The efects of self assessment logs on non english majors english listening comprehension at cfc m a

The study results suggested that self-assessment log was a useful facilitative metacognition task which should be launched in English listening classes for purposes of improving non-Engl

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY –HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

THE EFFECTS OF SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS ON NON-ENGLISH MAJORS’ ENGLISH LISTENING

HO CHI MINH CITY, JANUARY 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY –HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

THE EFFECTS OF SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS ON NON-ENGLISH MAJORS’ ENGLISH LISTENING

NGUYEN THU HUONG, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, JANUARY 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been completed without the assistance on various forms and from different sources First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thu Huong, who gave me enthusiasm and useful advice over the lengthy period of the searching and writing

of this thesis He was always by my side to meet and talk about my ideas, and to ask me questions to help me think through my problems Without his excellent academic guidance, encouragement, and document support, I would not have enough ability and motivation to overcome the stages to finish this thesis on time

Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mr Truong Van

Nam, Mr Huynh Huy Van, Mr A Tron, and Ms Nguyen Thi Thanh Hong for their

kindness, trust, assistance, and shared experiences to help me complete my thesis

Finally, I would like to send my thanks to my beloved family including my father, mother, older-brother, and my cousin who love, hope, understand and encourage me to overcome all the difficulties on the way of pursuing this work

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

I certify that, this thesis with the title as mentioned bellow is my own work

THE EFFECTS OF SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS ON NON-ENGLISH MAJORS’ ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT CFC

As stated in the statement of the Higher Degree Committee’s Requirements for the Thesis in Master’s Program, this thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions

Ho Chi Minh City, January 2019

CHAU THUC QUYEN

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, CHAU THUC QUYEN, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s thesis deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan, or reproduction of the thesis

Ho Chi Minh City, January 2019

CHAU THUC QUYEN

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of explicit self-assessment logs on non-English-majored students’ English listening comprehension achievements as well as their attitudes towards the self-assessment log application at the College of Finance and Customs (CFC)

Thirty two second year students at CFC were conveniently selected and assigned into either experimental or control group KET tests were adopted as this study’s pre- and post-tests in order to investigate whether or not there were differences between two groups in terms of listening comprehension competence Furthermore, attitude questionnaire and semi-structured interview were also used for determining the attitudes of learners towards the effectiveness of self-assessment logs they have perceived

The statistical results revealed that (1) the listening achievement scores of students in the group receiving treatment greatly outperformed the scores of the students in comparison group, and (2) the participants in experimental group had positive attitudes towards the treatment of self-assessment task in terms of practice, affection, and cognition

The study results suggested that self-assessment log was a useful facilitative metacognition task which should be launched in English listening classes for purposes of improving non-English majored learners’ English listening comprehension achievements as well as making a good preparation for their future English listening skill development based on the impacts of metacognition during the learning process

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… i

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY……… ii

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS……… iii

ABSTRACT……….iv

CONTENTS……… v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……… x

LIST OF TABLES……… xi

LIST OF FIGURES……… xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1.1 Background of the study………1

1.2 Aims of the study……… 1

1.3 Research question……… 2

1.4 Research hypothesis……… 2

1.5 Significances of the study… ………2

1.6 Scope of the study……… 3

1.7 Outline of this thesis……… 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……… 5

2.1 Listening and its vital role in foreign language learning……… 5

2.2 Brief of English listening comprehension ……… … 7

2.3 Common English listening comprehension teaching approaches seen from the teachers' angle……… 9

2.4 Top-down and Bottom-up processing in listening comprehension…….….14

2.5 Listening strategies in English listening comprehension……….16

2.6 Metacognition in listening comprehension……… 18

2.7 Traditional assessment versus alternative assessment……….20

2.8 Self-assessment under the role of an alternative assessment tool…………20

2.8.1 The differences between self-assessment log versus peer-assessment and portfolio……… …… 22

2.8.2 The researcher’s critical thinking about the nature of self-assessment logs applied in this thesis……… ……25

2.9 The implicit learning autonomy factor in self-assessment log……… 25

2.10 How self-assessment logs affect English listening comprehension achievements……….……… 26

2.11 Previous studies on the use of self-assessment in English classroom…… 28

2.12 Conceptual framework of the study……….32

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY……….……… 34

3.1 Research questions and hypotheses……….34

3.2 Research design………34

3.3 Setting of the study……… 35

3.4 Participants……… 36

3.5 Sampling procedure ……….37

3.6 Research procedure and data collection……… 37

3.7 Teaching material……….39

3.8 Treatment……….40

3.8.1 Pilot study for the treatment……… 40

3.8.2 The official treatment applied in this study………40

3.9 Data collection instruments……… 43

3.9.1 Attitude questionnaire……… ………… 43

3.9.2 Reliability of the questionnaires……… ………46

3.9.3 Listening test……… ……….47

3.9.3.1 Listening comprehension proficiency tests………… …… 47

3.9.3.2 Test reliability……….49

3.10 Telephone interview……….………50

3.11 Data analysis procedure……… 50

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION……….………… 52

4.1 Statistical analysis of test results……… 52

4.1.1 The comparison of the results of two groups’ pre-tests…… ………52

4.1.2 The comparison of the results of pre-test and post-test of comparison group.……….……… ……….53

4.1.3 The comparison of the results of pre-test and post-test of experimental group.……….54

4.1.4 The comparison of the results of two groups’ post- tests……… … 57

4.1.5 The learners’ tendency in completing Part 4 and Part 5 of post-test better than their pre-test in experimental group.……… …….58

4.2 Statistical analysis results of the questionnaire………60

4.2.1 The experimental group’s learners’ attitudes in term of self- assessment practice.……… ……… 61

4.2.2 The experimental group’s learners’ attitudes in term of self- assessment affection.……… ………….………….61

4.2.3 The experimental group’s learners’ attitudes in term of self- assessment cognition.……… ……… 62

4.2.3.1 The experimental group’s participants’ perceptions towards the top-down and bottom-up improvement ……… …… … 66

4.2.3.2 The attitudes of the participants in experimental group towards their English listening comprehension performance improvement ……….……… ………66

4.2.3.3 The general attitudes of experimental group’s respondents towards self-assessment logs.……… …… …66

4.3 Statistical analysis results of the interview.……….67

4.3.1 The attitudes of learners in experimental group towards the treatment …… ……… ……… ….67

4.3.2 The learners’ opinion towards the effectiveness of the treatment

……… 67

4.3.3 The challenges faced by the learners when they applied self- assessment logs in the experimental class……….……69

4.3.4 The learners’ opinion in continuing applying self-assessment logs in their future English listening learning.………….…….…… ……….69

4.4 Discussion ……… 70

4.5 Finding summary ………74

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS…….………75

5.1 Pedagogical implication…….……….……….75

5.1.1 For CFC teachers.……….…….75

5.1.2 For CFC learners.……… 78

5.1.3 For syllabus and curriculum designers.……….78

5.2 Limitations of the study.……… 78

5.3 Recommendations for further studies ……… …….79

5.4 Chapter summary.………80

REFERENCES……….……….…82

APPENDIX A: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE – Vietnamese version.………91

APPENDIX B: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE – English version………… 95

APPENDIX C: SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW – Vietnamese version ……… ……… 99

APPENDIX D: SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW – English version…… 100

APPENDIX E: SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS OF STRAIGHTFORWARD TEXTBOOK OF MACMILLAN.……….……… 101

APPENDIX F: SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS OF MORE! TEXTBOOK OF CAMBRIDGE.……….…….…………102

APPENDIX G: SELF-ASSESSMENT LOG OF FACE2FACE TEXTBOOK OF CAMBRIDGE.……… 103

APPENDIX H: SELF-ASSESSMENT LOG OF Q: SKILLS FOR SUCCESS

LISTENING AND SPEAKING TEXTBOOK OF OXFORD.………104

APPENDIX I: SELF-ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST FOR REFERENCE … 106

APPENDIX J: SELF-ASSESSMENT LOG FROM THE INTERACTION 1 TEXTBOOK ……….111

APPENDIX K: ADAPTED SELF-ASSESSMENT LOGS USED IN THIS STUDY……… 113

APPENDIX L: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR REFERENCE No 1……….115

APPENDIX M: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR REFERENCE No 2……….……118

APPENDIX N: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR REFERENCE No 3……….121

APPENDIX O: ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR REFERENCE No 4……….123

APPENDIX P: LESSON PLAN FOR EXPERIMENTAL AND COMPARISON GROUPS……… 124

APPENDIX Q: PRE-TEST…… ……… 134

APPENDIX R: POST-TEST……… ……….139

APPENDIX S: FIGURES……… ……… 144

APPENDIX T: LEARNERS' SELF-ASSESSMENT LOG PRACTICE IN EXPERIMENTAL GROUP……… 148

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Structure of self-assessment log adapted by the researcher…… ……27

Table 3.1: The essential information of the participants in this study………… 36

Table 3.2: A description of the attitude questionnaire applied in this study…… 44 Table 3.3: The results of Cronbach Alpha’s for the question items of Practice….47

Table 3.4: The results of Cronbach Alpha’s for the question items of

Affection 47 Table 3.5: The results of Cronbach Alpha’s for the question items of

Table 4.6: Learners’ attitudes on self-assessment practice……….61

Table 4.7: Learners’ attitudes on self-assessment affection………61

Table 4.8: Learners’ attitudes on the self-assessment logs’ friendly user……… 62

Table 4.9: Learners’ attitudes on the self-assessment’s lexis memorizing

effectiveness………63

Table 4.10: Learners’ attitudes on the strategy use

effectiveness………63

Table 4.11: Learners’ attitudes on the listening top-down effectiveness…………63

Table 4.12: Learners’ attitudes on the listening bottom-up effectiveness……… 63

Table 4.13: Learners’ attitudes on the English listening learning

effectiveness………64

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Conceptual framework of the current study………32

Figure 4.1: Learners’ attitudes towards their top-down and bottom-up

Figure 4.4: Learners’ changing attitudes after receiving the treatment…… … 145

Figure 4.5: The extent of learners’ cognition towards the self-assessment logs’ effectiveness……… …146

Figure 4.6: The extent learners have cognition of self-assessment logs’

challenges……… …146

Figure 4.7: The learners’ future self-assessment log application…… …………147

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

This thesis with the title “the effects of self-assessment logs on non-English

majors’ English listening comprehension at CFC” was conducted because of the

following reasons First of all, based on the researcher’s experiences as educational practitioner in her students’ current issue, listening is a struggling English skill in terms of both anxiety and low capacity for CFC learners to achieve comparing to the other English skills due to the TOEIC 450 target, which they had to get for officially graduation from the College of Finance and Customs (CFC) At that time, the researcher really wanted to do something to improve my students’ English listening comprehension

After the materials reading procedure, I found out a task namely assessment log It was a facilitative metacognitive tool supposed by Vandergrift & Goh (2012), which had the same format and the using purposes with alternative assessment in terms of supporting learners to significantly improve their listening comprehension capacity via the most important component, metacognition Although self-assessment log was a metacognitive tool suggested by Vandergrift

self-& Goh (2012), these two authors had not any implementary studies demonstrating its effectiveness in foreign language teaching and learning For these reasons, the researcher decided to carry out this study with the hope to not just identifiy whether self-assessment logs application could enhance her students’ English listening comprehension capacity but also worked as a quite persuasive evidence supporting for the two authors’ metacognitive tool suggestion

1.2 Aims of the study

The objectives of this thesis were (a) determine whether or not assessment logs caused effective influences on CFC non-English majored students’ English listening comprehension achievements, and (b) to discover the attitudes of students towards the use of self-assessment during their receiving treatment process Through the results of this research, the author would have a

self-valuable foundation to not only (c) adjust her self-assessment logs better for enhancing her self-assessment application for her learners’ English listening comprehension performance improvement, but also (d) demonstrate the effectiveness of the implication of facilitative metacognitive tool named self-assessment log supposed by the two writers Vandergrift & Goh (2012)

Based on the teaching background and the objectives of the writer, this research was implemented in order to figure out the answers for the following research question:

1 What are the differences between the group treated with self-assessment logs and the group untreated with self-assessment logs in terms of their English listening comprehension performances?

2 What are the attitudes of the students in experimental group towards the self-assessment log application in terms of practice, affection, and cognition?

There were two hypotheses raised for this study The first hypothesis was

“the post-test scores of students in experimental group will surpass the post-test

outperformance of the experimental group And the second hypothesis associating

with the attitudes of the learners was “the participants in experimental group will

have positive attitudes towards the self-assessment log application in terms of practice, affection, and cognition”

1.5 Significances of the study

This quasi-experimental work with the research question and hypotheses represented some significance First of all, it was one of the first investigations focusing on how teachers and students at CFC use self-assessment logs as a facilitative metacognitive tool supposed by Vandergrift & Goh (2012) in a sense that English listening improvements could be strengthened and weaknesses could

be overcome Secondly, the results of this study not only demonstrated the important role of self-assessment logs in non-English majors’ English listening enhancement, but also offered some deeply insights into the learners’ cognition towards self-assessment log implementation, and suggested some valuable teaching implications for self-assessment log’s future adaptation to teach English listening skill for non-English majored students at the school

Thirdly, if this research is conducted successfully, it will be a significant solution supporting to the practice at CFC because the treatment could partly fill in gap in solving the students’ low capacity in English listening comprehension Fourthly, one of the most significant of this study was its partly contribution to the indirect impacts of self-assessment logs on the CFC learners’ intrinsic factor, metacognition, which boosted the students’ learning awareness effectively instead

of concentrating too much on the extrinsic ones, for instance, the teachers themselves, their teaching methodologies, textbooks, and curricula based on the studies of the other researchers previously in the vein of listening skill such as Ridway cited in Lynch (2009) and Field (2008) Moreover, the positive findings of this study would initially demonstrated for the effective role of self-assessment log, a facilitative metacognitive tool supposed by Vandergrift & Goh (2012), in improving learners’ English listening comprehension performances, which had not any previous studies conduction before

Finally, the results of this study was a fundamental foundation assisting CFC teachers in making creative combination of their current English listening teaching methods and self-assessment logs in order to maximize the effectiveness

of them as well as to enhance their learners’ English listening comprehension achievements

1.6 Scope of the study

In this study, the researcher only focused on examining the effective impacts of self-assessment logs on the early second year non-English majors at the College of Finance and Customs (CFC) and discovering the learners’ attitudes

towards the treatment they received However, the main content of this experimental research just concentrated on presenting the main concept of self-assessment and demonstrating that self-assessment log was a powerful metacognitive tool for learners so as to improve their English listening comprehension capacity in experimental group, and to support for the implementation theory of metacognition tool supposed by Vandergrift & Goh (2012) This meant that this study would not pay too much attention to the other academic terms such as learning autonomy, learning motivation, and learning self-efficacy even though they seemed to have some mutual connections

quasi-1.7 Outline of this thesis

This thesis was composed of five themed chapters The Chapter One of this paper was the study’s introduction It firstly showed general background of the study Chapter Two began by laying out the theoretical dimensions of the research including related literature in the correlation to definitions, components as well as beliefs, practices, and thinking of teachers, the other researchers, and the writer herself towards self-assessment logs in English listening teaching and learning; and after that, a conceptual framework was formulated The Third Chapter was concerned with the methodology used for this study which drew up a general picture about the researching methodology, participants, data collection and data analysis procedure applied in this study Chapter Four described the findings of the research and discussed to figure out the best answers for the research questions and the hypotheses Finally, Chapter Five suggested some pedagogical implications for better English self-assessment task application at CFC teaching and learning context

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This section attempted to provide a brief summary of the literature relating

to the three key words “listening comprehension”, “self-assessment log”,

“alternative assessment”, and especially how self-assessment log caused positive influences on listening comprehension performance in English teaching and learning context

2.1 Listening and its vital role in foreign language learning

It was not surprised when not only Yajun (2004), but also the other scholars and researchers in the twenty first century such as Rost (2001), Vandergrift (2007), and Kurita (2012) pointed out that listening was an essential skill in second language pedagogy because of its vital and critical dimension in language learning

As Rost (1994) stated that listening was extremely significant in foreign language learning because it provided input for learners leading to the development of their language in the future Besides, Krashen (1985) and Hamouda (2013) believed that listening skill was an important element in achieving understandable input because learning process would not exist if there was not any input

According to Dunkel’s 1991 study (as cited in Vandergrift, 2007) and Rost (2002), he argued that listening comprehension could be regarded as an important language skill to develop because it was the heart of L2 learning and the significant development of the other language skills Furthermore, Hasan (2000); Hamouda (2013); and Kurita’s 2012 study (as cited in Field, 2008) assumed that listening comprehension was the most basic skill challenging both learners and instructors’ success during their learning English process due to its individual characteristic However, it was sometimes a hard mission for the listeners to comprehend the speakers’ intentions as well as to extract the relevant information from the messages to meet their own goals because listening was not the thing learners could control as expected in terms of how much the speaker said, how fast they spoke and so on on one hand On the other hand, from the teachers’ viewpoints, they could not control their learners’ listening process completely due

to its isolation effect Therefore, listening was considered as the most internalized

skill among the four English skills (Field, 2008) This was an evidence in the case

of teachers knew whether learners were reading the passage or not based on their eyes’ movement; however, how they knew exactly whether learners were listening

to the recordings, while they could not force their learners to listen when they wanted to give up and wandered their mind somewhere outside the classrooms

To the researcher, she strongly agreed with the viewpoint ofDunkel’s 1991 study (as cited in Vandergrift, 2007) and Rost (2002) that listening was one of the most crucial skill in foreign language learning because it was the most widely used language skill in normal daily life On the top of that, the role of English listening skill had been highly appreciated especially in developing countries generally and Vietnam particularly to meet the demands of the Industrial Revolution 4.0

Anyway, there was a great distance in the perception of English listening comprehension in the past and now In the past, listening skill was not highly valued from both learners and instructors As Nunan (1999) had explained this issue through his viewpoint that English learners tended to manipulate their English speaking and writing skills only because of their higher desire in these skills, but not listening and reading Therefore, listening skill became an unessential skill comparing to speaking and writing in terms of English learning and teaching context at that time However, in contrast to the viewpoint of Nunan (1999), the researcher believed that the currently perception towards the role of listening in English learning changed dramatically If “passive” was the adjective labeled for listening skill in the past, “active” and “complex” were the two key terms used for describing listening processing characteristics in the twenty first century Teachers should not solely apply speaking or writing activity separately in teaching English classes For activating classes to be much more realistic and productive, teacher should combine both receptive and productive skills simultaneously In other words, listening and speaking skills, reading and writing skills should be amalgamated critically and logically because listening and speaking, reading and writing had interrelationship to the other one in teaching and learning English classes

2.2 Brief of English listening comprehension

Associating to the definitions of listening comprehension, we could not deny that there were many definitions expressing the nature of listening from the worldwide authors Each author had his own individual viewpoint to define his own listening comprehension theory and one of the most famous listening comprehension definitions the researcher would like to mention firstly in this paragraph was the one supposed by 1993 study (as cited in Vandergrift & Goh, 2012), which mainly referred Levelt’s to “how a cognitive process work” According to Levelt, listening comprehension was a continuous operation of perception, parsing, and utilization respectively under the general control of metacognition The listening comprehension process started at the first Perception stage which recognized sounds, phonemes, pauses, acoustic emphases and hold it

in short-term memory For this stage, the listeners tended to firstly analyze speech signal for producing a phonetic representation After that, in the Parsing stage, the listeners would use phonetic representation of what was retained in their short-term memory previously to activate potential word candidates from long-term memory When phonological decoding and lexical selecting process were finished, the listeners would link the data of meaningful units and information sources in long-term memory in order to interpret the intended or implied meanings in Utilization stage Finally, Metacognition played its important role in orchestrating the whole cognitive process smoothly, efficiently and effectively via four main mutual steps planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluating To be much more specific, planning was the learners’ participation, monitoring referred to the anticipation’s accuracy checking, problem solving was associated to the repairing inaccurate comprehension, and evaluating was regarded to the overall comprehension, ideas, and performances verification

Furthermore, listening comprehension was also basically defined by Vandergrift’s 1999 study (as cited in An, 2012) and Hollen III (2004) which referred to an active and complex process with substantial mental effort to combine the input of sounds, the meaning of vocabulary, the grammatical structures, the stresses and intonation in the first step, and finally to interpret it

within the immediate and even the larger sociocultural context Not stop at Vandergrift (1999), the variety of listening comprehension definition was also demonstrated via the definition confirmed by Buck (2001) As Buck, he declared that listening comprehension was a combination of language and strategic competence Listening capacity would be firstly affected by both top-down and bottom-up processing with various types of knowledge regarding to language understanding (e.g grammatical knowledge, discourse knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, and sociolinguistic knowledge) which were not applied in any fixed order but happened, interacted, and influenced each other simultaneously in Language Competence, when kinds of strategies should be administered critically and effectively to comprehend the content of a recording file in strategic competence For strategic competence, it included both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, shortly called executive processes, which worked as the cognitive management function in listening Regarding to cognitive strategies, all the listening inputs would be stored in both short-term and long-term memory for later retrieval via the three typical processes such as: comprehension processes, storing and memory processes, using and retrieval processes While, associating to metacognitive strategies based on the definition of Buck (2001), listeners were conscious or unconscious mental activities which fulfilled an executive function management of cognitive strategies by assessing the situation, monitoring, self-evaluating, and self-testing their own language knowledge, language use, and language performances

Additionally, according to the two talented authors Vandergrift & Goh (2012), they argued that listening comprehension was an extremely complicated process affected by the four cognitive processes including (1) top-down and bottom-up processing, (2) control and automatic processing, (3) perception, parsing, and utilization, and (4) metacognition These four processing had mutually interrelationship with the other factors, and learners tended to manipulate all these processing rapidly and automatically To the researcher, there was some quite similarity straits between the listening comprehension theories stated by Levelt (1993) and Vandergrift & Goh (2012) because the listening comprehension

theory of Vandergrift & Goh (2012) was adapted from the one of Levelt (1993) However, Vandergrift & Goh (2012) was the first two pioneering authors in emphasizing the extremely important role of metacognition in listening comprehension process as well as suggesting some useful tools for metacognition enhancement besides the other top-down, bottom-up, perception, parsing, and utilization processing For this thesis, the writer adapted a new listening comprehension theory by combining the language and strategic competence factors of Buck (2001) and the metacognition complement of Vandergrift & Goh (2012) under the management of the four critical learning process: planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and self-evaluating The writer believed that in order

to assist students in their listening comprehension enhancement, she should cause some directly impacts on their lexis, strategies, top-down, bottom-up, and metacognition instead of mainly focusing on transferring English phonological knowledge only

from the teachers’ angle

Listening comprehension was an important language skill learners needed

to develop because of their practical demands in understanding English native speakers as well as being able to access the numerous available information sources via network-based multimedia Furthermore, listening comprehension located at the heart of L2 learning which had a beneficial impact on the other skills’ development (Dunkel, 1991; Rost, 2002) In other words, listening skill developed faster than speaking skill and created fundamental background for both reading and writing skills in foreign language learning (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992; Oxford, 1993) In spite of the crucial role of L2 listening comprehension competence, it was not really appreciated; especially, how to listen effectively was rarely taught in class (Mendelsohn, 2001; Berne, 2004; LeLoup & Pontiero, 2007)

The writer agreed that listening was not an easy skill to perceive Most listeners had to work as complex and active information processors (Young, 1997; Vandergrift, 1996, 1997, and 2003) which they made meaning from the input by

relating what they heard with their prior knowledge, produced information in their long-term memory and interpreted the main content into their first language simultaneously Especially, this information process would be much more complicated if learners had limited memory capacity for their target language In return, students who knew how to control their listening processes could enhance their comprehension and reach the overall success in foreign language learning (Vandergrift, 2007) Therefore, in some ways, focusing on the information process itself in order to facilitate learners’ listening comprehension competence via new adapted and creative teaching listening methods had become more and more popular for more than ten decades However, as mentioned in the very early stage

in this study, most of the English listening teaching approaches mainly emphasized the role of the teachers themselves in their learners’ listening capacity improvement In other words, we spent a lot of time for developing the teachers’ teaching technique and ability, the extrinsic factors, whereas we had forgot the crucial role of learners themselves, she meant the intrinsic ones, something originated from the learners’ inside For example, their learning awareness, or something called metacognition

Regarding to listening teaching approaches from the viewpoint of direct components caused by the teachers, the way people taught and studied English listening skill has been changed dramatically during more than one hundred years ago In the past, speaking and writing were thought as productive and active skills, while listening and reading were receptive and passive ones In one of the earliest foreign language teaching approach called Grammar Translation mentioned in Flowerdew & Miller (2005), listening was not taught All the teaching process was conducted in the learners’ mother tongue for only grammar and sentence structure, and vocabulary were just taught for helping learners translate Greek or Latin texts

The first language teaching approach emphasizing the important role of listening comprehension was Direct Approach (Felder & Enriquez, 1995) As described in Flowerdew & Miller (2005), although listening comprehension in this time played a major role, both listening comprehension and listening strategies

were not actually taught in classes For further explanations, learners acquired listening skill in an inductive way via repetition and regular application

For Grammar Approach, listening comprehension was considered as an essential element of it; however, listening ability was constantly taught and tested

in form of ability to simultaneously read and listen to a recording passage for perceiving the grammatical and lexical rules of the target language via filling missing words activities According to Flowerdew & Miller (2005), the greatest disadvantage of this teaching listening approach was having no listening meaningful discourse activities in the class for meeting the demands of learners in applying what they learnt into their daily life communication

According to Larsen-Freeman (2000), Audio-lingual Approach reached its popular time in the 1960s and 1970s which required learners to practice utterances,

to create similar utterances, and to recognize it in the dialogue they heard At this point of time, audio-cassette was also started widely used via the forms of drilling, practicing, repeating, and error correcting for meeting the learning goals of learners in correct pattern of discourse However, listening was taught only as a way to manipulate the new grammar and lexical structures without anything pertained to listening comprehension strategies Anyway, thanks for the appearance of this teaching approach and cassettes, learners had more opportunities to practice and interact with authentic target language situations despite of via machine only

According to Flowerdew & Miller (2005) Communicative Approach became popular in the 1980s and 1990s For this teaching approach, teachers paid more attention on using authentic target language and placing learners in real meaning exchange situations For this teaching and learning practice, learners were constantly required to process input and produce output for reaching maximum understanding their participants’ information exchange However, like Grammar Approach, listening strategies once again were not actually taught due to its non-important role consideration during this period of time

Task-based Approach was the other one during the foreign language teaching approach progression This approach required learners to listen, to

comprehend the input, and to complete kinds of tasks, for example: note-taking or filling in charts or forms Although it was argued to design under the real-world need orientation, the tasks were frequently focused on the content of lectures or passages Anyway, these types of tasks also provided useful opportunities for learners to familiar with real-life target language

In current language learning approaches, Learner-strategy Approach had been considered as one of the most effectiveness ones in facilitating learners’ foreign language learning According to Flowerdew & Miller (2005), this approach created opportunities for learners to familiar, recognize, and apply their own listening strategies in specific context and authentic tasks Specially, this was also the approach highlighting the significant role of metacognition realization As we knew that, metacognition referred to the learners’ knowledge of what strategies they should apply for specific tasks under the effectiveness conditions This meant that learners completely understood about types of listening strategies and knew how to apply it correctly for getting successful task completion during their listening procedure Although this approach focused on the learners’ independent learning, they also could share their thinking and individual knowledge about their kinds of strategies understanding for helping the other learners improve their strategy application in term of mutually listening skill development Learners in this situation would become more autonomous due to their own manipulation of learning goals and learning process It had been concluded that the more aware learners were of the learning process, the greater chance they could enhance their learning consciousness and strategic application competence

The next learning approach the writer would like to mention here was Integrated Approach (Flowerdew & Miller, 2005) For this approach, the teachers also paid more attention in teaching strategies for developing learners’ accuracy in their listening comprehension, making them able to listen for main ideas and details, improving their critical thinking skills, manipulating their listening process, especially using perceived information and presenting it under intelligently and intelligibly ways Consequently, for Integrated Approach, complementary listening strategies played an extremely vital role applied by the

learners during their perceiving foreign language procedure to comprehend, control, and to produce the language to overcome the authentic and meaningful tasks

Last but not least, the final one was also the most important one, Metacognitive Approach Annevirta et al (2007); Field (2008); Goh (2008); Lee & Oxford (2008); Vandergrift (2007); Veenman et al (2006); Zohar & Peled (2008) argued that among the approaches from the past until now, metacognitive one had been highlighted to be the most effective recent trend for English listening skill teaching and learning process

Based on the theory of Vandergrift & Goh (2012), Metacognitive Approach was some pedagogical procedures (pre, while, and post stages) which facilitated learners to raise their awareness of their listening learning process via developing their metacognitive knowledge on themselves, the demands, the nature and the strategies for listening support Simultaneously, learners also learnt to plan, monitor, problem-solving and evaluate their comprehension efforts for controlling the progress of their overall listening development In other words, Metacognitive Approach enabled learners to improve their listening by scaffolding to take positive actions to self-regulate their learning After being integrated with well-planned listening tasks, metacognitive activities could be an effective way to enhance listening proficiency and learners’ autonomy and motivation

These two famous authors suggested several activities for successfully deploying on Metacognitive Approach in classes such as: metacognitive pedagogical sequence, self-directed listening, and post-listening perception activities for guided reflections tasks including listening diaries, anxiety and motivation charts, and self-report checklist Among these activities, self-report checklist was supposed as one of the most effective ways for learners’ metacognition development via their own learning self-assessment task It worked

as a facilitative metacognitive tool to assist learners in expressing their ideas, feelings, and reflecting their learning experiences for deeply understanding their own listening abilities, behaviors, problems, and strengths Moreover, by making the awareness explicitly via learners thought of what they knew and performed,

they could better monitor, evaluate, plan and re-plan their own listening development by setting tangible comprehension and learning goals To the researcher, although having different names, self-report checklists suggested by Vandergrift & Goh were also the self-assessment logs applied in this thesis which were carefully adapted based on the format of self-assessment logs presented in the Interaction textbook and the combination theory of listening comprehension of Buck (2001) and Vandergrift & Goh (2012) However, the writer argued that the self-assessment logs she applied in this study were the “final activity” before finishing one chapter in class, not post listening activity in the sequence of pre- while- and post- because the textbook itself had designed specific pre- while- and post- activities for the listening content already

In conclusion, for these teaching English listening approaches, the role of listening skill had been appreciated more and more significantly together with the teachers’ responsibilities, their obligation, and their creation when the time went

by

Both top-down and bottom-up processing played a very significant role in deciding the success of the listeners’ listening comprehension performances (Rost, 2005) According to Nunan (2013), top-down and bottom-up were cognitive process in English listening comprehension happening by the same time for input procession For the theoretical framework foundation, both top-down and bottom-

up processing were firstly proposed by Rumelhart & Ortony (1977) Subsequently, they were continuously expended extensively and intensively by the studies of Chaudron & Richards’s 1986, Richards’s 1990, Field’s 1991, Rost’s 2002 and

2005, Park’s 2004, and others until now (as cited in Nunan, 2003)

Top-down processing basically involved the application of context and prior knowledge to comprehend the speakers’ messages In other words, listeners understanding a comprehension task in a top-down manner tended to use their context knowledge, prior knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, L2 cultural knowledge, and discourse knowledge of the listening events or the topics of a

recording file to activate the meaning for understanding the whole messages These knowledge sources were stored in the listeners’ long-term memory in which the form of schemata Such top-down component of listening was considered as an interpretation process demonstrating that learners’ comprehension began with their expectations about the information in the texts and the applications of appropriate knowledge sources to comprehend the sound streams However, the authors also emphasized that using this component solely was not adequate because listeners might not have all required prior knowledge and good perspectives on the subjects

to interpret listening messages accurately

Associating with bottom-up processing, it consisted of segmentation of the sound stream into meaningful units for coding the messages It was actually a mechanical process in which listeners segmented the sound stream and constructed the meaning based on their knowledge of the segmentals (individual sounds or phonemes) and suprasegmentals (patterns of language intonation such as stress, tone, and rhythm) of the target language After that, listeners gradually built meaning from phonemes to words to larger units of full sentences’ meanings and then larger chunks of discourse The bottom-up process of listeners was drawn primarily on linguistic knowledge, which included phonological knowledge, lexical knowledge, and syntactic knowledge of the target language Similar to top-down processing, listeners could not deal with the sound stream if bottom-up processing is only used separately

To the researcher personally, both top-down and bottom-up processing were the learners’ effective listening cognition process and meaningful teaching strategies, which were extremely significant for learners to improve their English listening comprehension competences However, for reaching the maximum advantages of these processing, the listeners should be taught how to use and control both top-down and bottom-up processing simultaneously instead of only depending on one typical listening processing For that reason, teachers themselves should be aware of the top-down and bottom-up important roles, then explicitly adapted and taught their learners via useful listening activities in classes

2.5 Listening strategies in English listening comprehension

In this part, the researcher would like to take a quick glance over the important of strategies on enhancing learners’ foreign language capacity According to Nunan (2003), Slavin (2006), Oxford (1990), Vandergrift & Goh (2012), these authors agreed that strategies completely could assist learners in making them to be more successful in foreign language academic career Many researchers supported the classification of L2 learning strategies into seven categories as supposed by Oxford (1990) including cognitive, metacognitive, memory related, compensatory, affective, social, and self-motivating strategies By applying these strategies consciously, language learning strategies could not only promote learners’ learning self-regulation but also help learners realize how to acquire English more effectively and efficiently Especially, it also assisted learners to be able to develop their self-diagnosis, problem solving skill, decision making skill, and evaluation skill particularly to become more independent, autonomous, and lifelong learners (As Oxford’ 2003 study as cited in Rahimi & Katal, 2012)

Besides the statements of strategies’ benefits for learners’ English studying, some other authors argued for its no usefulness in their teaching English classes The researcher did not agree with the Ridway’s statement (as cited in Lynch, 2009) that teaching strategies were waste of lesson time activities as L2 learners would not have enough time for applying strategies in their real-time listening On the contrary, she agreed with the viewpoint of Field (2008) which strategies were more necessary for both language learners in learning mother tongue and second language in the earlier stages of listening acquisition than for more competent listeners According to Field, after regular practicing, L2 listeners might employ kinds of strategies for overcoming some limitations caused by their incomplete knowledge of target language and uncertain decoding skills Furthermore, based on the arguments of Vandergrift & Goh (2012), strategies also helped learners achieve comprehension goals even when they could not understand what they hear Moreover, strategies were also needed in assisting them in enhancing foreign

language comprehension, retention, and recall of information To the writer, listening strategies were ones of the essential factors which could be taught to enhance learners’ listening comprehension competences even though there were some debates about its real usefulness She believed that although listeners tended

to automatically ask the speakers to repeat or ask further questions for clarifying the received input instead of applying listening strategies in real-life listening situations, the application of listening strategies should be carried out based on the learners’ demands and their own learning orientation For this study, strategies kept important role in helping learners overcome their learning English difficulties

In her personal opinion, the perceived and practiced strategies might gradually assist them in making good preparation for their upcoming school English tests and TOEIC test

In this thesis, to narrow down the wide range of listening strategies, the researcher would like to focus only on the two main types of learning foreign language strategies, cognition and metacognition among the seven strategies suggested by Oxford (1990) because these two types brought back much more positive benefits for learners’ listening learning comparing to the other types According to Buck (2001), cognitive strategies referred actions in which learners manipulated the material to be learnt and applied specific techniques to the learning task including: summarizing, induction, imagery, auditory representation, making inferences, using resources grouping, note-taking and elaboration of prior knowledge (Nunan, 2003, adapted from Chamot & O’Malley, 1994 and Oxford, 1990) While, metacognitive strategies were overseeing, directing and regulating the learning process In other words, it involved in thinking of learning process via planning, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating which planning was previewing main ideas, making plans for accomplishing the tasks, paying attention

to key information, seeking information and arranging it for promoting learners’ successful learning Monitoring referred to the learners’ self-checking their own foreign language comprehension to develop the learners’ ability to determine how well they had accomplished the task Problem solving was related to the learners’ adjusted approaches and inferences to activate specific strategies to comprehend

the task, and evaluating was the final stage in reflecting on the encountered difficulties as well as the success of problem-solving efforts To the writer, although cognitive and metacognitive strategies played crucial roles in assisting learners to improve their English listening proficiency, metacognitive strategies kept more significant function than cognitive strategies in learning process because whenever learner perceived how to regulate his or her own learning process critically, they could automatically manipulate their ways of learning and other types of strategy using, adjust their weaknesses, develop their strengths, and improve their strategy use via the implicit development of their metacognitive awareness (Henter, 2014 and Öza, 2016) and finally led to the faster proceed of learners’ English input process

2.6 Metacognition in listening comprehension

According to Hemmati & Mehammadkhani (2015), metacognitive awareness in some cases could affect the process of self-assessment implicitly via its four typical elements including planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluating To the researcher, metacognition was not only a new term in the twenty first century teaching and learning foreign language field, it was also one of the most popular topics for prestigious authors worldwide’s discussion Therefore, instead of paraphrasing the definitions and the positive roles of metacognition in teaching and learning English from other articles, putting metacognition as a factor which implicitly manipulated the self-assessment process to help learners evaluate their own cognition and manage their cognitive development in English listening context particularly was the main objective the researcher in this study

Self-assessment logs applied in this thesis was considered as a facilitative metacognitive tool which guided learners to their individual reflection in self-evaluating their personal capacity in specific contents such as writing something personally significant on a regular basis, expressing their ideas and feelings, reflecting on their experiences, creating opportunities for them to attend and realize their listening capacities, behaviors, and difficulties, encouraging them to think more deeply, replanning their learning process to improve their

performances, and creating higher learning motivation for their further practicing and studying According to Vandergrift and Goh (2012), “guided reflection” was a factor directly relating to metacognition, which was usually employed under the forms of some tasks such as listening diaries, anxiety and motivation charts, process-based discussions, self-report checklists Therefore, metacognition was something implied in self-assessment logs which affected the learners’ accuracy of self-assessment practice during their learning process via some dimensions such as helping learners understand the challenges of L2 listening, thinking of their individually and collaboratively learning development, actively making plans to self-direct, monitoring their listening progress, using listening strategies appropriately, having greater self-efficacy and learning motivation, and improving their listening proficiency ultimately

In other words, applying self-assessment logs in class was developing learners’ metacognition in that class According to Vandergrift & Goh (2012), learners’ metacognitive awareness should be guided critically via self-assessment logs so as to orient learners to perceive English listening skill better by helping them understand not only their learning objectives, but also their favorite learning methods, their types of different tasks, their listening strategy use, and especially their failure or realization in learning English listening skill

After having good realization of listening, learners could plan what they were going to listen for and what should they prepare for successful listening Then, they monitored and manipulated their listening process via giving predictions, making adjustments, confronting difficulties, adjusting their listening approach, and activating appropriate strategies Next to, they self-assessed their whole listening process consciously to identify whether it was effective or not for further improvement Therefore, self-assessment logs in this study took the vital role of an explicit guided reflection affecting learners’ top-down and bottom-up processing, strategy use, and metacognition practice via planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluating (Vandergrift and Goh, 2012)

2.7 Traditional assessment versus alternative assessment

According Combee et al., alternative assessment was different from traditional assessment in that it utilized different task types With traditional assessment, it focused on some special characteristics such as: one-shot, standardized exams, times, multiple-choice format, decontextualized test items, score suffice for feedback, norm-referenced scores, summative, oriented to product, non-interactive performance, and extrinsic motivation fostering In contrast, with alternative assessment, students were evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they were able to recall and reproduce which emphasised on continuous, longitudinal assessment, direct tests authentic assessment, group projects, feedback provided to learners, untimed exams, contextualized test tasks, criterion-references score interpretation, and classroom-based tests In other words, traditional assessment only focusesed on product while alternative assessment emphasized both product and process Concluding from the all information as mentioned above, the alternative means of assessment have been considered as effective tools for teaching and learning context including portfolios, conferencing, diaries, learning logs, teacher checklists, observations, self-assessment, and peer-assessment However, in this study, we spend most of the time discussing on self-assessment only

2.8 Self-assessment under the role of an alternative assessment tool

By the advent of the theories of self-assessment, the concept of this term was expressed via a variety of names such as self-evaluation, self-rating, self-testing, and self-appraisal by creating practical opportunities for learners to self-assess their own learning process in their classes based on some typical assessment criteria suggested by the teachers According to many studies around the world such as Dickinson (1987), Bailey (1998), Harris (1997), Richard & Schmidt (2002), Taras (2002), and Brown (2004), self-assessment played an extremely vital role in language teaching because of its positive effects on the learners’ language learning process to reflect their work quality and the judgment degree of their explicitly stated goals or criteria for better improvement in the future (Andrade, 2010) This meant that self-assessment was completed on drafts of works in

progress for informing revision and improvement And the primary purpose of applying self-assessment in this study was to boost the students’ listening achievements

In other words, self-assessment could be referred as “procedures by which the learners evaluate their skills and knowledge themselves” (Bailey, 1998, p 227) It was the main learning strategy for autonomous language learning which enabled learners to monitor their progress for meeting their individual needs (Harris, 1997) Furthermore, it was also a useful tool reflecting learners’ expectations, demands, their faced problems during their own learning process and forcing their reactions to the materials and learning methods using (Harris & McCann, 1994) Besides, Richard & Schmidt (2002, p 475) defined self-assessment as “checking one’s own performance on a language learning task after

it had been completed”, and as an example of metacognitive strategy in language learning Moreover, according to Taras (2002), self-assessment was the use of tasks, tools, or tests which helped learners assess their own foreign language abilities It meant that through self-assessment, learners could develop some necessary criteria to realize their weaknesses, to judge their own performances in learning English listening skill, and to set up plans for their future improvement In addition, a major assumption behind self‐assessment was learners’ conscious awareness of their own learning process, which not only contributed to their meaningful learning, but also encouraged them to actively shape their learning environment, and helped them think about their achievements critically Especially, self-assessment was also an effective tool to enhance learners’ self-awareness, self-directed language learning, learning autonomy, and life-long learning (Matsuno, 2009)

On the other hand, a number of researchers such as the studies of Bachman’s 1990, Haughton & Dickinson’s 1988, and Oscarson’s 1989 (as cited in Mazloomi, 2016) defined the term of self-assessment by divided it into two types based on their specific purpose The first one was performance-oriented self-assessment and the second one was development-oriented self-assessment The

distinction between performance-oriented self-assessment and oriented self-assessment was that the former one focused on the learners’ performance at a particular point of time while the later one was concentrating on assessing learners’ foreign language abilities for an extended period to develop their proficiency over time In this research, the treatment played a role as a development-oriented self-assessment on listening skills based on the criteria provided through self-assessment logs Currently, there were many kinds of self-assessment forms And the self-assessment logs applied in this research worked as

development-a tdevelopment-ask with lists of items for ledevelopment-arners to development-answer bdevelopment-ased on their English listening acquisition in class per each chapter However, there was a great distinction between the self-assessment log applied in this study and the other self-assessment checklists used by the other researchers around the world

On the market currently, there were many English textbooks from famous

publishers applying self-assessment tasks, for instance, Straightforward of Macmillan, More! of Cambridge, Face2Face of Cambridge, Q: Skills for success

of Oxford and Interaction of Mc Graw Hill (See Appendices E, F, G, H

respectively) After considering the differences between the textbooks’ assessment logs, the researcher discovered that they differed from the others visibly in terms of the name, the table design, the activity design, and the frequency design; however, how we could recognize which one was the better one Did we have any clear criteria to choose or we just employed it randomly without any manipulation or rationales Disagreeing with the previous supposed self-assessment logs’ format and content, the writer adapted them to form a new better one for assisting her learners’ English listening comprehension improvement through engaging learners in a healthy and critical self-assessment type

self-2.8.1 The differences between self-assessment log versus peer-assessment and portfolio

According to Karakaya (2015), although assessment tasks increased the lesson’s workload, each type of alternative assessment had its important role in (1) increasing students’ learning responsibility and autonomy, (2) having deeper

understanding of the learning subject, skills, strategies, and the whole learning process, (3) transferring passive learners to active learners and assessors, (4) involving learners in critical reflections, and (5) developing learners’ subjectivity and judgment However, each type of assessment had its own typical disadvantages that the writer would like to present in this part for painting a general picture about kinds of currently popular used alternative assessments

For “peer-assessment” firstly, although this type of assessment could involve high level learners to participate in their learning process and receive much more useful feedbacks and judgments from teachers, learners themselves, and their friends in the class, we still could not deny that (1) the assessment reliability of learners towards their peers might be affected by their friendships, (2) learners had tendency to give their friends higher marks than the practical ones, and (3), they might be reluctant to make judgments without really thinking about the solutions for helping their friends as well as overcoming their own difficulties for better improvement in the next performances

Secondly, for “portfolio”, as the writer used to participate in a research writing class, she agreed that this was a very useful task among several kinds of alternative assessment However, to her, portfolio should be applied for high English level learners in case of learning English writing skill in order to get the highest effectiveness because (1) portfolio could help teachers to manipulate all the reading materials learners found and read for their personal studying as well as their writing drafts without increasing workload in the classes Most of learners were asked to gather all the information at home, made the portfolio book individually, and submitted it to the teachers at the final day of the course for being marked The teachers could observe the whole learning process of their learners based on their portfolio document which completely reflected whether they were the lazy or the autonomous and independent learners Based on the portfolio document presented by learners, teachers could not only improve learners’ learning autonomy, learning motivation, learning self-regulation but also their reflection and writing skill However, it was only good for high English level

learners who had good learning self-efficacy to monitor and control their own learning process This meant that, such type of alternative assessment should be applied for learners with intermediate and higher proficiency levels who had good enough ability to read, to select appropriate information or document for summarizing and criticizing with high learning awareness

Regarding to “self-assessment log”, learners could perceive foreign language better when they engaged in deliberating thought of what they were learning and how they were applying it during their period of learning process To the writer’s viewpoint in learners’ foreign language performances self-assessment,

it was an easier way teachers could conduct in classes for the following reasons: (1) each learner had his own goal setting which was appropriate only with his current English level (2) The self-assessment implemented by learners themselves would be much more reliable than peer-assessment based on their own individual reflection, not their friends’ or teachers’ one (3) Self-assessment could be easily applied for all levels especially low English proficiency, learners just needed to follow the instructions and answered all the items presented in the self-assessment tasks to complete it (4) Teachers could directly observe, control, and encourage learners to do self-assessment tasks in classes in cases they were lazy or completed the self-assessment tasks for form’s sake Finally (4), all pieces of self-assessment logs of learners could be stored by the teachers for making comparison from the starting to the ending of the course and observing the enhancement in English learning process of learners based on the ways they answered the questions in the checklists day by day

After analyzing strong and weak points of the three main type of alternative assessment critically, to the writer, although each had its own advantages, self-assessment log would be concluded as the much more suitable one for the researcher to apply in her basic English listening level class in term of alternative self-assessment Self-assessment log in this case could assist her in guarantying factors needing to be manipulated in class and especially, to easily adapt the self-

assessment log into different components for meeting the theory of listening comprehension as presented in the conceptual framework

2.8.2 The nature of self-assessment logs applied in this thesis

To the writer’s personal viewpoint, self-assessment logs in this thesis were applied as a metacognitive tool under the format of alternative assessment for formative assessment purposes If self-assessment generally was implemented under the form of formative assessment for evaluating students’ learning progress and success only, self-assessment logs in this thesis were applied not only under the format of formative assessment with the teacher instruction based on some typical and identified criteria, but also under the form of learning autonomy, which worked as a chance for students to self-evaluate what they learnt by their own knowledge and consciousness called metacognition To be much more specific, self-assessment log in this case was considered as a “reviewing”, a “reflecting”, and a “self-assessing” task to assist learners in reflecting what they learnt for supporting their awareness of lexis, top-down, bottom-up, strategies, metacognition, and their final foreign language achievement under the format of checklist and diary as supposed by Vandergrift & Goh (2012) and Brown (2004)

2.9 The implicit learning autonomy factor in self-assessment log

According to Benson’s 2009 study (as cited in Gholami, 2006), the concept

of autonomy was not original to language teaching and learning Actually, it was a non-linguistic concept applied into language teaching from philosophy field via the theory of psychology and education However, until the 20th century, the theories came into the foreign language teaching and learning field and the concept namely learner autonomy started attracting the attention of the researchers

The definitions of learning autonomy was understood, adapted, and changed significantly during the time For instance, Holec (1981) firstly stated that autonomy was something which individuals must develop their personal abilities

to meet the society demands to become much more responsible in solving the new challenges of the society they lived in After that, Little (1991) reflected the vital