Analysis of Interview Data

The interviews were conducted to elicit more detailed information about participants’ (students) strategies use in their English listening comprehension process, and used to make triangulation with the results of questionnaire data for discussing the first research question. The frame to the results of interview data is split up into two parts as the questionnaire section for making discussions: cognitive strategy and metacognitive strategy.

Results from Students

Cognitive Strategy

The application of strategies truly causes the strong influence in students’

process of English listening comprehension, even in their English learning. From the result of the questionnaire (as shown in Table 4-5), it indicated that there were six cognitive strategies (with top five ranking in order) being most frequently used by students in their English listening comprehension process: the usage of main idea in the text for guessing the meaning of unknown words (item 8), making a mental memorization (item 2), doing translation mentally (item 4), knowledge and personal experience’s employment for understanding the listening topic (item 10), note-taking strategy (item 1), and the context’s use for guessing the meaning of unknown parts in listening text (item 6). Since the results of interview data demonstrated, nine of the

interviewees replied that they would apply the strategy of main idea in the text for guessing the meaning of unknown words in their listening process. Take two examples as below:

[Participant # 6, sophomore, male student]

“Some words I haven’t ever seen before, or I had learnt but just forgot. If I don’t know the vocabularies, I will make a sign first, then I will see the paragraph….this sentence’s front and back part, and guess what’s the meaning in this sentence from the context, and to see the word’s meaning, then integrate them into one topic, for guessing the unknown part from the known part.”

[Participant # 8, junior, male student]

“If there is a passage about technological news, I will use this area’s aspect to guess the unknown words. There is another example, here is a passage about the computer, and there are some units, and you will think to that parts.”

As the results of interview data delivered above, the sixth participant stated that he would take down the unknown words in advance, and see the context for inferring their meanings, then integrate into one topic finally for guessing their meanings; on the contrary, the eighth participant said that when he met the unknown words, he would employ the main idea of the passage for guessing their meanings. The responses from these two participants above imply that the main idea in the text indeed is a core toward students to apply for judging or inferring the meaning of unknown words.

Moreover, 11 out of the 12 interviewees said that they would make a mental memorization of information gained through listening. The excerpts as follows are quoted from the eighth and the twelfth participants:

[Participant # 8, junior, male student]

“I will memorize some important numbers or dates…then the name of person from listening text; for instance, who says these words, and that will cause a big difference, and that will be convenient for me to answer the question given in an exam.”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student]

“When doing the listening, it’s of course that to remember something in your head first, and that can help me to answer the questions after listening…. they are helpful for you as you hear the new stuffs in the future because if you don’t memorize the stuffs in the earlier part, you will not know what’s the main point in the back part of listening content when it has the relation with the context.”

The data above presents that making mental memorization to some critical information can truly help students understand the listening contents in their listening process. As the account responded by the eighth participant, he said that some information were important to him when he took the listening exam, so he would memorize them. Moreover, English instructors sometimes might demand the students to give few oral comments after they heard the short talk from the teaching materials in English course, so they would first memorize some main information mentally in order to reply the questions easily after the listening session, as the reply given by the twelfth participant.

Furthermore, eight of the interviewees answered that they would translate the listening materials mentally in listening session; 10 of the interviewees expressed that they could generally employ their personal knowledge and experience to understand the listening topic when the article was related to the daily life or specific area, and students also owned related career, which the writer put these two cognitive strategies

into the third ranking. Several instances are extracted as below:

[Participant # 6, sophomore, male student, for item 4]

“My English ability isn’t very well, and I cannot directly know what the meaning of whole sentence will be as I hear it, so I will translate out the listening materials slowly from the vocabularies in order to know their meanings.”

[Participant # 9, junior, female student, for item 10]

“If the listening topic refers to the daily life, then I can just use my knowledge and personal experience to help me understand it.”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student, for item 10]

“If there are some thematic articles about the culinary art, and you also have touched or possessed the related experiences for this field before, then it will be helpful for you to understand this article.”

Additionally, as to the strategy of note-taking, 10 out of the 12 interviewees demonstrated that they would employ such method. Two examples are elicited as follows:

[Participant # 4, sophomore, female student]

“I will take notes as I hear the key words because I think it can truly help me comprehend the listening contents.”

[Participant # 7, junior, female student]

“I will take notes in the test, to write down some key words such as place, date, whatever.”

From the results above, they reveals that students would take notes for catching some key information in order to understand the listening contents or answer the questions given in listening exam easily.

Besides, when it comes to the usage of contextual clues for guessing the meaning of unknown parts in listening text, 11 of the interviewees described that they would use this strategy in their listening process. There are two instances below:

[Participant # 5, sophomore, female student]

“If there are some vocabularies that I am unfamiliar with, I will depend on the context for guessing their meanings.”

[Participant # 6, sophomore, male student]

“Some words may not be met before or be forgotten suddenly, and cannot recall them, if you see the content from the context, you will generally know what meaning the author wants to tell us.”

An obvious difference of using context in varied situations by participants in their listening process can be distinguished between the fifth and the sixth participants.

The fifth participant indicated that she would use the context when she confronted the difficulty of unfamiliar words; the sixth participant replied that he had the problem of recalling the words, and he would use the context for understanding their meaning. In brief, the employment of the context is helpful to students for guessing unknown parts’

meaning in listening text indeed.

To sum up, in the questionnaire section, students responded that guessing the meaning of unknown words through the main idea in the text was the most frequently used cognitive strategy to them in their English listening comprehension process.

Most of the interviewees also replied that they would use such strategy. Besides, it is surprising that the strategies of making a mental memorization and context’s use in the listening text for guessing the meaning of unknown parts in students’ listening session held the highest response by 12 interviewees in the interview section.

Metacognitive Strategy

As the result of metacognitive strategies’ use displayed in the questionnaire (as shown in Table 4-6), it revealed that there were five strategies (with top five ranking in order) being most frequently employed by students in their English listening comprehension process: focusing harder on listening text as they owned trouble understanding (taking the direct attention in listening, item 13), adjusting the wrong interpretation to the listening materials (method of monitoring students’ listening process for finding some ways of problem-solving, item 17), recalling listening contents that students had already learnt before, for checking whether their guessing to words’ meaning in the text is correct or not (item 14), doing checking exactly that whether they correctly understand the meaning of the whole chunks of the listening text (way of monitoring students’ listening process, item 18), and doing the evaluation after listening such as thinking back their ways of administering listening activity during the listening comprehension process, for using another method to embark the listening activity and make it well next time (item 22). With regard to the results delivered in the interviews, nine of the interviewees said that they would focus harder on listening text when they had trouble understanding. The responses from students presented that they would listen continuously when they met the trouble understanding in listening session because the later part of the listening materials

would give some clues for them to extract the meaning of unknown parts, so they would not stop for thinking those unknown parts in order to avoid losing the information in the following part. Two examples are elicited as follows:

[Participant # 9, junior, female student]

“I will focus harder on the listening text as I have trouble understanding from it because I want to know what the listening text wants to express…”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student]

“For example, because you already have the difficulty in understanding, and it’s impossible for you to cost so many times to think those unknown parts, that will let me forget the later part, or lose them. So I will listen continuously, to avoid losing the later message, and then go back for thinking, and using the thematic or contextual clues to guess those parts’ meanings.”

In addition, 11 out of the 12 interviewees indicated that they would adjust the wrong interpretation when they heard the listening materials, which held the most frequent response stated by the participants in the interview section. Take some instances as below:

[Participant # 5, sophomore, female student]

“I will quickly adjust interpretation as I listen to the materials if my meaning isn’t right. When I listen to the content…and interpret its meaning in my mind, if its meaning isn’t right, I may revise it.”

[Participant # 10, senior, female student]

“I will listen through all the contents, and I will translate them in head after hearing. If my interpretation to those listening contents is not correct, I will listen again and adjust it, to look whether the translation is similar as me, then I’ll know that how much I understand.”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student]

“If I hear the earlier part of the listening text, and feel it’s this meaning, as the later parts come out, I will realize that the back parts are not consistent, and at that time I will adjust them that what are their meanings…and not for other meanings.”

As the data elucidated by three interviewees exposed as above, both the fifth and the tenth participants responded that they would adjust their wrong interpretation after they heard the contents from the listening materials and translated them mentally. The twelfth participant stated that he would adjust his interpretation when the meaning of listening contents was inconsistent before and after.

Furthermore, 10 of the interviewees (students) delivered that they would recall listening contents which they had already learnt in the past for checking whether their guessing to words’ meaning in the text was correct or not. Several examples are extracted as follows:

[Participant # 10, senior, female student]

“If I am seeing the article or whatever, and I had ever seen the stuffs which had similar topic, I will know what it says, so I will easily understand them, that means, I will think the stuffs that I have ever read before and guess this word’s meaning instantly.”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student]

“As guessing the meaning of the words in the text, I will think back every event or stuffs that I may have heard before, and to do the comparison for seeing whether they are correct or not.”

When it comes to the metacognitive strategy of doing checking exactly whether students correctly understood the meaning of the whole chunks of the listening text, 10 out of the 12 interviewees answered that they would apply such method. An instance quoted from the ninth participant is elicited as below:

[Participant # 9, junior, female student]

“If the listening text has a string of multiple choice questions, then I will check repeatedly that whether I can understand the meaning within them.”

Besides, seven of the interviewees replied that they would think back to how they listened and about what they might do differently in the listening activity next time. There is an example as below:

[Participant # 6, sophomore, male student]

“Maybe as I listen to the passage, there may be some vocabularies or sentences that I don’t understand, then I will notice and find some solutions to it, for improving my listening next time.”

Moreover, there are two items out of the 11 metacognitive strategies taking the most frequency with the option “Disagree” (from the result of questionnaire data in Table 4-6 above); in a word, some students might feel English listening comprehension was a challenge for them (item 15; 5 out of the 12 participants possessed this perception), and they also might feel nervous when they listened to English (item 19; 6 out of the 12 participants expressed this perception). For making some examples to prove these points of view as below:

[Participant # 6, sophomore, male student, for item 15]

“For instance, if there is a long sentence, it will be difficult for me to understand because I use the vocabularies to guess and understand its meaning, so I cannot get that sentence’s meaning as I see it, that will spend me more times to think. It will be difficult.”

[Participant # 10, senior, female student, for item 19]

“If you want me to listen, and translate the listening contents out, then I will feel nervous, because I am afraid that I cannot understand, and randomly translate them.”

In conclusion, there is a little inconsistence between the questionnaire data and the interview data. In the questionnaire section, students replied that they would choose to focus more on the listening text when they got trouble understanding, i.e. to take the direct attention most of time in listening, which was the first frequently applied metacognitive strategy toward students in their English listening comprehension process; however, the results of interview data showed that two metacogntive strategy items (adjusting the wrong interpretation of listening materials, recalling listening contents that students had already learnt in the past for checking whether their guessing to words’ meaning in the text is correct or not) seemed outweighed in the interview section with 12 interviewees than the questionnaire section with whole sample. Fortunately, the result of other two items out of the 11 metacognitive strategies (item 15, item 19) in the interview section still corresponded with the result of the questionnaire data.

Additionally, there is another question in students’ interviews about whether students’ usage of listening strategies (cognitive, metacognitive) can truly improve their English listening comprehension or not. The results of interview data showed that all of the interviewees agreed the usefulness of two listening strategies toward their English listening comprehension. Take two participants’ responses for the examples:

[Participant # 4, sophomore, female student]

“I can catch the key words if I use the note-taking strategy, even if I don’t understand every word, but generally I still can understand the contents spoken by the speakers.”

[Participant # 12, senior, male student]

“When I embark a listening task with the unknown topic, and I can use the context in the listening text for guessing the meaning of contents that I don’t know, and I will reflect out the content I know at that time in the next time for listening activity...to do more these connection in context will help me listen smoothly in the future.”

As seeing the explanations from these two participants above, both of them used the cognitive strategies to improve their English listening comprehension. The fourth participant said that note-taking strategy was the good way for her to catch key words, and then to understand the whole listening contents; for the twelfth participant, he stated that he would train himself to guess the meaning of contents by the context in the listening text, and this strategy truly improved his listening competence smoothly in next time’s listening activity.

Besides, there is another example with the usage of metacognitive strategy for improving students’ English listening comprehension, which was stated by the freshman student:

[Participant # 2, freshman, female student]

“If I have evaluated my performance after listening, I will know where I can improve in next time’s listening. Or if I don’t understand the text, the context will provide some helps to me; or when I listen to the sign, like ‘but’, or another words, whatever, there will be some main ideas back of them or some repeated words that are important to me, and these can make me comprehend more and more.”

As the result delivered above, the second participant responded that she would evaluate and criticize her listening performance for figuring out her listening problems, and improving her listening difficulties next time; besides, she also used the cognitive strategies in her listening process such as context or main idea from the text to help herself understand more contents in her listening comprehension process. To sum up, all of these examples demonstrated from the participants above have proved the practicality of two listening comprehension strategies (cognitive, metacognitive) for students’ English listening comprehension. The results also echo Vandergrift’s (1999) points about two strategies’ usefulness toward students’ listening, i.e.

“Cognitive strategies manipulate the material to be learnt or apply a specific technique to the learning task.”; “Metacognitive strategies are important because they oversee, regulate, or direct the language learning process” (p.170).

Results from Teachers

In the present study, the writer also executed the interviews with two English instructors who had professional experiences about English listening teaching. The aim of the interviews with teachers is to explore more in-depth information of their viewpoints toward students’ strategies use. At the beginning, the writer inquired whether listening strategies are important to improve students’ English listening comprehension or not. The responses are indicated as follows:

[Teacher # 1]

“Whatever you do, you must have a strategy, because that would help you, you know, uh…do things more efficiently, especially in listening, you see? If you don’t have listening strategy, then about the listening text just, you know, looks like water-fall, once if you uh…stopped, you are stopped in a middle, the water still runs, so you need to, you know, for example, one of the strategies to, you know, to get to know the script of that listening text, if you know the script, the background knowledge, and what the script is…is going, then you know for sure, even if you are stopped in the middle, for example, some vocabularies that you don’t know, you might just stop right there, then, because of the uh…script you have, that will help you, you know, make up the lost that you…hear, ok?”

[Teacher # 2]

“Uh, well, as far as I concern the…as some strategies work but not all the strategies work, because different students learn in different ways.The best strategies is that strategies that the students develop themselves, it’s the best, you know, we can create certain strategies you know, but I take it might just happened about maybe 20% to something, but even best strategies is the one that

“Uh, well, as far as I concern the…as some strategies work but not all the strategies work, because different students learn in different ways.The best strategies is that strategies that the students develop themselves, it’s the best, you know, we can create certain strategies you know, but I take it might just happened about maybe 20% to something, but even best strategies is the one that