METHOD
The present study aims to investigate the listening tasks in the current senior high school English textbooks. This chapter consists of five major sections. The first
section includes the description of the two raters and the consistency between the two raters. The second section provides descriptions for the instructional materials utilized for analysis in this study. The third section introduces the instruments adopted in this study. As for the fourth section, procedures and data analysis are presented. In the final section, this study utilizes one lesson in the San Min English Reader to demonstrate the step-by-step analysis of the listening activity in the textbooks.
Since this study is aimed at showing how the listening activities are designed in the different sets of textbooks, the results presented will not show the name of the textbooks. Instead, when presenting the findings of the analyses, the name of these five sets of textbooks are replaced with Textbooks A, B, C, D and E.
The Raters
In order to achieve the objectiveness of the study, two raters are involved in the analyses. The two raters include the researcher herself (Rater A) and one high school English teacher (Rater B) who has four years of teaching experiences in the high school. Additionally, in her teaching phase, she also pursued further studies in TEFL Graduate Program. In this study, Rater B merely covered two tiers of analyses: (1) the function types of the language and (2) the distribution of listener function and listener response.
Initially, definition of terms were provided for the Rater B in the first meeting.
After the Rater B finished analyzing the listening activities in the first three lessons in
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San Min English Reader, the researcher had a discussion with her and found that there was high agreement of the analyses between them. With regard to the disagreement, the researcher and the Rater B had another discussion and reached consensus in the end. In addition, they also discussed the possible difficulties that they may
encountered during the process.
With regard to the function types of language, the total number of the listening activities that the two raters have agreement on is 394 and the total number of the listening texts is 403. Hence, the inter-rater reliability of the function types of language classification between Rater A and Rater B is: (359 + 35) ÷ 403 = 97.8%.
In the distribution of listener function and listener response, the total number of the listening activities that the two raters have agreement on is 558 and the total number of the listening activities is 581. Therefore, the inter-rater reliability of the listener function and listener response distribution between Rater A and Rater B is:
558 ÷ 581 = 96%.
Data Collection
The Textbooks Selected for Analysis
The instructional materials analyzed in this study are current five major senior high school English textbook series, all of which are compiled based on the 2010 curriculum guidelines. According to the principles of textbook compilation (MOE, 2010), in order to improve the situation that students’ proficiency level varies
significantly, two versions of the English instructional materials are provided from the eleventh grade (version A and version B); the content of the two versions are different.
The A version textbook includes the basic learning materials with lower level of difficulty while the B version textbook contains both of the basic learning materials
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and the advanced learning materials. The advanced learning materials are more challenging for senior high school students in terms of the difficulty of the texts and the activities, the degree of the guidance provided by instructors and the level of cognition. Different schools select different textbooks for their students based on their proficiency level. With a view to having a more complete picture of how the listening activities are designed, this study decides to analyze the listening activities in all the current major senior high school English textbook series.
The five different senior high school English textbooks utilized for analysis are published by the four major textbook publishers: the Far East Book Company, San Min Book Company, Nan I Enterprise Company and Lung Teng Cultural Company.
The Far East Book Company and San Min Book Company released two textbook series while the Nan I Enterprise Company and Lung Teng Cultural Company only released one textbook series. Each textbook series is composed of six volumes (Book 1- 6); therefore, the total number of the textbooks under analysis is 302.
Detailed information about the lessons and the listening activities are presented as follows. Besides, Table 6 shows the structure of different textbooks and Table 7 shows the size of listening activities under analysis in each textbook.
Generally speaking, the structure of the textbooks are commonly divided into different learning sections such as reading, vocabulary, grammar usage, thinking corner, listening practice and the like. Based on the Table 8, all the textbooks contain approximately more than ten sections and each textbook includes listening activities, even though they account for small proportion. Therefore, this study focuses on the listening activities in the current major senior high school English textbooks. Detailed
2 This study does not analyze the listening tasks in the B version of San Min English textbook since the whole six volumes are not totally available in the market.
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information about the section to be analyzed are discussed as follows. First, Chen et al.’s Far East English Reader and Shih et al.’ s Far East English Reader share the similar structures. The listening activities in both of these two Far East English Readers are included in ‘Listening’ section. The listening activities are combined with the theme-related material; besides, the diversity of activities is one feature whose purpose is to expose students to different types of listening. Chen et al.’s Nan-I English Reader contains one learning section called ‘Oral and Listening Practice’.
This textbook series emphasizes the integration of speaking and listening activities since it is hoped that students can cultivate the ability to speak fluently and utilize English to make appropriate responses in the real-life situation. As a result, in addition to the practice of the listening activities, the first volume reviews the speech
recognition and intonation structure. In addition to the basic listening activities, this textbook series also includes listening material with diverse contexts such as News English, daily life English, specific occasions and the rest. The section that includes listening activities in Chou et al.’s Lung Teng English Reader is ‘Listening Practice’.
All the activities are presented with the content-based material and multiple comprehension questions, aiming to sharpen students’ listening skills. The overall structure of Che et al.’s San Min English Reader---A version is divided into two major sections. The first section are activities and contents closely related to the Reading while the second section covers listening and speaking practices. This study attempts to analyze the listening activities in both of these two sections. The listening activities are included in the ‘Beyond the Text’ in the first section and the Listening Practice in the second section. Its main purpose is to help students review what they learned in each lesson and then apply it to the authentic situation. The second section in Che et al.’s San Min English Reader consists of extra six lessons for listening and speaking
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practices in each volume. The listening practices are designed based on the theme of the conversation; they are mainly designed to train students how to grasp the
fundamental messages in every conversation.
Table 6. The Structure of Five English Textbooks
FS FC SM NI LT Reading
pre-reading activity while-reading activity post-reading activity Reader’s Compass
Vocabulary, Idioms and Phrases
Word Bank/ Word Power/iWords
Grammar Focus/ Sentence Pattern/ Patterns in Action (Use)
Thinking Zone/ Corner
Language Use
Beyond the Text
(one extended activity & one listening practice)
Listening Activity/Practice
Oral and Listening Practice
Chat Room/ Conversation
Project
Proverbs, Quotations, Riddles, & Jokes
Activity Time
Writing
Creative Learning
Extra Reading/ Extended Reading/Reading Plus
Listening and Speaking Conversation
Listening Practice
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Table 7. The Size of Listening Activities in the Five Textbook Series
FS FC SM (A) NI LT
Book 1 12 12 12 & 6* 12 12
Book 2 12 12 12 & 6* 12 12
Book 3 12 12 12 & 6* 10 12
Book 4 12 12 12 & 6* 10 12
Book 5 10 10 12 & 6* 10 10
Book 6 10 10 12 & 6* 10 10
Total 68 68 108 64 68
*the lessons that are included in second section (Listening and Speaking) of the English textbooks
Instruments
To analyze the listening activities in the senior high school textbooks, in addition to the researcher’s coding, the Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (Brown et al., 2008) and the Function-Response Matrix (Lund, 1990) are two major
instruments adopted in this study.
1. The Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (CPIDR○R 5.1)
The CPIDR utilized in this study was a system coded by Covington (2012); it aims to measure the information amount of the listening text since it “describes the real proportion of the passage that contains actual content” (Blodgett et al., 2001, p.2319). The main reason for selecting CPIDR is that it is the only extant “computer program that determines the propositional idea density of an English text
automatically on the basis of part-of-speech tags” (Brown et al., 2008, p.450). Besides, this system is easy to operate and it can generate the results quickly.
The main CPIDR screen is presented in Figure 2. The first step is to type or paste the text to be analyzed in the first blank (①) or choose the “Analyze File(s)” to
upload the text files from the browser. The result of the analysis will be presented in the following blank (②); the number of ideas and words, information density and the confidence interval are all included. Briefly speaking, the CPIDR allows users to view
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both of the results and the detailed information about the analysis immediately.
Figure 2. The main CPIDR screen
2. The Function-Response Matrix for Listening
The Function-Response Matrix for Listening proposed by Lund (1990) is composed of two pedagogical dimensions (see Table 8). This taxonomy refers to
“real-world listening behaviors that can be incorporated in listening tasks in the instructional environment” (Lund, 1990, p.106). In Lund’s taxonomy, both of the six listener function items and nine listener response items were all clearly defined and they could be adequate for the students’ listening behaviors crucial to the listening instruction.
Table 8. Lund’s Function-Response Matrix
Identification Orientation Main idea comprehension
Detail
comprehension Full
comprehension
Replication
Doing
Choosing
①
②
Listener function
Listener response
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As this study adopts Lund’s taxonomy for further analysis, the definition of the listener function and listener response in the matrix are provided as follows.
(1) Listener function
Lund’s taxonomy was adapted from the recognition-comprehension continuum of the receptive function proposed by Galloway (1987). In Galloway’s guideline, she underlined that the text itself should also be embedded in the definition of listener function. Hence, Lund defined listener function as “the aspects of the message the listener attempts to process” (p.107). The message entails both of the internal (e.g.
actual language) and external messages (e.g. text length, the topic and the
participants). Moreover, Lund expanded Galloway’s continuum to contain six listener functions which were identification, orientation, main idea comprehension, detail comprehension, full comprehension and replication.
a. Identification
Instead of centering on the content of the message, listeners pay their attention to the code or form of the message itself. On the one hand, identification is commonly regarded as the skill of the beginner since the novice listener can merely cope with certain types of texts in the primary stage (Lund, 1990).
b. Orientation
Transferring
Answering
Condensing
Extending
Duplicating
Modeling
Conversing
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This function focuses on “determining essential facts about the text” (Lund, 1990, p.108). It implies that listeners process the external messages such as the setting, the participants, the conversation topic and the rest, all of which are intended to prepare listeners to process the message.
c. Main idea comprehension
This category is the threshold of the “actual comprehension of the message”
(p.108) which can differentiate the intermediate listeners from beginners. This function involves higher level of comprehension when compared with the previous two functions.
d. Detail comprehension
Detail comprehension refers to the further comprehension of the particular information. It is different from the main idea comprehension for its focus on specific clusters of information. This level of function can distinguish the advanced listeners from the intermediate ones.
e. Full comprehension
This category can be seen as the combination of main idea comprehension and detail comprehension. That is to say, listeners focus on the whole message so that they obtain both the global and supportive information. Even though listeners having full comprehension are commonly placed at higher
proficiency level than those simply having detail comprehension or main idea comprehension, novice listeners can also achieve at the level of full
comprehension for certain messages. Furthermore, this function is “the goal of instruction in listening proficiency” (p.108).
f. Replication
This function applies when the listeners can “reproduce the message in either
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the same modality or in a different modality” such as dictation or transcription (p.109). Lund pointed out that replication does not suggest that it is a higher level of proficiency than comprehension; instead, it is merely a different way how listeners process the message.
In Lund’s Function-Response Matrix for Listening, these six listener functions are accompanied with nine listener responses which are partially retrieved from Richard’s (1983) list of common task types.
(2) Listener response
In addition to listener function, listener response is also an important component in language teaching. The aim of listening instruction is to comprehend the message;
however, comprehension itself cannot be observed easily. Therefore, this study attempts to utilize the response dimensions covered in Lund’s taxonomy because they are observable and can be used to “describe behaviors or products of behaviors”
(p.110). Given that, instructors can infer their students’ comprehension from these observable cues. The nine listener responses are doing, choosing, transferring, answering, condensing, extending, duplicating, modeling, and conversing. All of the items are described as follows:
a. Doing: the listener responds to the message in a physical manner. Total Physical Response (TPR) is the typical type of doing since listeners are required to respond to instructors’ commands with physical movements.
b. Choosing: it involves selecting from alternatives such as pictures, graphics and story titles. According to Richards (1983), listening activities such as placing pictures in order or matching are included in this category.
c. Transferring: it implies that listeners transfer the information from one
modality to another. For example, listeners may be asked to draw a map based
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on the direction or fill in the tables or charts.
d. Answering: it involves completing the questions related to certain information about the text. Lund displayed some instances for this category such as finding out what time the train leaves and who the company’s leader is.
e. Condensing: the messages are trimmed by the listener. The activities belonging to this category are note-taking and outlining.
f. Extending: the listener goes beyond the original text by adding more other information or making some modification to the message; for instance, listeners may be required to create the ending of the story and complete the partial transcription.
g. Duplicating: “the exact message is replicated, often in another modality or language” (p.110). It involves activities such as dictation, translation and oral repetition of the aural reception.
h. Modelling: it means that the text is utilized as a model for imitation. Listeners may imitate the features of the text or the whole text such as making a
reservation or booking the tickets after listening to the model.
i. Conversing: the previous eight listener responses are listeners’ reaction to the message. However, conversing refers to the active role of the listener in that they can not only respond to the text but engage themselves in a face-to-face conversation.
Procedures and Data Analysis
This study aims to investigate the listening activities in current senior high school English textbooks. The analyses of the listening material involved three major dimensions. The first section deals with three important features of listening texts in terms of text type, information density and the function type of language. For the
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second part, the analysis moves forward to the design of listening activities in terms of listener function and listener response. This section utilizes the Function-Response Matrix for Listening (Lund, 1990) to analyze how listener function and listener response are represented in the textbooks. The final section moves to the listening instruction; in this section, the whole discussion focuses on the teaching guidance suggested in the pre-listening stage, while-listening stage and post-listening stage.
In the next section, the criteria for analyzing the listening activities are discussed.
Criteria for Analyzing Listening Activities 1. The features of the listening text
As for the features of the listening text, the present study investigated three major features: text type, information density, and the function. Regarding the text type, this study adopts Hughes’ (2003) classification, that is, monologues, dialogues and
multi-participant conversations. Furthermore, the researcher added one more category
‘sentential-level’ since some of the listening text in the textbooks include only one sentence. To make a distinction between these categories, monologues refer to the speech represented by a single speaker; dialogues means that the speech involves two speakers; the multi-participant conversations refer to the situation involving more than two speakers.
To examine the length of the listening text, information density is the focus of the study. The Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (CPIDR) was utilized to measure the information density of the listening text. This system determines the proportion of the passage including actual content (information density) based on the part-of-speech tags. To be more specific, the formula involved in the measurement of the idea density is the number of expressed propositions divided by the number of words.
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Concerning the function of the listening texts, the classification of informational functions of language and interactional functions of language are adopted in this study (Brown & Yule, 1983; Nunan 1991). The researcher in this study examined and identified the purpose of the listening activities in the textbooks. The distinction between these two function types are briefly summarized in Table 9. They differ in the features, the purposes and language of the listening text.
Table 9. Transactional & Interactional Functions of the Language
Feature Purpose Language
Transactional message-oriented transfer information specific and direct Interactional listener-oriented shorten the distance
between speakers
uncertain and non-specific
2. The Design of Listening Activities in Terms of Listener Function and Listener Response
After the analysis of the features of the listening texts, the focus of this section is to utilize the Function-Response Matrix for Listening (Lund, 1990) to analyze the listening activities in the senior high school English textbooks. The matrix consists of two dimensions (1) listener function and (2) listener response. In this stage of analysis, the researcher initially identifies the listener function and listener response that each listening activity belongs to. After all the lessons are examined, the researcher compares whether there is any difference in how listener function and listener
After the analysis of the features of the listening texts, the focus of this section is to utilize the Function-Response Matrix for Listening (Lund, 1990) to analyze the listening activities in the senior high school English textbooks. The matrix consists of two dimensions (1) listener function and (2) listener response. In this stage of analysis, the researcher initially identifies the listener function and listener response that each listening activity belongs to. After all the lessons are examined, the researcher compares whether there is any difference in how listener function and listener