Listening skill is one of the important communication skills likewise speaking, reading, and writing. However, it has been considered a passive process so that many listening instructions were composed of static activities which require checking under...
Listening skill is one of the important communication skills likewise speaking, reading, and writing. However, it has been considered a passive process so that many listening instructions were composed of static activities which require checking understanding of discourse instead of activities which derive learner’s participation. This kind of listening instructions has been changed with the awareness of the listening as a concrete behavior or thinking process. Especially, a strategic listening instruction has been studied a lot to verify its effect on deriving learners’ spontaneous and active participation. Also, it is necessary for Korean students in an English as a Foreign Language(EFL) environment to overcome difficulties from the environmental limitations.
This study investigated the effects of strategic listening instructions on middle-school students’ listening abilities. The study had three following research goals: 1) to investigate the effects of strategic listening instructions on students’ listening abilities, 2) to investigate the use of listening strategies, 3)to investigate the attitude toward learning listening.
To verify those effects, the 3rd grade of 37 middle-school students who take English listening courses at a private institution in Seoul were selected. They were divided into two groups: 20 for the experiment and 17 for the comparison group. The experiment group had strategic listening instructions for 8 weeks. On the other hand, the comparison group had classic listening instructions focusing on vocabulary, grammar and translation of listening texts for 8 weeks. In advance of the experimental instructions, EBS listening test scores were collected to assess the students’ listening ability, and the survey of listening strategy use based on SILL(Strategy Inventory for Language Learning) developed by Oxford(1990) was conducted to assess the frequency of listening strategy use. In the experimental instructions for 8 weeks, memory, cognitive, meta-cognitive, compensation, affective, and social strategies suggested by Oxford(1990) were applied to each class. Among many strategic instruction models, CALLA(The Cognitive Academic Language Approach) developed by O’Malley & Chamot(1990) was selected and modified by this investigator for this study. There are five steps in CALLA model: preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, and deepening. These steps are classified into the three basic instruction phase: introduction, development, and consolidation. Among them, development phase is composed of before listening, while listening, and after listening activities.
In order to analyze the results, descriptive statistics and t-test using SPSS program were used to find the difference of listening ability, frequency of the use of listening strategies, and attitude between the experiment and comparison group.
The summary of results drawn from this study is as follows.
First, the experimental group marked higher change on listening test score than the one of the comparison group. The result values statistically. Hence, the strategic listening instruction has influenced positively on the students’ listening ability.
Second, the experimental group marked higher change on the frequency of the use of listening strategies than the one of the comparison group. The result values statistically. From this result, it is revealed that listening strategies can be learned by instructions.
Third, the experimental group marked more positive change on the attitude toward listening on the survey of the affective aspects on listening. Hence, the listening strategy training sessions have influenced on building positive attitude toward listening.
These results show that strategic listening instructions affect middle-school students’ listening ability, use of strategies, and attitude toward listening. That is, it is suggested that the strategic instruction is necessary in class.