Strategy Instruction in Listening for Lower‐Intermediate Learners of French

Abstract

Second language listening has historically proved to be a difficult skill. Strategy instruction studies have sought to bring about improvements in subjects' listening but with mixed results. This lack of success might be due to the nature of listening strategy theory and its influence on conceptualizations of listening strategy instruction. The current study, based on an initial descriptive investigation of a specific population of learners, measured the effects of strategy instruction on both the listening performance and selfefficacy of 68 lower-intermediate learners of French in England, against a comparison group. Moreover, the effects of high-and low-scaffolded interventions were compared. Results suggest that the program improved listening proficiency and learners' confidence about listening. Implications for pedagogy and strategy theory are discussed.

How Explicit Listening Strategy Instruction Affects Listening Comprehension of Different Learners

“…The outcome of this study also supports the findings of previous research (e.g. Graham and Macaro, 2008;Liu, 2009;Zhang, 2012;Guan, 2014;Graham and Santos, 2015;Jacobsen, 2015).…”

“…From the literature, it is obvious that there has been lots of studies on learning styles, teaching methodologies, and listening strategy instruction separately (e.g. Graham and Macaro, 2008;Graham and Santos, 2015;Jacobsen, 2015;Zhang, 2015;Zarrabi, 2016), but to the best of author's knowledge there is no research on the effect of explicit instruction of listening strategies on the listening comprehension skill of different learner types. Therefore, the current study is designed to shed more light on the issue of "Do all learner styles benefit from listening strategy instruction?"…”

“…Research in L2 listening has been increasingly directed to recognize facilitative strategies and clarify listener's mental processes (Cross, 2012). The interest in listening comprehension strategies has evolved in a number of research studies (Graham and Macaro, 2008;Siegel, 2012;Jacobsen, 2015). Listening strategies according to Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), is classified by how the listener processes the input.…”

Iranian EFL Students’ Listening Comprehension Problems

“…The six utilization problems (items [18][19][20][21][22][23] in the questionnaire are mostly related to the general message of the text, the main ideas in it with the related supporting details, the relationship among these ideas, and their order. The results related to utilization problems are displayed in Table 3.…”

“…Listening is one of the most difficult skills for foreign language learners due to the complexity of its process and different types of knowledge required for successful listening (Field, 2008b;Graham & Macaro, 2008). Moreover, as Graham (2006, p. 178) alluded "many learners see themselves as less successful in listening than in other language areas" like reading due to some uncontrollable facts like "the speed of delivery of texts" and "the speaker's accent" (Graham, 2006, pp.…”