(a) the more skilled listeners were found to use rategies (Goh 2002; Vandergrift 1997b & 2003a).
(b) the less skilled listeners made frequent use of more superficial strategies, such as translation (Murphy 1985; Vandergrift 1997b & 2003a).
(c)and the proficiency level of the learners was found to have a clear irategies they used. That is, the more skilled listeners were more purposeful and flexible in approaching the listening task, whereas their less skilled peers were more passive (Murphy 1985; Vandergrift 2003a).
A review of research into listening strategies by Macaro, Graham, & Vanderplank(2007) identified the strategies that have consistently been advocated as playing an iening process:
1. ions about the likely content of a passage;
2. selectively attending to certain aspects of the passage, deciding to “listen out for”particular words or phrases or idea units;
3. monitoring and evaluating coking that one is in fact understanding or has ation; and
4. using a variety of clues (linguistic, contextual, and background knowledge) to infer the meaning of unknown words. (-79)
Research on Listening Strategy Instruction
As reviewed on the previous section, several studies have exahe range and type of listening strategies used by good language learners and the differences in strategy use between more and less effective listeners. However, it is not until the last two decades that studies focusing on teaching listening strategies in classrooted.
Strategy-based instruction focuses on a range of strategies deemed appropriate to listening in “real world”situations or tasks (Mendelsohn, 1994). It focuses on helping listeners to develop top-down processes in order to extract ual and cotextual clues or by educated guessing based on other available inforpensate for prehension breakdowns (Vandergrift, 2007a). Nevertheless, since listening processes can never be used in isolation due to the interdependence of bottom-up and top-down listening processes (Tsui & Fullilove, 1998), listening strategy instruction should also cater for strategies involved in bottoan facilitate prehension.
Some studies of FL/L2 listening strategy instruction have reported improved perforprehension of those learners who received listening strategy instruction. Thompson and Rubin's (1996) classroom-based, longitudinal study of foreign-language learners provided strong evidence that strategy training is effective in helping language learners prehend oral input. Thompson and Rubin taught university students who were learning Russian as a foreign language to apply ening strategies. The cognitive strategies taught in the study included a) “Draory line, b) “Interview”, with a focus on question-and-answer sequences, and c) “News”, with a focus on who, what, where, when, and how. rategies included planning, defining goals, monitoring, and evaluating. The results confirstruction in the use of cognitive and rategies did its in the experimental group showed a significant improveprehend video text pared to the group that was not given instruction on listening strategies. Anecdotal evidence in this study indicated that the use of rategies helped students manage how they listened. Although the nuts in the research was not large, the evidence of this study indicates that instruction in strategies can help students to capitalize on the language input they receive, and to i listening tasks.
Focusing on academic listening tasks over a six-week period, Carrier (2003) gave a class of seven volunteer U. S. high school ESL students with 15 class sessions of explicit listening strategy instruction. The sessions, each about 20-30 minutes long, focused on strategies for developing discrete listening skills (bottom-up) and video listening skills (top-down) as well as effective note taking. Data were collected from pretests and posttests, which were of the same format and focus. The results showed that the explicit listening strategy instruction significantly helped the group of high school ESL students improve their discrete listening ability, their video listening and note taking abilities. Despite this positive result, erns limit the generalizability of the findings (e. g., the small sats).
To raise the awareness of the listening process through tasks designed to develop effective listening strategies, Vandergrift (2003b) undertook a study with French-as-asecond-language university students. After being told the topic of the listening task, the students pleted part of a worksheet in which they listed their predictions about the information they hey listened to the text, checked the predictions and vocabulary they had anticipated, and added new inforhe students worked in pairs to pare and discuss their understanding before listening a second time, which was followed by a class discussion. After the third time of listening, students wrote a personal reflection on their own listening processes and the strategies they might use in future to is given by the students revealed positive reactions to the strategies, increased anding of their own thinking processes during the listening tasks.
Nevertheless, soerns arise, regarding the effectiveness of listening strategy instruction. As Graham and Macaro (2008) noted, “evidence from the previous research that strategy instruction can lead to short-term improvement in listening as measured by pretests and posttests, is inconclusive” ().
Besides, contrary to the studies reviewed above, other studies revealed very limited and slight improvement in listening or mixed results. For example, O'Malley et al. (1985) found differences in the gain scores of three groups of ESL learners who received different amounts and types of strategy instruction, but the differences were not statistically significant.
Seo (2000) reported inconsistent results for listening strategy instruction directed at news videotexts. In the study, Seo initially used a e Japanese Language Proficiency Test to deterening ability of 10 Australian tertiary level Japanese-as-a-foreign-language learners, and then chose three cognitive strategies (identifying key terms, elaborating, and inferencing) and taught them to a randomly assigned group of 5 learners. After a five-week period of instruction and a one-week review session, the intervention group and non-intervention group were given some videotexts followed by a co consisting of e, true/false and key-word questions. Though noticeable improvements in perforervention group, the non-intervention group also recorded gains and even outperforion group in five out of the seven posttests.
However, Seo's findings should be viewed with caution due to the following facts: ①The study involved a very small sample size (i. e., only ten participants) ; ②The results from the 7 videotext tests were pared with results of an audio-only pre-test, and thus involved an unconvincing parison.
Another lihe studies reviewed above included a delayed posttest, and thus could not address whether any advantage of the strategy training was maintained over time. Furtherudies short-term improvement in listening was demonstrated in a posttest, this might have been because of the siype of tasks used in the posttest and the strategy instruction that the participants had received in the study.
In light of the various problems of earlier listening studies, this study will attempt to ensure a more valid design by:
(a) employing a large sample to allow for generalizability;
(b) investigating the durability of the strategy training by using a battery of pretest, posttest and delayed posttest, all of which are identical in both for;
(c) conducting both the pretest and posttest in the sa in order to avoid the possibility of influencing the posttest result by any out-of-class activity.