Discovery Listening and Explicit Strategy-Based ... - Science Direct

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 (2012) 5435 – 5439

WCES 2012

Discovery listening and explicit strategy-based-instruction models` effect on the Iranian intermediate EFL listening comprehension Amir Marzbana,*, Fereshteh Isazadehb a

English Language Department, Qaemshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qaemshahr, Iran b English Language Department, Alborz University, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract The study aims to compare the effect of Discovery Listening (DisL) with explicit Strategy-Based Instruction (SBI) on the Iranian EFL listening comprehension (LC). The participants were 79 students at a university in northern Iran. The main instruments included LC Strategy Table, the related lesson plans, listening Strategy Checklist for SBI and task paper for DisL Group. Results show that there is no significant difference between SBI and DisL methods. Publishedby byElsevier ElsevierLtd. Ltd. © 2012 2012 Published Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu

Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Keywords: SBI Listening; Discovery Listening

1. Introduction Constructivist linguistics emphasize focusing on form and structure, discriminating vowels and consonants pronunciation, understanding word and sentence meanings, and the discourse in L2 (bottom-up model), but Functional Language Theory recognizes language as a communicative tool and pref ability to comprehend the speech intention accurately and communicate effectively (top-down model) (Robin & Gou, 2006). SBI seeks to find out how listening strategies used by good listeners can be taught to so-called ineffective listeners. On the other hand, Wilson (2003) proposed a model, based on task based language teaching and bottom-up primacy for teaching L2 listening which a conscious reaction against the top-down approach which is dominant in recent EFL theory and practice . In this research, a comparison between these two methods of teaching L2 listening has been made.

* Amir Marzban. Tel.: +98 911 153 4121 E-mail address: [email protected].

1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.453

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2. Literature Review 2.1. Strategy-Based Instruction The basic premise of the SBI approach is making the L2 learners more aware of the strategies available for understanding how to organize and use them systematically and effectively and transfer them to new language learning and contexts (Cohen, 2007). In SLA, there are two kinds of Learning and Communication strategies which can be taught explicitly, or implicitly (O'Malley et al., 1989; Wenden, 1987). Explicit learning strategy-instruction, w awareness of the strategies they use, teacher modeling of strategic thinking, student practice with new strategies, student self-evaluation of t has come up with four models for teaching of the learning strategies in1993; (1) using checklist and or interview, (2) embedding strategies into L2 learners pedagogy and then practice them implicitly (3) using certain compensatory techniques to help the students overcome their certain weakness instantly, and (4) introducing some strategy textbooks as part of content centered approach (Brown, 2001). The strategy instruction model administered in the present research is of the explicit one along with checklist. 2.2. Listening and SBI LC is the ability involving the simultaneous understanding and identifying of the interlocutor(s) accent or pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, and meaning comprehension interactively and noninteractively (Bowen 1986, Robin & Gou, 2006). Gary (1975) notified that giving priority to LC, especially in the early stages of EFL/ESL has cognitive efficiency, and affective advantages (Vandergrift, 1999). The kind of listening which will be worked on in this research is non-interactive. Being neglected for many years after SBI emergence, LC strategies and techniques have been used for equipping L2 listeners to understand the different aspects of listening skill too (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990 cited in Al-Obaidi, 2002). Robin & Gou (2006) define listening strategies as techniques or activities that cause directly the listening input to be comprehended and recalled encompassing metacognitive, cognitive and socio affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make learning more effective. Metacognitive strategies concern what listeners do for managing, regulating, or directing their learning and they include planning, monitoring and evaluating and happen before the listening, during the listening and after the listening. Cognitive Strategies are strategies for handling the input or material, or implementing a definite skill or strategy to a special task in two significant processes of bottom up and top-down (Holden, 2004). In top down processing listeners recognize the topic of a conversation or make predictions about the listening passages, but in bottom up processing listeners focus on the meaning of vocabulary or the syntax cues of the text. Socio-affective strategies have been defined as the techniques listeners use to collaborate with others, to verify understanding or to lower anxiety (Vandergrift, 2003 cited in Hamzah, 2009, P. 690). Vandergrift (2003) believes that to interact with the parts of the listening passages, different strategies must orchestrate. 2.3. Controversy on the Listening Strategy and its Teachability Guo (2007) emphasizes placing all types of the listening skills and strategies in the first phase in a listening class for acquiring a comprehensive ability to listen effectively in different situations, types of input, and for a variety of listening purposes. According to Hol instruction suggest that learners can be instructed in strategy use, and that doing so enhances their performance on listening tasks (p. 260). Vandergrift et al (2006) refer to some researchers as Bolitho (2003); Victori & Lockhart (1995); Wilson (2003) who believe that awareness of strategies and other variables in learning can have positive Although Abdel Latif (2006) refering to Fuji Ware's (1990), Rost and Ross (1991), Thompson and Rubin (1996), Ozeki (2000), Carrier (2001) shows the positive effect of SBI on the LC of the subjects, he reminds that the interpretation of these findings must be done cautiously because of the complexity of LC and the many factors that might affect the listening ability and the listening strategy use. Chen (2005) 1985) found no improvement in the L2 learners listening due to teaching them cognitive, metacognitive and socioaffective strategies. Schwartz (1992) found no significant differences between the effects of three types of listening strategy training (Abdel Latif, 2006). Of the twelve pieces of research mentioned by Rubin and Chamot (1995) which involved explicit training in

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compensatory strategies, only two produced unambiguous findings that improvement had occurred (Field, 1998). Renandya and Farrell (2010) believe listening problems are related to the perception which has been neglected by too much focusing on teaching listening strategies and maintain teaching steps put a heavy burden on the teachers, there is not a clear one-to-one correspondence between teaching listening strategies and an increase in LC because of many interfering variables. They mention McDonough (2006), Littlejohn (2008), Ridgway (2000), Field (2003) and Wilson (2003) who have recently expressed some doubts about using ample time for training strategies. 2.4. Discovery Listening Premise and its Phases Wilson (2003), critic of SBI Listening, has introduced a new approach in teaching L2 listening based on the notion of bottom-up prima -centered, task-based teaching. It makes the case for noticing as a method of improving listening ability by getting students to discover and then prioritize their own listening difficulties after (P. 335). He has called this approach as Discovery Listening. In his approach he added some new features to the traditional 'dictogloss' and used it as the 'task' of listening for enhancing the listeners` 'noticing'. The task in discovery listening has three phases: listening, reconstructing, and discovering. The listening phase has 3 stages first, learners just only listen to a short text spoken at normal speed; then, they self assess their comprehension level after listening, and finally, they listen two more times along with note taking. In the reconstructing phase the listeners must form small groups and use their notes and try to reconstruct the original text together. The discovering phase has 3 stages first, learners compare their reconstructed text with the original, and attempt to classify the reasons of their mistakes; then, they assess the relative importance of their errors, and finally, they listen again without reading the text, and assess their performance. This phase direct the L2 learners a step further than the traditional dictogloss when they compare their recreated listened text with the original one and try to classify their errors in some categories provided on their task sheets. The text in discovery listening must be graded because with ungraded listening text, listeners will be compelled to use top-down contextual guesswork. 3. Research Questions and Hypotheses For the purpose of the current study, the following question was set: Is there any significant difference between Discovery listening and Exp models on the listening comprehension proficiency of Iranian intermediate EFL learners? To find answers to the above-mentioned question, the following null hypothesis was proposed: Strategy-

LC

4. Method 4.1. Participants The population to which the findings of the present research were hopefully generalizable included the 79 level one freshmen in complementary English course from Mazandaran Science and Technology University majoring Computer, Information Technology, and Industrial Engineering; all of them were studying English as their foreign language. They were between 18 and 23 years old. 4.2. Instrumentation The instruments utilized in the study include National Wide Entrance Exam (NWEE) logs, three series of PET (2004,2006) listening sections as instructional materials, PowerPoint Software for presenting the listening material transcript, Task paper, A French language listening text has been also used to acti metastrategic awareness before introducing Chen (2010) listening comprehension strategies table and the related lesson plans for SBI group, Strategy checklist, two series of PET (2006) listening sections as the pre and posttest. 4.3. Procedure The first instrument utilized in this study was National Wide Entrance Exam logs for locating more homogeneous EFL learners in general English proficiency. From among 172 in seven classes, 98 in four classes were chosen. Then

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PET listening section was used as a pretest to choose homogenous participants in LC skill and finally 79 were decided as the main participants of the study. They were divided into two experimental groups: 45 participants took part in DisL group and the other 34 in SBI group. During a period of 12 sessions, in addition to the routine educational program developed by the department, the participants received their treatments in 45 minutes each session. Just one session after taking the pre test, students in SBI group were exposed to a French listening material and Attention, Selective Attention, Evaluation, Listen for Gist, Listen for Details, Inferencing, Prediction, Elaboration, Visualization, Summarization, Note taking, Clarification, Encouraging). During each session besides teaching the the translated Strategy Checklist were distributed among the SBI participants. The task papers were delivered to the students to do all its 8 steps; In the first step, participants just listened to estimate their comprehension through putting a check mark on the five-choice item. In the second step the students are asked to listen again and make notes of keywords. In the third step they are asked to listen again to take more notes. In the forth step the participant try to write the sentences in their group as complete as possible. In the fifth step, they must write their problematic words or expression. In the sixth step, the students decide which of the words or phrases caused them the most difficulty in getting the gist of the meaning. In the seventh step the participants are asked if they have difficulty when they read the transcriptions. In the last step they estimate their understanding in the final listening through putting a tick near one of 5 items. The teacher's role was to supervise students' work, listen to them, and guide them, if necessary. Another standard listening comprehension test of PET was held for the two groups at the same time as the post test to compare these two different methods of teaching LC. 5. Results and Discussions An independent t-test was run to compare the mean scores of the experimental groups on the pretest in order to probe their LC ability before implementing the different treatments. Groups DisL Group 1 SBI Group 2

Table 1. Independent T-test of Listening Comprehension Pretest Homogeneity Number Mean Std. Deviation t 45 9.35 1.90 1.11 34 9.82 1.78

df 77

As shown in Table 1, participants in DisL group (M =9.35, SD =1.90) didn't outperform [t (77) = 1.11)] those in SBI groups (M =9.82, SD =1.78).That means there is no significant difference between the groups at the beginning of the treatment and they are homogenized. As Table 2 reveals, after twelve sessions of treatment, participants in DisL group (M =11.28, SD =2.65) didn`t significantly outperform those in SBI group (M = 11.55, SD =2.90) in posttest. Groups DisL Group 1 SBI Group 2

Number 45 28

Table 2. Descriptive table of SBI and DisL groups Mean Std. Deviation 11.28 2.65 11.55 2.90

t 0.38

df 77

after instructing through different methods are scores changed from 9.82 to 11.55, DisL and SBI group mean score increase are 1.93 and 1.73, respectively. As it can be observed, DisL had 0. 20 more progress in LC compared to SBI one and this may be the possible positive effect of discovery listening method of listening in comparison to the strategy-based-instruction. 6. Conclussion Although the related research didn t show any significant difference between these two kinds of LC instructions in the classroom, DisL group mean scores developed a little more than the SBI, and more importantly, as the teacher of the both groups, the researcher noticed that DisL activities were more enjoyable for the majority of the students

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and they took part more actively in the DisL task compared to the SBI ones who were complaining most of the time that didn t catch up with the listening materials speed or the words were not familiar to them. Renandya and Farrell (2010) knowledge, i.e. knowledge about how to process spoken language with ease and automaticity. While we may need to devote some time teaching students some declarative knowledge the what of listening (for example grammar, vocabulary, features of spoken language, and some comprehension skills and strategies) the bulk of our classroom time should be used to provide our students with lots of listening practice, in which they actually listen to a lot of listening practice, and Reference Abdel Latif, M. (2006). The teachablity of second foreign language learning strategies. Essex Graduate Student Papers in Language & Linguistics. 8, 18-42. Retrieved from http:// www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/. Al-Obaidi, Khalid. (2002). Effectiveness of teaching listening comprehension strategies on learners` performance in this area. Journal of Documentation and Humanities Research Center, 14, 7-44. Retrieved from http://qspace.qu.edu.qa/bitstream/handle/10576/8427/1002140009-fulltext.pdf?sequence=3 Bowen, D. (1986).TESOL techniques and procedures. London: Newbury House Publication. Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles. (2nd ed.). San Francisco State University. Longman. Chamot, A.U. (2004). Issues in Language Learning Strategy Research and Teaching. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 14-26, Centre for Language Studies, National University of Singapore. Chen, A. (2010). Effects of listening strategy training for EFL adult listeners. The Journal of Asia TEFL. 7(1), 135-169. Cohen A. D. (2007). Styles- and Strategies-Based Instruction (SSBI). Retrieved from:www.carla.umn.edu/strategies/SBIinfo.html. Field, J. (1998). Skills and strategies towards a new methodology for listening. ELT Journal, 52(2), 110-118. Guo, L. (2007). Issues and options in English listening teaching. US-China Foreign Language, 5(8), 64-67. Hamzah, M. S. G. (2009). Effects of socio-affective strategy training on listening comprehension. European Journal of Social Sciences, 11(4), 690-697. Retrieved from http://www.eurojournals.com/ejss_11_4_15.pdf Holden. R. (2004).Facilitating listening comprehension: acquiring successful strategies. Bulletin of Hokuriku University.28, 257-266. Retrieved from http://www.hokuriku-u.ac.jp/library/pdf/kiyo28/kyo3.pdf mot, A.U., & Kupper, L. (1989). Listening comprehension strategies in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 10, 418 437. Renandya, W. A., and Farrell, S.C. (2010). Teacher, the tape is too fast! Extensive listening in ELT. ELT Journal, Advance Access. Retrieved from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/03/31/elt.ccq015.full.pdf+html Robin, W. & Gou, N. (2006). An investigation of factors influencing English listening comprehension and possible measures for improvement. Retrieved from http:// www.aare.edu.au/05pap/guo05088.pdf. Vandergrift, L., Goh, C. M., Mareschal, C. J. & Tafaghodtari, M.H. (2006). The Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire: Development and Validation Language Learning. 56(3):431-462 Vandergrift, L. (2003). Orchestrating strategy use: Toward a model of the skilled second language listener. Language Learning, 53(3), 463 496. Vandergrift, L. (1999). Facilitating second language listening comprehension: Acquiring successful strategies. ELT Journal, 53(3), 168 176. Wenden, A.L., and J. Rubin. (1987). Learner Strategies in Language Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: prentice-Hall. Wilson. (2003). Discovery Listening- improving perceptual processing. ELT Journal, 57 (4): 355-343.