The following part of the chapter is the presentation of the first-stage analysis of
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each instrument. The discussion is in sequence of the research procedure, with English listening self-efficacy firstly discussed, which is followed by the result of the English listening test, and ends with students’ replies on English listening difficulty, which is the main focus of the research.
English Listening Self-Efficacy Scale
There are thirteen items in the English listening self-efficacy scale. Five choices from “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neutral”, “agree”, and “strongly agree” are given for students’ options. Any answer with a “strongly disagree” is rendered one point while one with a “strongly agree” answer is granted five points. For answers in the spectrum between “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”, points of two, three, and four are given respectively. In total, the thirteen-item scale could result in scores from 13 points to 65 points.
The average score on the English listening self-efficacy scale of the all 109 students is 44.52. With three points as the average on a five-point scale, we can say that anyone who scores higher than 39 points in the scale could be considered high in listening self-efficacy. With the average score of 44.52, it is assumed that these junior high school students in the study generally have high English listening self-efficacy.
The average score of each item on the English listening self-efficacy scale is exhibited in Table 2. Eleven out of thirteen items get average scores higher than three.
Only items #11 and #13 get average scores lower than three.
Item #11 discusses students’ preference to practice English listening comprehension with teachers or classmates and item #13 regards the challenging practices of English listening comprehension practices and students’ interests. These two items are taken from Rahimi and Abedini’s (2009) scale of English listening
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efficacy, with only slight modification, changing from “I enjoy doing listening practice with a proficient partner” to “I enjoy doing listening practice with teachers and classmates” for item #11.
English listening practices for junior high school students are mostly unidirectional (Graham, 2006), with the listening material broadcasted to the students’
ears without opportunities for further clarification as in bidirectional listening. The lack of voicing their misunderstanding and negotiating with meanings might contribute to students’ lack of interests in practicing English listening with their peers or teachers. As English listening requires considerable attention, any interference from other students or even teachers might distract the individual and cause unsatisfied performance on students’ English listening practices. Some students might prefer practicing English listening alone instead of practicing with others.
Item #13 states that “the more difficult the listening practice is, the more challenging and enjoyable it is.” The low score of the item might be due to students’
learned helplessness, which refers to the perception of independent response and outcome, regardless of how much effort one pays and how much reward one gains (Butkowsky & Willows, 1980). If students experience too many failures from enigmatic English listening practices, they might lose hope and hate English listening practices (Zimmerman, 1989). Therefore, students would try hard to avoid listening practices that are beyond their capability. Krashen (1981) promotes “i+1” and proposes that teachers give students inputs that are manageable and a little above students’ present ability. As can be seen from the result of item #13, elevating the difficulty level of English listening practices would not simultaneously increase students’ interest in English listening.
Teachers are advised to prepare comprehensible listening inputs for students so as to sustain their interests in English listening practices.
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Table 2. Average Scores of the English Listening Self-Efficacy Scale
Chou (2014) and Chou (2007) report high self-efficacy among six graders and senior high school students, respectively. It was suggested that students’ family-social capital and their high English self-efficacy directly affects students’ attitudes to learning English (Chou, 2014). Senior high school students who have undergone more childhood English learning and those with higher basic competence test for junior high school students (BCT) scores exhibit higher English self-efficacy (Chou, 2007).
On the other hand, both Wang (2011) and Chang (2013) report medium English self-efficacy among junior high school students in Taiwan. And junior high school students without any English learning experiences tend to show the lowest English self-efficacy while students study in urban schools maintain the highest English self-self-efficacy
Items mean s.d.
1. I have abilities to continue improving my English listening comprehension skills.
3.68 1.23 2. I believe that my ability in English listening comprehension will
improve.
3.70 1.23 3. I can concentrate on the English listening content. 3.58 1.31 4. If I practice English listening comprehension more, I will improve my
English listening comprehension.
3.72 1.18 5. I can remember contents of the English listening comprehension
practices.
3.27 1.21 6. I can understand English listening comprehension materials in class. 4.12 5.08 7. When my teachers read English sentences in class, I can understand
them.
3.53 1.30 8. When practicing English listening comprehension, I can answer my
teachers’ questions.
3.80 5.04 9. Even if the listening practice in the class is difficult, I can find a
strategy to answer most of the related questions.
3.30 1.33 10. I enjoy doing English listening practices. 3.05 1.34 11. I enjoy doing English listening practices with my teachers and
classmates.
2.85 1.29 12. When I am doing a listening practice by myself, I can repeat listening. 3.05 1.29 13. The more difficult the listening practice is, the more challenging and
enjoyable it is.
2.89 1.39
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(Chang, 2013).
According to the surveys of family income and expenditure in 2013, households in Taipei City averagely get NT$1,659,231 annually while families in the whole island of Taiwan receive NT$9,793,646 each year (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, Taiwan, R.O.C., 2015; Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Taipei City Government, 2015). Students in Wang (2011) are from New Taipei City and those of Chang (2013) are from Taitung County. Compared with the present study, which is done in Taipei City, it is presumable that the relatively higher family-social capital of junior high students in Taipei City might yield higher English self-efficacy than students of other counties or cities. And since the school under investigation in the present study is considered an urban school, the students are understandably higher in English self-efficacy.
In addition to students’ relatively higher family income in Taipei City, the subjects of the present study have learned English ever since they entered elementary schools.
The policy of the Taipei City government ensures elementary school students to learn English starting from the first grade while the ministry of education have elementary school students of the whole island learn English from year three (Department of Education, Taipei City Government, 2015; Taiwan Elementary and Secondary Educator Community,2015). Chou (2014) has proved that childhood English learning experiences could be associated with students’ higher English self-efficacy. It is plausible that this group of junior high school students in Taipei City, who has learned English since the first grade, would have higher English self-efficacy than students of other areas in Taiwan, who are not exposed to English learning until the third grade.
Past studies in Taiwan mainly explore students’ general English self-efficacy. As the present study focuses on students’ English listening self-efficacy, it is also probable
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that English listening self-efficacy could differ from general English self-efficacy. Since there are few researches done in Taiwan for students’ English listening self-efficacy, the present study could contribute an insight in the perspective.
Overall, the subjects are high in their English listening self-efficacy, which might be related to these students’ family-social capital, the well-fare resource of the school site, and students’ early English exposure. The facts that students would reject practicing listening or accepting difficult listening inputs should be factors that teachers consider when administrating English listening comprehension practices. Preferences for individual listening practices might indicate a call for language classrooms with isolated booths and the rejection of difficult listening inputs would test teachers’
capability in choosing proper listening materials.
English Listening Test
The English test scores of the 109 participants vary greatly. There are 30 test items in the English listening test, and a correct answer is awarded four points, making the full score 120 points. The average score in this study is 78.13, which means that generally, students get about 19.53 items right out of the thirty items. The correction rate is about 65 %, which might indicate a relatively satisfactory passing performance.
As the English listening test in this study is taken from the elementary listening test of GEPT, a comparison of students’ score average and the published score on the administered GETP can be made. The third elementary-level GEPT in 2014 showed an average of 83.49 points among approximately 48,000 test-takers. About 80% of those who took the test are junior high school students, and their average score on the test was 84.44. It seems that the students under the present study did not perform as well as those who really took the GETP test.
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With four points awarded to each correct answers, test items with a lower average than two points are considered tougher for students. That is, any test item which receives average points under two is answered wrong by most students. Among them, items #9, #17, #18, #30 are the ones that receive average points below two.
Item #9 belongs to the first part of the English listening test, which requires students to listen to the questions and possible options from the listening input and choose answers based on the pictures they see on their test paper. The picture for item
#9 is shown below. During the test, the students heard the question and three options from the CD. They looked at the picture and tried to answer the question.
Q: What will Maria most probably do next?
(A) Give Frank his change.
(B) Ask Frank to pay for his lunch.
(C) Prepare the food for Frank.
Many of the students later reported that they couldn’t understand the picture right after the broadcasting of the question item input. Common complaints are “Zhe sha xiao? (這啥小? What is it?)” or “Wo kan bu dong ta men zai gan ma. (我看不懂他們 在幹嘛。I don’t know what they’re doing.).” It is possible that the picture does not provide clear hints due to possible reasons of printing or complex picture composition so that students fail to recognize that Frank in the picture is already paying his lunch in a restaurant and Maria has already given him his food.
Items #17 and #18 are short questions and answers. The listening material of item
#17 is “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” And the possible options listed on students’
test paper are “(A) Yes, we have to. (B) Yes, in high school. (C) Yes, even earlier than
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that.” A considerable number of students are tempted to choose (A) because they were confused the usages of “haven’t we” and “have to.” And some students might only catch the word “before” from the input and chose (C) based on the key word “earlier.” Since tag questions and the present perfect tense are parts of grammar for ninth graders, these eighth graders could not be blamed for choosing the wrong answer.
For item #18, students hear “When will the next train to Kaohsiung leave?” The three options for item #18 on the test sheet are “(A) Sorry, the last train to Kaohsiung has already left. (B) The next train goes to Taichung, not Kaohsiung. (C) This train will arrive in Kaohsiung at three.” The correct answer (A) requires students to sense a situation when a person inquires the departure time of the next train to Kaohsiung when the train has already departed. Again, though eighth graders have learned the future tense, they have yet to acquire present perfect tense. And answer (B) could be chosen if students do not consider the above situation and literally accept “the next train to Kaohsiung” as the key words for answers. Answer (C) uses future tense and contains key words “train,” “Kaohsiung,” and even “three,” which might reply to the key word
“when” in the input.
Item #30, the last test item, has students listen to a dialogue between a man and a woman. The listening message is as follows: “Man (M): Do I check in here for Far Eastern Flight 786 to Taipei? Woman (W): Yes. May I see your ticket, please? M: Sure.
Here you are. Could I have a window seat, please? W: Sure. Question: What is the man going to do?” The answer options listed on the test sheet are “(A) Get on a plane. (B) Return his ticket. (C) Clean the window.” To correctly answer this requires students to be able to grasp the whole idea of a conversation between a man who is going to board a train and a woman who is checking his plane ticket. Key words such as “flight,”
“ticket,” and “window seat” should be absorbed for correct answers. Students who lack
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the vocabulary of “flight” or experiences of taking a plane might fail in choosing the right answer and instead opt for (B) or (C) based on key words “ticket” and “window”
they hear from the input.
Though students’ performance in the present test is beyond that of real GEPT test-takers, the score of a simple test should be explained with caution. The English listening test is conducted in an ordinary class, with no stakes on their English assessment. Many of the students, regardless of the teacher’s inspection and persuasion, did not pay complete attention to the test. This could be observed when some of the students start doodling, snooping, or doing other individual work after about half of the English listening test. Perhaps the students view the test as not important and did not want to pay much effort. The resulting averaging score is thus not ideal.
Another explanation for the low score of the English listening test lies on the fact that these subjects are only eighth graders. Since the target of the elementary-level GEPT is the general adults and people possess the English proficiency of junior high school graduates, the eighth-grader subjects might understandably perform below average because they haven’t finished the study of junior high school. Common errors made due to the unfamiliarity of present perfect tense and tag questions could be the proofs. Besides the students’ age and language learning experiences, the real GEPT test-takers are believed to be of higher English learning motivation and would sign up for the test when they conceive themselves as capable of passing the test. In the contrast, students of the present study do not show the motivation and are miscellaneous in proficiency. The low score of their English relatively to real GEPT test-takers should not be blamed.
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English Listening Difficulty Questionnaire
The English listening difficulty questionnaire is composed of 30 items, with each item given five options: never, seldom, sometimes, usually, and always. The students read the description and choose the situation that suits their condition. One point is given to any “never” answer, two for “seldom,” and so on. The lowest points possible for the total thirty-item questionnaire is thirty, and the highest score would be 150 points, with every item checked for “always” and given five points each. As the English listening difficulty questionnaire aims to gain access to junior high school students’
English listening difficulty, students with lower scores actually demonstrate fewer or less severe listening difficulty while students with higher scores in the questionnaire indeed encounter more number or higher degrees of listening difficulty.
Students of the study report listening difficulty with individual severity, ranging from 30 to 150 points. The average total score of the whole listening difficulty questionnaire by all 109 students is 77.68. As the questionnaire follows a five-point Likert scale, any score under 90, which is the half point, could indicate that the student being studied show mild listening difficulty. This might signal that this group of junior high school students do not find listening experiences too daunting.
The average scores of each difficulty item in the listening difficulty questionnaire are shown in table 3. As can be seen from the table, the average scores of every item in the questionnaire do not exceed three points, and there is no category of listening difficulty with extraordinary result, which means that students generally do not face high degrees of listening difficulty based on the questionnaire.
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Table 3. Average Scores of the Listening Difficulty Questionnaire
While listening to English, what I feel more bothered are… mean s.d.
Listening Process 2.59 1.18
1. I cannot guess the meaning of unknown words. 2.61 1.10 2. I cannot form a correct image of the word heard in my mind (e.g.
when I hear the word “apple”, appears in my mind).
2.35 1.04 3. I cannot chunk streams of speech into meaningful pieces. 2.45 1.14 4. I cannot connect images in my mind (e.g. When I hear “eat an apple,”
I connect and in my mind).
2.37 1.17
5. I cannot catch important details. 2.55 1.21
6. I miss the connection of the speech. 2.66 1.16
7. I ignore the context and characteristics of the speakers. 2.61 1.15 8. I cannot use personal background knowledge or linguistic knowledge
to process the heard message.
2.50 1.14 9. I fail or don’t have enough time to process previous inputs, which
affects the comprehension of subsequent contents.
2.81 1.13 10. The pace of the speakers is too fast, I don’t have enough time to
comprehend.
2.89 1.23 11. I translate English into Chinese in my mind and don’t have time to
listen to following inputs.
2.71 1.31 12. I translate English into Chinese in my mind and confuse myself. 2.55 1.32
Text 2.60 1.23
13. I cannot discriminate similar sounds in words (e.g. discriminate /i/ vs.
/ɪ/).
2.58 1.21 14. I cannot decide the precise word meaning when a word has multiple
meanings.
2.71 1.19
15. The text has too many unknown words. 2.65 1.30
16. Difficult grammatical structures in the content affect my comprehension.
2.71 1.28 17. I don’t know what/who the pronouns (e.g. this, it, he etc.) in the
listening inputs are referred to.
2.18 1.16 18. I cannot use words that connect sentences or structures to help me
understand (e.g. however; first, second; then, etc.).
2.58 1.20 19. I do not use features such as repeated messages or pauses in speech to
help me understand.
2.64 1.21 20. I do not understand the inputs due to linkings (e.g. not at all [natæ tɔl])
or omissions (e.g. tell me what to [whatu] say).
2.71 1.31 21. I don’t understand the inputs because the speakers have special
accents.
2.64 1.22
22. The texts have unfamiliar topics. 2.62 1.23
Input Quality 2.60 1.23
23. The volume of the input affects my comprehension. 2.51 1.21 24. The clarity of CDs or the existence of noise affect my comprehension. 2.69 1.24
Task 2.50 1.28
25. I don’t have enough time to listen to the inputs and write down my answers because there is not enough time for answering the questions.
2.50 1.30
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26. I cannot finish reading the questions because the pause time allotted between each test item is too short.
2.50 1.26
Psychological
2.60 1.3027. The material is not of interests to me 2.72 1.30
28. I feel nervous when I don’t understand the aural input. 2.61 1.33 29. I get nervous when people evaluate my listening. 2.45 1.24
30. I don’t have confidence. 2.62 1.36
Previous study on junior high school students’ English listening difficulties find that students of different proficiency report different types of listening difficulties. For instance, unable to repeat the listening materials are the biggest obstacles for effective listeners in Chuang’s (2009) and fast delivery of speech annoys high-achieving students in Chuang’s (2011) research. Low-achieving students, comparatively, exhibit significantly more difficulties in all factors discussed: process, listener, speaker, text, and tasks (Chuang, 2011; Ku, 2012). And many of the low-achievers are troubled by their deficiency in grammar and vocabulary knowledge (Chuang, 2009; Chuang, 2011).
Compared with the present study, it is plausible that students of lower proficiency would encounter more significant levels of listening difficulties.