a descriptive study was designed to 50 students (25 from DH14TA and the other half from DH14AV) To be more specific, in this descriptive study we designed a questionnaire of 18 questions and an interview checklist of

14 questions for those students so as to receive necessary feedbacks which were about the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors and its effects on listening comprehension of these students

After the long process of collecting and analyzing the data, the results we achieve reveal

t t t e stude ts’ liste i g compre e sio s bee muc e ced fter t ey d pplied repeated listening way Moreover, listening comprehension was not the only skill to be improved, but also others They asserted that with repeated listening approach they could witness the positive changes of vocabulary development, fluency and high listening motivation

TÓM LƯỢC

Đây là đề tài g iê cứu ả ưở g củ việc áp dụ g p ươ g p áp g e lặp đi lặp lại lê

k ả g g e iểu củ si viê m b trườ g Đại ọc A Gi g Tro g đề tài ày, c ú g tôi xo y qu i vấ đề c : một là về t ực trạ g củ việc áp dụ g p ươ g p áp g e tiế g A lặp đi lặp lại iều lầ củ si viê m b , i là về ả ưở g củ p ươ g

p áp ày lê k ả g g e iểu củ ọ

Để có được ữ g dữ liệu cầ t iết p ục vụ c o việc g iê cứu, c ú g tôi đã t iết kế một

“ g iê cứu mô tả” áp dụ g c o việc k ảo sát 50 si viê , với 25 si viê từ lớp DH14TA và 25 sinh viên cò lại từ lớp DH14A ụ t ể ơ , tro g g iê cứu ày c ú g tôi đã t iết kế một bả g ỏi gồm 18 câu cù g với một bả g p ỏ g vấ gồm 14 câu để t u

t ập ữ g t ô g ti p ả ồi t iết yếu ằm cu g cấp c o việc k ảo sát t ực trạ g củ việc áp dụ g p ươ g p áp g e lặp lại và ả ưở g củ p ươ g p áp ày lê k ả g

g e iểu củ si viê m b trườ g A Gi g

S u một quá trì t u t ập và p â t c dữ liệu, kết quả g iê cứu c o t ấy p ươ g p áp

g e tiế g A lặp đi lặp lại iều lầ đã giúp c o si viê cải t iệ iều được kỹ k ả

g g e iểu K ô g c ỉ vậy, óm si viê ày cũ g ậ đị rằ g bê cạ kỹ g

g e iểu được cải t iệ k ả g ói lưu loát và vố từ vự g cũ g có sự t y đổi t c cực

Bê cạ đó, p ươ g p áp ày cũ g t úc đẩy si viê có độ g lực ọc kỹ g g e iều

ơ

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study

Although listening is now well recognized as a critical dimension in language learning, it still remains one of the least understood processes According to Morley (2001), during the 1980s special attention to listening was incorporated into new instructional frameworks, that

is, functional language and communicative approaches Throughout the 1990s, attention to listening in language instruction increased dramatically Until recently, there have been several studies of developing listening comprehension, one of which is repeated listening approach According to Kr s e d Dupuy’s fi di gs, repeated listening could increase seco d l gu ge le r ers’ liste i g compre e sio It w s discovered t t repe ted liste i g could help language learners achieve listening comprehension effectively It is known as a very cheap, useful one to self-enhance listening comprehension Language learners these days including AGU students, however, still struggle with finding a right method to practice listening and to improve listening comprehension As a result, there have been AGU students galore, even graduated ones, considering listening skill as the greatest fear in their English learning, which leads them to fall in communication with the others Knowing the seriousness of this problem, a survey on the effects of applying repeated listening on junior

E glis m jors’ listening comprehension at AGU is conducted to give a helpful approach of developing listening comprehension to AGU students, especially to English majors According to the personal experience of Krashen in 1996 and the large-scale study of Dupuy in 1999, repeated listening brings positive results to language learners which helps them enhance not only listening comprehension, fluency but also vocabulary Hence, this dissertation will re-verify that to see whether repeated listening approaches help enhance AGU stude ts’ liste i g compre e sio T is study is divided i to five c pters: introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, and results and discussion In the last sectio , i p rticul r, we poi ts out t e study’s stre gt s d limit tio s, d makes several suggestions

1.2 Research title

Therefore, in this thesis, I would like to focus my research on the topic:

“The effects of applying repeated listening on junior English majors’ listening

comprehension at AGU”

With this title, some main reasons and purposes for our research would be listed out as in

t e ext sectio “R tio l”

1.3 Rationale

Although English is more and more concentrated in Vietnamese educational system, just few Vietnamese students can be successful in learning English, even English majored ones Like at many other schools and universities in Vietnam, the majority of An Giang University English majors are not really good at English, specially listening skill, even after graduation Those students cannot communicate in English effectively and confidently inasmuch as their listening skill is not good enough to be able to understand what the others mean Realizing the seriousness of this problem, there have been researches galore into listening skill development carried out by researchers, teachers and students, including AGU ones Of these studies, however, there have been just few researchers noticing to the roles of repeated listening on improving listening comprehension As a result, a survey on “The effects of applying repeated listening o ju ior E glis m jors’ listening comprehension t AGU” is conducted to give practical contribution to the teaching and learning of English, particularly at AGU To be more detailed, this study is expected to improve English listening ability for AGU students which results them in communicating in English effectively by repeated listening method For other researchers who conduct the same study, the result of this study is expected to be a reference and contribute more information to solve the same problems

1.4 Research questions:

This study is conducted based on the following research questions:

(1) What is the reality of applying repeated listening approach of junior English majors

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of applying repeated listening on junior

E glis m jors’ listening comprehension t AGU d e ce E glis m jors’ liste i g ability As a result, the aims of this study are:

(1) To investigate the reality of applying repeated listening approach of junior English majored students at AGU

(2) To examine the effects of applying repeated listening on English listening comprehension

1.6 Research methodology

1.6.1 Research design

There are several kinds of research designs such as descriptive design, experimental design, evaluation design, etc Each will have different strengths and weaknesses Therefore, we will depend on the features and contents of questions, study conditions such as time and financial ability to apply an appropriate research design In this study, “t e descriptive design” is pplied to draw a general picture about the reality of applying repeated listening approach of junior English majors at AGU It is also used to re-describe the effects of listening repetition on those English majors’ listening comprehension at AGU, which is to improve listening ability of AGU students Firstly, a survey questionnaire will be delivered

to 50 students from DH14TA and DH14AV to investigate the reality of applying repeated listening on junior E glis m jors’ liste i g compre e sio and its effects on junior English

m jors’ listening comprehension at AGU The information from questionnaire will be analyzed to embrace the reality of learning listening skills at AGU and find out an effective solutio w ic c be “repe ted liste i g” to e ce t e stude ts’ listening comprehension Then, an interview is also conducted to a group of students with similar contents above in order to raise the reliability

1.6.2 Population

In this research, the English majored students are the objects of the study At present, faculty of foreign languages has over 800 students in total including pedagogy and bachelor There are approximately 800 English students at AGU divided into 3 different majors: AV,

TA and CD AV, TA and CD majors, in detailed, usually take about 200, 200 and 400 students respectively Interaction books (to freshmen) and English language skills for IELTS books (to second, third and fourth year students) are applied to primarily develop

four main skills - listening, speaking, writing and reading- in their curriculum Like the three left, the total units of listening subjects which must be completed are 12 to university students, and 9 to college ones before their graduation

1.6.3 Sample

Due to the limitation of time, research competence and finance, in this study, we only pick

up 50 students (25 from DH14TA and the rest from DH14AV) for surveying the effects of applying repeated listening on junior English majors’ listening comprehension at AGU These participants are chosen to be our sample because they have just been taught enough the number of units of listening skills and applied several different listening methods and strategies including repeated listening approach Hence, they are selected to be participants

To collect the sufficient data needed for this study, a questionnaire consisting of 18 questions is designed for 50 students ( 25 from DH14TA and 25 from DH14AV) to get information about the reality of applying repeated listening approach of those students and find out its effects on the stude ts’ listening comprehension at AG During the time questionnaire was set up, it underwent a lot of changes Right after the first drafts had been finished, it was delivered to these 50 students as the pilot stage The pilot data was used to check for the reliability first Then the carefully edited questionnaire would be delivered to these ones to exploit their levels of agreement to each statement relating to the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors and the effects of listening repetition on junior E glis m jors’ listening comprehension at AGU Before using the questionnaire for the main scheme it was read and evaluated by teacher To ensure the reliability of students’ responses, the research gave clear instructions to do the job

The questionnaire consists of three parts with 18 questions:

(1) 3 questions for p rticip t’s background

(2) 9 questions for the reality of applying repeated listening of junior English majors (3) 6 questio s for t e effects of liste i g repetitio o ju ior E glis m jors’ listening comprehension at AGU

 Interview

Beside the questionnaire, to make sure the reliability of data collected in this research, an interview checklist consisting of 14 questions was designed to exploit students’ feedbacks from the reality and effects of repeated listening approach on junior English majored stude ts’ listening comprehension at AGU The subjects of the interview were 5 students selected among 50 students in the sample They are students who apply and follow repeated listening approach to improve their listening comprehension When being interviewed, five students would answer 14 questions in the interview checklist about background information, the reality and the effects of applying repeated listening on junior English

m jors’ listening comprehension at AGU and their answers would be carefully written

1.7 Structure of the thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters Chapter one introduces general information of the research Chapter two reviews the literature and chapter three discusses research methodology Findings are presented in chapter four Chapter five gives the summary of the study, conclusion, implications and suggestions for further study

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction

Literature review is a base of the research In this study, literature is built with two parts The first part is definition and clarifying of key terms including repeated listening, listening comprehension In the second part, it is background of the study It concludes related studies

of repeated listening and listening comprehension

2.2 Definition of key terms

2.2.1 What is repeated listening?

Repeated listening is when a learner listens to the same recording repeatedly In repeated listening, learners collect several brief tape-recordings of proficient speakers discussing a topic selected by the acquirer They then listen to the tape as many times as they like, at their leisure Repeated listening, interests in the topic, and familiar context help make the input comprehensible Topics are gradually changed, which allows the learners to expand their competence comfortably Repeated listening is a low-tech, inexpensive, and pleasant way to obtain comprehensible input

 Necessary tools for applying repeated listening

In order to best utilize repeated listening, a few tools of the trade are needed:

+ “Ipod or M 3 pl yer” for stori g audio files

+ “Google Translate” for finding listening materials

+ “Audio Hijack” for recordi g y udio from t e I ter et t t is ’t dow lo d ble

+ Time to search, collect, and listen

 Tips for repeated listening

+ First of all, let’s choose short English audios – from 2 to 5 minutes – which you are interested in the topics Repeated listening should only be on topics that are of real interest,

to ensure that the focus is on the message Boredom sets in rapidly when listening is undertaken only because it is in another language

+ After listening to the recording for several times, if you still do not really understand some passage of it, you should read the transcripts to make it clearer and more familiar This will make the foreign language input more comprehensible

+ Listen repeatedly until you understand all about the audio/ tape or interest starts to wane + Topics then are changed gradually and you move to related topics This will help ensure greater comprehensibility of input One might move, for example, from current events to history

 Repeated listening ’s t eoretic l fou d tio s

Repeated listening is based on research findings on the receptive skills: listening and reading It is based on the concept of extensive listening (listening in great amounts and for content) and the principles of repetition, authenticity, listening for information, and topic familiarity In the repeated listening approach presented here, comprehension is enhanced because subjects can listen to the same input several times Repetitive exposure to a listening passage has been found to be a very effective means for improving listening comprehension Studies that have pointed out the value of repetitive exposure to language input are Blankenship, 1982; Pica, 1987; Lund, 1991; Cervantes and Gainer, 1992; Chiang and Dunkel, 1992; Terrell, 1993; Berne, 1995; Bygate, 1999; Krashen, 1996; and Gass, Mackey, AlvarezTorres, and Fernández, 1999 From a pedagogical point of view, Chambers (1996) poi ts out t t t e repetitio tec ique reduces t e stude ts’ level of xiety bec use the listener knows that he/she can listen to the segment as many times as desired Moreover, subjects studied by Rodrigo and Krashen (1996) reported that, when rehearing a single listening passage several times, the speakers on the tape seemed to the listeners to be speaking more slowly, when in fact they, the students, were listening to the same, unaltered passage They also appeared to distinguish sound sequences more efficiently into more and more meaningful words and chunks/phrases, thereby improving their level of comprehension with each rehearing

Repeated listening also requires authentic listening material, which, as with all authentic texts, focuses on culture as a natural informational context facilitating the language

acquisition process The benefits are numerous Authentic material provides adult learners with an opportunity to work at a higher cognitive level (Byrnes, 1984 and Swaffar, Arens, and Byrnes, 1991) and, consequently, to develop target language skills in a more meaningful context Authentic material, thus, leads to more effective listening skills and to cultural awareness The use of authentic listening material, and hence of spontaneous speech

by native speakers, has been recommended by several researchers (Meyer, 1984; Gasparro and Veguez, 1990; Lund, 1991; Herron and Seay, 1991; Bacon, 1992; Harlow and Muyskens, 1994; and Schmidt-Rinehart, 1994; Omaggio, 2000)

Liskin-Similarly, topic familiarity has been shown to aid listening comprehension by allowing language learners to more accurately predict the unknown content of a passage as they establish links between what is familiar, i.e background knowledge, and what is new Several researchers report that topic familiarity has a positive effect on listening skills (Gass and Varonis, 1984; Glisan, 1988; Altman, 1990; Lund, 1991; Chiang and Dunkel, 1992; Dunkel, 1986; Schmidt-Rinehart, 1994; Bygate, 1999; and Gass, Mackey, Alvarez-Torres, and Fernandez, 1999) Finally, if a language teacher has succeeded in helping his or her students to focus on meaning and information, (i.e listening for content, extensively and allowing for the possibility of not completely understanding every single word in the recorded passage), they will not be concerned about form, and consequently, they will be more likely to apply top-down strategies, as used by effective listeners For a more detailed account of the benefits of a focus on information and general meaning in language acquisition see Cook, Dupuy and Tse (1994), Day and Bamford (2000), and Krashen (2003, 1993)

2.2.2 What is listening comprehension?

 Definition of listening

Liste i g c be defi ed s, “Liste i g is t e ct of e ri g tte tively” It is lso process similar to reading which should possess knowledge of phonology, syntax, semantics and text u derst di g T omliso (1984) defi es liste i g s, “Active liste ing, which is very import t for effective commu ic tio ” or “More t just e ri g d to u derst d d

i terpret t e me i g of co vers tio ” Liste i g is receivi g l gu ge t roug t e e rs It involves identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and sentences When we listen, we use our ears to receive individual sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and

pauses) and we use our brain to convert these into messages that mean something to us Listening in any language requires focus and attention It is a skill that some people need to work at harder than others People who have difficulty concentrating are typically poor listeners Listening in a second language requires even greater focus Like babies, we learn this skill by listening to people who already know how to speak the language

of emotional variation in another person's voice will be less likely to be able to discern the emotions the other person is experiencing Listening is a visual as well as auditory act, as

we communicate much through body language We thus also need to be able to discriminate between muscle and skeletal movements that signify different meanings

† Comprehension listening

The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make sense of them To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what others are saying the same is true, of course, for the visual components of communication, and an understanding of body language helps us understand what the other person is really meaning In communication, some words are more important and some less so, and comprehension often benefits from extraction of key facts and items from a long spiel Comprehension listening is also known as content listening, informative listening and full listening

† Critical listening

Critical listening is listening in order to evaluate and judge, forming opinion about what is being said Judgment includes assessing strengths and weaknesses, agreement and approval This form of listening requires significant real-time cognitive effort as the listener analyzes what is being said, relating it to existing knowledge and rules, whilst simultaneously listening to the ongoing words from the speaker

† Biased listening

Biased listening happens when the person hears only what they want to hear, typically misinterpreting what the other person says based on the stereotypes and other biases that they have Such biased listening is often very evaluative in nature

† Evaluative listening

In evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other person

is saying We seek to assess the truth of what is being said We also judge what they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy Evaluative listening

is particularly pertinent when the other person is trying to persuade us, perhaps to change our behavior and maybe even to change our beliefs Within this, we also discriminate between subtleties of language and comprehend the inner meaning of what is said Typically also we weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, determining whether it makes sense logically as well as whether it is helpful to us Evaluative listening is also called critical, judgmental or interpretive listening

† Appreciative listening

In appreciative listening, we seek certain information which will appreciate, for example that which helps meet our needs and goals We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or maybe even the stirring words of a great leader

† Sympathetic listening

In sympathetic listening we care about the other person and show this concern in the way

we pay close attention and express our sorrow for their ills and happiness at their joys

† Empathetic listening

When we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understand how others are feeling This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances

of emotional signals When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel what they are feeling In order to get others to expose these deep parts of themselves to us, we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanor towards them, asking sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure

† Therapeutic listening

In therapeutic listening, the listener has a purpose of not only empathizing with the speaker but also to use this deep connection in order to help the speaker understand, change or develop in some way This not only happens when you go to see a therapist but also in many social situations, where friends and family seek to both diagnose problems from listening and also to help the speaker cure themselves, perhaps by some cathartic process This also happens in work situations, where managers, HR people, trainers and coaches seek

to help employees learn and develop

† Dialogic listening

The word “di logu” stems from the Greek words “di ”, meaning “t roug ” d “logos”

me i g “words” Thus, dialogic listening mean learning through conversation and an engaged interchange of ideas and information in which we actively seek to learn more about

t e perso d ow t ey t i k Di logic liste i g is sometimes k ow s “rel tio l liste i g”

† Relationship listening

Sometimes the most important factor in listening is in order to develop or sustain a relationship This is why lovers talk for hours and attend closely to what each other has to say when the same words from someone else would seem to be rather boring Relationship listening is also important in areas such as negotiation and sales, where it is helpful if the other person likes you and trusts you

 Types of listening skills

† Intensive listening

Intensive listening is when teachers use taped materials or materials on disk to make students practice their listening skill (Harmer, 129) In intensive listening, teachers have to concentrate on making students achieve and recognize the phonological and morphological elements of the language (Brown, 122) For example, the case of hearing two words nearly pronounced similarly but in fact these two words include two different vowels as what Douglas Brown showed here; phonemic pair, vowels, (123)

Test-takers hear: is he living?

Extensive listening will usually take place outside the classroom, in the students home, car,

or on personal stereos as they travel from place to another The motivational power of such

an activity increase dramatically when students make their own choices about what they are going to listen to (Harmer, 228) In that case, students are free in their selection of what they are listening to This type of listening gives teachers to play their role even if they are so far from the students by advising students to listen, for example, to especial English accent more than other one Douglas Brown considered dictation as one of extensive listening tasks (132) For EFL teachers, dictation considers as a means for assessing listening comprehension because dictation' nature shows that students need a verity of lexical grammatical competences

 Definition of listening comprehension

Wit t e reg rd to t e term “liste i g compre e sio ” i l gu ge le r i g, sc ol rs ve proposed a number of different definitions

Chastain (1971), for example, defined listening comprehension as the ability to understand the speech of native speakers at normal speed in listening situations Similarly, Saricoban

(1999) noted that listening comprehension is the ability to identify and understand what

ot ers re s yi g T is i volves u derst di g spe ker’s cce t or pro u ci tio , is or her grammar and vocabulary, and grasping the meaning conveyed

Listening comprehension can also be defined broadly as human processing which mediates between sound and the construction of meaning (Morley, 1991) That is, after people receive sounds from the environment, they try to get the meaning out of the sounds they hear In a similar token, listening comprehension is described as a complex process of what people use to understand speech Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) suggested that those complex activities cannot be understood by simply looking at the linguistic cues or knowledge of the language, but non-linguistic cues or knowledge of the world also have to

be considered in the comprehension process

Byrnes (1984), who defined listening as a complex skill in which people have to employ all types of knowledge to interpret the meaning, proposed another similar view of listening comprehension definition She explained that listening is more than the perception of sounds Rather, it includes comprehension of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and connected discourse

By Wallace, Stariha and Walberg, 13, listening skills are essential for learning since they enable students to acquire insights and information and to achieve success in communicating with others This means that students receive information from school settings to transfer it to their daily life to benefit from it for the purpose of communicating

in a real social interaction Moreover, Gary Buck argues the same point of view "listening is

a complex process in which the listener takes the incoming data, an acoustic signal, and interprets it based on a wide variety of linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge (247)

Spratt, Alla, Pulverness, and Williams (The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test Course) added that listening is sense of language sounds that have meaningful indication (30) The authors meant that when the person feels that there is audio sound which has a meaning, he/ she is listening by this way

J ck Ric rds viewed i is i troductio t t co sideri g liste i g s"…t e m stery of discrete skills or microskills, such as recognizing reduced forms of words, recognizing cohesive devices in texts, and identifying key words in a text, and that these skills should

form the focus of teaching" is not enough and adds that listening examination is not exclusively for comprehension but also for language learning itself (1) Jack C Richards' view shows the importance of what really should be taught and the aims of teaching should not be exclusive only on making students understand for a moment Students' understanding should cover the possible learning progression

Although these definitions vary to some extent, basically listening is considered as an activity in which listeners employ a variety of processes in trying to comprehend information from oral texts In this way, listeners construct meaning from the passage and relate what they hear to their existing knowledge Additionally, it is meaningful to consider listening comprehension as a three stage process

 The process of listening comprehension

The process of listening comprehension, once thought to be a passive activity is now generally described as a dynamic interpretive process consisting of a series of complex interactive processing stages that a listener goes through (Call, 1985; Murphy, 1991; O’M lley, mot & Kupper, 1989; Ric rds, 1983; Rost, 1990) As mentioned there are many interpretations of these processes and different authors make their own distinctions in gradation and the rank order in which some processes occur It is not possible to explore all the arguments since the concern here is with how a teacher might approach the teaching of listening to assist learners with problems In order to find where these problem areas have been placed in the processing chain, it is useful to examine a few examples taken from the literature Richards defines three related levels of processing which he terms ‘propositio l ide tific tio ’, ‘i terpret tio of illocutio ry force’ and ‘ ctiv tio of re l world

k owledge’ (1983:220) Lu d lists six ‘liste er fu ctio s’ of w ic ‘ide tific tio ’ is t e first and is defi ed s ‘focus o t e code r t er t t e mess ge’ (1990:107) Du kel et l divide the listening comprehension construct into three areas The first area consists of processes which precede comprehension such as orientation, attention, perception and recognition These they term as being ‘lower order, ‘bottom up’, ‘trivi l pre cursor’ elements (1993:180) Comprehension occupies the middle grou d d t e ‘ ig er order’,

‘top dow ’ eleme ts i cludi g, for ex mple, lysis, sy t esis or ev lu tion corresponding

to Richards‘ ctiv tio of world k owledge’ T e problems of perceptio , recog itio , d identification are described as being ‘lower order’ processes Upon such examination it

becomes obvious t t t e problems me tio ed f ll m i ly i to t e ‘bottom up’ c tegory of processing

 Le r ers’ problems i liste i g compre e sio

EFL Learners regularly report persistent problems in coping with spoken English which include problems with recognition of sounds (Carrier, 1999; Rost, 1990) and their functions (Brazil, 1994a) in fast speech, problems of anxiety from a lack of understanding of the systematics of the acoustic signal (Brazil, 1994a; Norris, 1993) and problems concerning how to approach the task of decoding spoken English (Brown, G., 1990; Carrier, 1999;

ie & Wei, 1998) T ere re compl i ts bout ‘speed’ w ic re rel ted to difficulties i understanding reduced forms, distinguishing word boundaries and recognition of non-prominent words (Cauldwell, 1996) Temporal concerns are also related to processing and short term memory capacity as well (Call, 1985; Ellis, 1996; Rost, 1990) There is a need for teachers to provide a focus on listening to promote acquisition in general and to relieve the frustrations and anxiety learners may feel in coping with the stream of speech In order

to do this in a principled way, it is incumbent on teachers to be aware of what current theory has to offer in this area Unfortunately this may not always be something teachers do Two thirds of the teachers in Berne’s study (1998) reported ‘ ever’ or ‘r rely’ when asked how often they sought out current listening comprehension research Valuable insights from research may be ignored or dismissed if teachers feel threatened by such materials (Carter, 1998) Literature on listening comprehension may appear to be extremely complex and even chaotic and thus threatening from the perspective of a non-specialist such as an ordinary language teacher

 Models of listening process

In terms of language processing, it is now generally accepted that learners need access to both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies Bottom-up processing strategies focus learners on the individual components of spoken messages, that is, the phonemes, individual words and grammatical elements which need to be comprehended in order to understand the messages Top-down processing strategies, on the other hand, focus learners on macro-

fe tures of text suc s t e spe ker’s purpose, d t e topic of t e mess ge (Nu , 1998)

It was noted by Richards (1990) that an understanding of the role of bottom-up and down processes in listening is central to any theory of listening comprehension It is, of

top-course, clear that we cannot see and observe the cognitive process of listening However, understanding the listening process can help us to rethink the methods of teaching listening For this purpose, there are three key components for clarifying the listening process: bottom- up, top-down and interactive processes

† Bottom-up processing

Morley (1991) maintained that bottom-up processing of language information is evoked by

an external source, that is, by the incoming language data itself Bottom- up comprehension of speech, then, refers to the part of the process in which the understanding

of incoming language is worked out from converting sounds into words, into lexical meaning and grammatical relationships and so on to an understanding of the meaning of the message Thus, the meaning of a message is based on the incoming language data Moreover, Buck (2001) suggested that in bottom-up processing, the process takes place in

a definite order, starting with the lowest level of detail and moving up to the highest level That is, the input is first decoded into phonemes which are used to identify individual words Then the syntactic level continues processing on to the next higher stage followed

by an analysis of the semantics to arrive at a literal understanding of the basic linguistic meaning Finally, the listener interprets the literal meaning in terms of the communicative situation to understand what the speaker means Nunan (1998) remarked that the characteristics of the bottom-up approach focus learners on the individual components of spoken messages that is the phonemes, individual words and grammatical elements which need to be comprehended in order to understand the message A similar view was proposed

by Carrel (1988), who indicated that listeners construct meaning from the smallest units of letters and words to larger ones like phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs According

to the bottom-up model, the meaning of the message is thus based on the incoming language data combined with linguistic knowledge of different types including phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics and discourse structure This is why some scholars (Carrell, 1988 and Brown, 2001) described this model as text-based and data driven processing Accordingly, bottom-up processing of language information, or text-based processing refers to the use of incoming data as a source of information about the meaning of a message Examples of bottom-up processing in listening viewed as a process of decoding include the following:

(1) Scanning the input to identify familiar lexical items

(2) Segmenting the stream of speech into constituents – for example, in order to recog ize t t “ -book-of-mi e” co sists of four words

(3) Using phonological cues to identify the information focus in an utterance

(4) Using grammatical cues to organize the input into constituents – for example, in order to recog ize t t i “t e book w ic I le t you” “t e book” d “w ic I le t you” re t e m jor co stitue ts r t er t “t e book w ic I” d “le t you” (Richards, 1990)

T e liste er’s lexic l d gr mm tic l compete ce i l gu ge provides t e b sis for bottom-up processi g A perso ’s lexic l compete ce serves s me t l dictio ry to w ic incoming words are referred for meaning assignment Grammatical competence, thus, can

be seen as a set of strategies that are applied to the analysis of incoming data

† Top-down processing

Chaudron and Richards (1986) noted that top-down processing involves prediction and inference on the basis of facts, propositions and expectations That is, it is quite possible to understand the meaning of a word before decoding its sounds because we have different types of knowledge, including knowledge of the world This idea comes from real life situations in which we know what normally happens, and so we have expectations in mind about what we will hear Top-down processing, then, comes from an internal source evoked from prior knowledge and global expectations These include expectations about language and expectations about the world Background knowledge may take several forms: previous knowledge about the topic of discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, and knowledge stored in long- term memory i t e form of “sc em t ” d

“scripts” (Ric rds, 1990) T e term ‘sc em ’ is defi ed i Rumel rt (1980) s d t structure for representing generic concepts stored in memory Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) additionally pointed out that background information in the liste er’s mind is of two kinds: content schemata and formal schemata Content schemata include cultural knowledge, topic familiarity, and previous experiences Formal schemata, on the other

d, i volve people’s k owledge of discourse forms: text types, r etoric l co ve tio s, and the structural organization of prose Both content and formal schemata facilitate the

liste ers’ compre e sio of text le rly, sc em t or scripts re closely rel ted to down processing in listening comprehension

top-According to Buck (2001), top-down processing utilizes various types of knowledge involved in understanding language and these are not applied in any fixed order In fact, they can be used in any order or the application of the different types of knowledge used in processing may occur simultaneously For example, syntactic knowledge might be used to help identify a word, or idea about the topic of conversation Knowledge of the context will also help interpret the meaning

In the same vein, Anderson and Lynch (1988) posited that meaning does not reside exclusively within the words It also exists in the head of the listener Successful listeners are those who can make use of both the knowledge inside and outside their heads to interpret what they hear Therefore, the use of knowledge inside the head is the use of knowledge which is not directly encoded in words This top- down view of listening is also known as knowledge-based processing

Examples of top-down processing in listening which make use of background knowledge

in understanding the meaning of a message include:

(1) Assigning an interaction to part of a particular event, such as storytelling, telling a joke, praying, and complaining

(2) Assigning places, persons, or things to categories

(3) Inferring cause and effect relationships

(4) Anticipating outcomes

(5) Inferring the topic of a discourse

(6) Inferring the sequence between events

(7) Inferring missing details (Richards, 1990)

that in accounting for the nature of processing spoken language, bottom-up and top-down modes work together in a cooperative process

O’M lley, et l (1989) lso fou d t t effective seco d l gu ge liste ers used bot down and bottom-up strategies to construct meaning while ineffective listeners try to decode the meanings of individual words The point is simply that listening comprehension

top-is the result of an interaction between a numbers of pieces of knowledge To comprehend spoken language, listeners have to use many types of knowledge The knowledge of individual linguistic units such as phonemes, words, or grammatical structures, and the role

of t e liste er’s expect tio , t e situ tio , b ckgrou d k owledge, d t e topic re ll important for listeners to be able to understand speech In other words, listeners use whatever information they have to interpret what the speaker is saying

Studies have been carried out to specify the types of processing skilled, listeners mostly rely on It was found that skilled listeners are better able to use top- down, or knowledge based processes whereas less-skilled listeners tend to rely on bottom-up, or text-based processes Hildyard and Olson (1982, cited in Rubin, 1994), for example, studying the comprehension and memory of oral versus written discourse, found that skilled listeners use a knowledge-based mode of text processing whereas less-skilled listeners attend mostly

to local details Similarly, Shohamy and Inbar (1991), in a study of the effect of text and question type on listening comprehension, found that less-skilled listeners performed much better o ‘loc l questio s’ w ic required t e liste er to ide tify det ils d f cts, t o

‘glob l questio s’ w ic required t e liste er to sy t esize information, draw conclusions and make inferences They, therefore, concluded that while high level listeners seemed to process the text in a knowledge-based manner, the low level listeners seemed to process the text in a data-driven manner Some studies, however, have indicated that skilled listeners are those who are able to monitor their developing interpretation of the incoming text by constantly checking it against the incoming linguistic cues and to modify their interpretation accordingly For example, Buck (1990) stated that listeners must check and monitor their developing interpretation in the light of the linguistic input and their background knowledge to ensure that the interpretation is a reasonable one Buck maintained that the ability to adjust the interpretation in response to new information is obviously an important listening skill Moreover, Richards (1990) pointed out that good

listeners use a number of processes simultaneously to reach an understanding of incoming speech

In brief, in listening comprehension, bottom-up and top-down processing are co-related in

a complex relationship and both are used to interpret meaning To arrive at an understanding of the message, listeners must understand the phonetic input, vocabulary, and syntax (bottom-up processing), and at the same time, use the context of situations, general knowledge, and past experiences (top-down processing) That is, to construct the meaning, listeners are not passively listening to speakers but are actively reconstructing the spe kers’ i te ded me i g d getti g me i gful i form tio by decodi g t e sou ds, words, and phrases

2.3 Related studies

2.3.1 Related research on listening comprehension

As teachers and scholars grow to understand the unique characteristics of listening skill and the significant role it plays in language learning and communication, they recognize more and more the importance of teaching listening comprehension in the second language classroom This recognition has resulted in an increase in the number of listening activities

in student textbooks and even in methodology texts designed specifically for listening There is, however, only a small body of research on listening comprehension since it is difficult to gain direct access to the listening process (Yian, 1998) Two of researches in listening comprehension were about listener characteristics and process characteristics

 Listener characteristics

Liste er c r cteristics ppe r to ve co sider ble imp ct o i dividu l’s liste i g comprehension Among these characteristics are: language proficiency level, memory, age, gender, and background knowledge

First, language proficiency level is a major variable in almost all of the studies A major problem in comparing studies is that there are few standardized tests to determine proficiency level Most studies use either teacher judgment, course level, or a performance

on a nonstandard test Most researchers suggested that cognitive processing varies depe di g o t e le r ers’ k owledge of t e l gu ge It is not clear what role grammar, vocabulary, background knowledge of the culture, or knowledge of discourse processes

play at different proficiency levels However, the use of standardized listening proficiency tests such as those of the American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and The Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) is working towards a standard

to be used in listening comprehension researches (Rubin, 1994) It is clear that language proficiency is a variable that needs to be considered in every study

Second, the relationship between memory and listening comprehension is complex Call (1985) considered whether listening comprehension was related to short-term memory for five types of auditory input: sentences in context, isolated sentences, random words, random digits, and musical tones She found that listening comprehension was correlated with these five types in the following order: isolated sentences, sentences in context, musical tones, random words, and random digits Also, Dunkel et al (1989) considered the influence of short-term memory on encoding lecture material in English They studied students taking college freshman English classes The students were native and non-native speakers who were presumably at an advanced level in English They found that subjects who had high short-term memory correctly recognized more concept information and detail information than subjects who had low short-term memory Moreover, they found that native speakers recognized significantly more of the lecture concepts and detail than did non-native speakers of English In addition, Conrad (1989, cited in Rubin, 1994) compared the memory of non-native speakers at high and medium-skill levels for recorded sentence at different speaking rates She found that non-native speakers tended to ignore information in the middle of sentences Rather, they tried to duplicate the beginnings or ends of sentences Third, age is an important variable affecting second language achievement Seright (1985) considered the relationship between age and L2 achievement

of adults in an instructional setting Working with members of the Canadian Armed Forces undergoing English language training in Quebec, she used 71 learners who ranged in age from 17 – 41 years of age with a mean age of 22.76 years Seright divided the students into two groups: an older group (aged 25 to 41) and a younger group (aged 17 to 24) Both groups were compared with respect to short-term development in aural comprehension She found that the mean gain was significantly greater for younger subjects than for older subjects Her study suggested that in adult L2 learners, the rate of achievement in aural comprehension decreases with increasing age

Fourth, only a few studies have examined gender in listening skill Some studies have considered how gender may relate to differences in listening comprehension For example, Boyle (1987) used Chinese students of English between 18 – 20 years old in his research Using a battery of tests including a vocabulary recall, a listening passage, a listening conversation, two dictations, vocabulary identifications given orally, as well as other items not related directly to listening, he found that males did significantly better on two tests of listening vocabulary, and woman did significantly better on all other tests However, some studies could not find a significant relationship between gender and listening comprehension For instance, Feyten (1991) looked at university students of French and Spanish She found that L1 listening ability was significantly related to foreign language listening comprehension However, she failed to find a significant relationship between gender and any foreign language proficiency measure Bacon (1992) looked at university students of Spanish and also failed to find a significant relationship between gender and listening comprehension Similarly, Markham found no significant differences between men and woman ESL students in their level of comprehension though all listeners paid more attention to male speakers than to female speakers Markham concluded that male speakers were prejudged by listeners to be more expert than female speakers

Fifth, several studies have considered the role of background knowledge in listening comprehension Long (1990, cited in Rubin, 1994) considered whether Spanish FL listeners comprehend better when they possess schemata relevant to the listening topic The subjects were students enrolled in a third quarter university Spanish course Before beginning the experiment, the students completed a survey of their background of the two subjects used mely “gold rus es” d “rock groups” Two me sures of compre e sio were used: a recall protocol and a recognition test consisting of paraphrased statements in English about the texts According to the survey results, students possessed less information about gold rushes than about rock groups Long found that recall protocols for the rock passage revealed a significantly higher number of correct idea units than the protocol for the gold rush passage This suggested that background knowledge may be related to listening comprehension

Schmidt-Rinehart (1992, cited in Rubin, 1994) also considered how topic familiarity and proficiency level affect recall measures of listening comprehension Students from three sections of first, second and third quarter university Spanish classes listened to two