The present study had 109 junior high school students in Taipei City fill out an English listening self-efficacy scale, take an elementary-level GEPT English listening test, and finally complete an English listening difficulty questionnaire. The author then selected 20 students, who represented the upper and lower level of English listening self-efficacy and English listening proficiency, for an interview of students’ English listening strategies. The primary results of the statistical data and the interview findings are summarized again here.
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The average score of the 13-item English listening self-efficacy scale is 44.52, indicating high English listening self-efficacy of the students. Only two items fail to reach 3 points in average, which are #11 “I enjoy doing English listening practices with my teachers and classmates,” and #13 “The more difficult the listening practice is, the more challenging and enjoyable it is.” The lower scores of these two items might result from students’ avoidance from difficult listening materials that are beyond their listening comprehension capacity and their preference for individual listening practices.
As the participants of the study are students of the capital city in Taiwan, it is conjectured that the students receive better family-social capital and hence possess higher English listening self-efficacy.
For the English listening test, students get 78.13 points in average out of a full score of 120 points. Test items #9, #17, #18 and #30 are particularly low in average, with mean scores under 2 points. The low scores might be due to the incomprehensible nature of the pictures provided, inability to visualize situations of the dialogues, and lacks of grammatical conceptions, especially for the present perfect tense. The overall low score of the English listening test might also be attributed to students’ indifference to the research, with no offending to their scores in school life.
The researcher divides listening difficulty into five categories, which are “listening process”, “text,” “input quality,” “task,” and “psychological.” For the thirty-item listening difficulty questionnaire, students averagely reported 77.68 points out of a maximum of 150 points. It is assumed that the relatively low average of students’
listening difficulty might result from the balancing of students with few listening difficulty and therefore decrease the effects from those of more listening difficulty.
The high self-efficacy (HS) group gets 61.07 points while the low self-efficacy (LS) group only gets 23.89 points in the self-efficacy scale. As for listening proficiency,
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the high listening proficiency (HL) group obtains 109.48 points in the English listening test while the low listening proficiency (LL) group only catches a meager 47.40 points in average. T-tests show that the differences between the HS and LS as well as the HL versus LL are significant.
To see the connection between listening self-efficacy and listening difficulty, answers by the high and low listening self-efficacy groups on the English listening difficulty questionnaire are compared. Averagely, the HS group only has 53.89 points of listening difficulty. But the LS group reports 102.15 points. The t-test between the scores on listening difficulty of the HS and LS group confirms that the two groups, with high and low English listening self-efficacy, respectively, differ significantly in English listening difficulty. A closer look of the HS and LS group involves item-by-item t-tests between the two groups’ listening difficulty. Only item #23, which relates to the volume of listening inputs, does not differentiate between the HS and the LS group.
A similar comparison is done between the students of higher and lower listening proficiency on their responses of English listening difficulty. The difficulty score of the HL group is 61.22 while that of the LL group soars up to 101.07. The t-test proves that listening difficulty differentiate the HL and LL group. T-tests of individual difficulty items indicate significant difference in all but two items, which are #23 and #24. Item
#23 is about the volume of the inputs and #24 is about the clarity of inputs and existence of noises. Both #23 and #24 are categorized under “input quality” on the categorization of difficulties. It is surmised that the subjects of the present study have the opportunity to adjust input volume and the recorded CDs for listening practices are of high quality.
Therefore, the input quality does not differentiate significantly between students of high and low listening proficiency.
Difficulties that particularly torture students of lower listening proficiency are
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items #5, #6, #9, #10, #11, #14, #15, #16, #19, #20, #22, #27, and #30. These difficulties include five “listening process difficulties”, which are unable to catch important details (#5), ignoring connection of sentences (#6), incomprehension of previous parts or processing too slowly that leads to later problems (#9), fast speed of the speakers (#10), and in-brain translation with no time for the following inputs (#11). Another five of them are “text” difficulties, which are words with multiple meanings (#14), too many unknown words (#15), difficult grammatical structures (#16), unable to use repetition or pauses for comprehension (#19), and linking or omission of sounds (#20). Two difficulties relate to “task” are #22 unfamiliar topics and #27 no interests toward the content. The only “psychological” difficulty is #30, having no confidence. The above difficulties are those that teachers have to pay special effort to help their students.
The interview of students’ listening strategies generate some cognitive, affective, sociocultural-interactive, test-taking, and training strategies. Students might replay CDs, repeat the inputs, look up unknown words, listen to main idea or key words, take notes, guess meaning through contexts, and translate inputs into the mother tongue. They might also tell themselves to relax while listening, ask others for help, ask questions of the speakers or require them to slow down, and have teachers turn up the volume of inputs. And while taking English listening tests, they look at the test descriptions before listening, choose heard words, cross out unknown words, take notes for later thoughts, mark problematic questions, write answers during pauses, and be careful not to mistakenly write wrong answers. To improve listening, some students listen to ICRT, talk with foreigners or memorize vocabulary to increase their English listening comprehension ability.
In sum, it is proved that junior high school students of the present study are high in English listening self-efficacy and low in English listening proficiency and English
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listening difficulty. Students of higher self-efficacy and higher listening proficiency both exhibit lower level of listening difficulty to the significant level. Students also generate some listening strategies to cope with these difficulties.