In the preceding chapter, the results of the analyses on the six major dimensions are displayed. This chapter consists of three parts. Initially, the researcher concludes the study by summarizing the major findings and provides further pedagogical implications. Finally, the third part addresses the limitations of the current study and the suggestions for future study.
Major Findings
The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the listening activities in terms of three major aspects in the current five senior high school English textbooks.
First, with regard to the features of the listening text, text type, information density and the function type of language are covered and discussed.
Text Type of Listening Tasks
No apparent progression of the text type distribution in each volume and each textbook was observed. Overall speaking, most of the text types in these five
textbooks are monologues and dialogues. It is likely that the difficulty level of these two types are moderate when compared with the other two types. The proportion of multi-participant conversation in all the textbooks is relatively low. When compared with other text types, the difficulty level of multi-participant conversation is the highest because students need to pay more attention to identify who the speaker is while listening to the recording. This might lower students’ motivation and their sense of achievement in listening. Another finding is that except for the listening activities in Textbook D, only few activities include the sentential level text type. This implies that the listening activities in Textbook D aim to better prepare students for the two test types (picture description & question-response) in the TELC. Besides, in
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accordance with the latest TELC score statistics released by the CEEC, students have better performance on the picture description, question-response and conversations.
The scoring rate of these three test types is higher than 70% while the scoring rate of short talks is merely 58%. Based on these figures, we can know that when compared with monologues, sentential level and dialogues are easier for most of the students.
This suggests that the users of the textbook D might have lower proficiency level because the proportion of the monologues and multi-participant conversation is merely 11%. In addition, they might need more practices of these two text types (picture description & question-response) of listening. On the other hand, Textbook E users might have higher proficiency level since the monologues account for 83%.
Information Density of the Texts
With reference to the information density of the listening text, except for few volumes, the information density in the multitude of the listening texts in the textbooks are slightly higher than 50%. All in all, there is no apparent difference in the information density of different textbooks. Therefore, we can predict that the listening activities in the different textbooks have the similar level of difficulty.
Besides, the information density of the listening texts in the GEPT-Elementary Level and Intermediate Level is 47.1% and 49%. Generally, this suggests that most of the listening activities in the high school textbooks are more difficult for the students when compared with GEPT-Elementary Level and Intermediate Level. Moreover, with these practices in the textbooks, students might have better performance on the GEPT.
It is vital that the textbook writers consider giving students moderate information.
Greater information density will increase the listeners’ processing load (Bloomfield et al., 2011). Too much information provided will increase the difficulty level of
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listening which might decrease students’ motivation in listening. That is to say, with moderate information density presented to students, it will become easier for them to process the messages in the listening activities.
The Function Types of the Listening Texts
As for the function type of the language, the inter-rater reliability of the analyses in the functions of language between Rater A and Rater B is 97.8%. The majority of the listening activities addresses informational function. Similarly, in accordance with the latest three-year reference papers released by CEEC, the multitude of the test items in the TELC also addressed informational function, accounting for roughly 90%.
As a result, we can find that on the one hand, the reason why most of the listening texts in the textbooks addresses informational function is that they follow the trend of the official examinations in Taiwan. Another reason is that after graduating from the senior high school, students have to participate in the English-oriented program in the college. With the practice of the listening activities that share similar function can accustom students to grasping the important information delivered by the speakers.
Overall, the proportion of the informational function and interactional function varies drastically. Even though the message-oriented texts are frequently appeared in the general examinations, interactional function is also crucial for students in their daily lives. Therefore, both of the informational and interactional function should be evenly addressed in the listening texts.
Design of Listening Activities in Terms of Listener Function & Listener Response The second layer copes with the distribution of listener function and listener response. In this part of the analysis, the inter-rater reliability of listener function and listener response distribution between Rater A and Rater B is 96%.
Regarding the diversity of listener function, the listening activities in both
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Textbook A and Textbook B cover all the six types of listener function. The listening activities in Textbooks C and E contain five types of listener function. The listening activities in Textbook D merely cover four types of listener function. This implies that Textbooks A and B include listening activities with both of the low and high difficulty level. Nowadays, most of the schools in Taiwan implement normal class grouping; the class consists of both high and low achievers. Therefore, these two textbooks might be more suitable for the general classes. As for Textbook D which covers the least type of listener function, it does not include replication when compared with other textbooks. Replication entails students’ higher level of abilities. As a result, we can speculate that the difficulty level of the listening activities in Textbook D is
comparatively low.
With reference to the distribution of listener response in the textbooks, the listening activities in Textbook B and Textbook C cover three types of listener response. The listening activities in Textbook A, Textbook D and Textbook E cover two types of listener response. Overall, the listener response covered by all the listening activities are choosing, answering and duplicating. Based on the analyses, most of the listening activities are multiple choice questions, matching and placing pictures in order; these three question types are classified into choosing because they are involved with selecting from the alternatives such as pictures or statements (Lund, 1990) Therefore, it is clear that the amount of the listening activities that cover
choosing is the greatest. This is the same as most of the listening tests in Taiwan.
Besides, some listening activities are short stories, news or broadcasts, followed by some questions related to the content. Thus, students are required to answer the questions in their own words. As for duplicating, we can find that the listening activities in Textbooks A, C and E include songs, poems and lyrics; these are gapped
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and students need to do the dictation.
Based on the findings, most of the listening activities fall in choosing-main idea comprehension and choosing detail-comprehension. It means that the questions offered for students contain both global and local questions. This corresponds with the current trend of listening comprehension tests in Taiwan. In accordance with Lund (1990), main idea comprehension involves higher level of comprehension when compared with identification and orientation. What’s more, the level of detail comprehension can discriminate the advanced learners from the intermediate ones.
This suggests that the listening activities in the current senior high school English textbooks have certain level of difficulty and they are utilized to train students’ ability in listening, which is helpful in students’ preparation for listening comprehension tests.
Besides, duplicating-replication also accounts for large proportion in the
textbooks. Apparently, this suggests that the textbook writers are aimed at training not only students’ listening ability but also their spelling ability.
The Implementation of Recursive Listening
The third layer deals with the instructional suggestions given in the three listening stages. Regarding the implementation of recursive listening, differences are observed between different textbooks. For example, the listening activities in
Textbook A and Textbook B that are suggested the practice of recursive listening account for larger proportion at 96% and 81%, followed by those in the Textbook C (26%) and Textbook E (25%). What is more, the listening activities that include suggestions for the practice of recursive listening in Textbook D account for merely 5%. This implies that the listening activities in Textbooks A and B might be more appropriate for the average students since students can become more familiar with the
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listening content with the practice of recursive listening.
Another finding in this section is that the type of recursive listening is slightly different in the textbooks. For instance, the listening activities in Textbook A and B are frequently being played one to three times. However, there is no further
suggestions for the practice of recursive listening in Textbook A. Contrarily, textbook writers in Textbook B provide more advices; in each play, students need to complete different tasks. The latter one is more corresponding with the recursive listening that the scholars have mentioned in the previous research. That is to say, the textbook writers are intended to present the listening material to listeners from listening for main ideas to listening for details. This can help the input offered for students become more comprehensible.
The Provision of Contexts in Listening Tasks
With reference to the provision of the contexts, it is conspicuous that the listening activities in all the five sets of English textbooks provide students with contexts. The contexts provided come in listening questions, pictures, statements and so forth. Among them, short introductions and options account for larger proportion.
Based on the teacher’s manuals, students can initially scan through the questions and then predict the listening content. When students start to do the prediction, they can connect what they read with the correspondences in the outside world. It will be easier for them to grasp the key words when they listening to the recorded material. Besides, some listening activities are illustrated with related pictures which can not only enhance students’ motivation in listening but help them connect the pictures with their prior real-life experiences.
Since all the listening activities provide contextual information for students, we can suggest that the textbook writers might aim to utilize these contexts to activate
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students’ schema. By doing so, it will become easier for students to get the key points when listening to the recording.
Suggested Activities in the Three Listening Stages
Moreover, this study also discusses the percentage of the listening tasks that include suggested activities in the three listening stages.
As for the pre-listening activities, the listening tasks in Textbook B that include the pre-listening activities account for the largest proportion at 91%, followed by those in Textbook A (72%), Textbook C (55%), Textbook E (54%) and Textbook D (36%). The major purpose of the pre-listening activity is to activate listeners’ schema.
The activities are mainly instructing vocabulary items (Field, 2008), making predictions, providing the contexts and so on (Chang & Lu, 2012; Field, 2008;
Masuhara, 2013). Based on the findings of this study, we can find that the suggested pre-listening activities mentioned in the teacher’s manual are similar to those
mentioned in the literature. Thus, it implies that the design of the pre-listening activities can achieve these purposes. This can build a bridge for students to move on to the listening stage.
The findings show that few units in these five sets of textbooks include suggested while-listening activities. The suggested while-listening activities are mainly taking notes, writing down certain key vocabularies or completing certain charts which are what the scholars have frequently mentioned in the previous studies (Brown, 2006; Wei, 2012). The major purpose of while-listening activities is to “help learners develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language” (Wei, 2012, p.5). Textbook writers might consider that too much while-listening activities might increase the difficulty level of listening. That is to say, while-listening activities require higher proficiency level of students; as a result, this is why in some units, only
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high-achievers are required to do while-listening activities.
Regarding the post-listening activities, the listening tasks in Textbook B that have post-listening activities account for the largest proportion at 74%, followed by those in Textbook C (51%), Textbook A (43%), Textbook E (20%) and Textbook D (5%). There are two main purposes of post-listening activities mentioned in the previous studies. First, teachers can check students’ comprehension (Underwood, 1989; Wei, 2012) and understand their learning difficulty (Field, 2008; Underwood, 1989). The second purpose of the post-listening activity is to provide extended
learning related to the topic (Underwood, 1989). However, we can find that except for the listening tasks in Textbook B, more than half of the listening tasks in the other four versions do not contain post-listening activities. The findings can imply that the listening tasks in the Textbook B are more holistic when compared to those in other versions of the textbook. Contrarily, with the lack of post-listening activities, students may not have the opportunity to learn more from the listening material because in the post-listening stage, some instructors will offer students extra background information or ask students to discuss about questions related to the theme of listening.
Pedagogical Implications
With the emergence of the Test of English Listening Comprehension, teachers put more emphasis on teaching listening nowadays. Based on the findings of this study, some pedagogical implications are proposed to facilitate the listening
instruction in the senior high school. This study is aimed at displaying the design of the listening activities in terms of three major dimensions in the current five senior high school English textbooks.
The research is dedicated to not only instructors but also textbook writers. On the one hand, overall speaking, the researcher hopes that the research can give teachers
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better understanding of how the listening activities are designed in the different sets of textbooks. First, as for the text type of the listening text, instructors can understand the trend of the text type in different textbooks. Since the findings show the
proportion of each text type in these five sets of textbooks, instructors can find other listening activities to compensate for those text type that are not frequently adopted in the textbooks. Second, when the instructors understand the average information density of the listening texts, they may know well how much time they need to give students to process the messages and complete the activities. Third, with regard to the functions of language, instructors can know more about the major purpose of the listening texts in each unit. Besides, instructors can also benefit from the findings of whether recursive listening and contexts are recommended in the textbooks. In the teachers’ manual, the textbook writers clearly pointed out what should the listeners pay attention to in the first play and second play respectively. This can give the novice teachers an index to teach students listening. Regarding the provision of the contexts, teachers can utilize the contexts provided in the textbooks to direct themselves to the right track. On the other hand, if they find that the contextual information offered is insufficient, they can also provide them with extra background information to lower down the difficulty level of the listening activity.
Moreover, the suggested activities mentioned in the teachers’ manual may be more beneficial for the beginning teachers since they have fewer teaching experiences.
For example, it will become easier for them to develop the activities in the three listening stages. Besides, textbook writers also offer supplementary listening material in the teachers’ manual; therefore, when they choose the supplementary listening material for listening, they can also refer to the suggestions provided from the textbook writers. Furthermore, if the listening tasks in the textbooks are lack of
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diversity, instructors can also utilize other suggested activities from other textbooks or they can design their own listening activities suitable for students. It is hoped that with the findings of the study, teachers can have better understanding about the overall design of the listening activities in the current five sets of English
textbooks .Besides, textbook writers could consider utilizing the findings of the study as a reference point when designing the listening tasks. They can re-examine the listening activities in terms of text types, information density, function types of language in the beginning. Besides, textbook writers can also provide instructors with more diverse suggested activities in the three listening stages.
All in all, it is hoped that with the suitable listening material and effective listening instruction, students can learn English listening in a more systematic way.
Limitations of the Study and Directions for the Future Research This study aims at examining the listening activities in the five sets of senior high school English textbooks. Since this study did not analyze other listening materials utilized in the senior high schools, the findings of the study are limited to the listening materials examined.
The analyses are related to the features of the listening text, the instructional suggestions and the design of listening activities in terms of listener function and listener response. It is evident that this study focuses on the designing of listening activities themselves. As a result, future research can consider investigating both the instructors’ and students’ perspective toward the design of the listening activities in the textbooks. On the one hand, teachers’ perspective can help the textbook writers modify the content. On the other hand, students’ need is also one important factor that decides whether the listening activities are suitable for learning.
Third, the findings of the second layer of the analyses present the proportion of
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the units that provide contexts for listeners and include suggested activities in the three listening stages. However, this study does not pay much attention to the details of the context and suggested activities provided in the textbooks. Hence, future studies can attempt to explore the issues about the types of contexts provided in the textbooks and how instructors utilize the suggested activities in the listening
instruction.
The Contribution of the Study
Based on these findings, we can find a great variety of listening activities in the current senior high school textbooks. However, the listening instruction in English class is constrained since listening is not the major learning focus; instead, the
Based on these findings, we can find a great variety of listening activities in the current senior high school textbooks. However, the listening instruction in English class is constrained since listening is not the major learning focus; instead, the