Chen & Luo (2001)

Chen & Luo (2001) probed into the effects of visual cues on listening comprehension of elementary school students in Taiwan. Thirty-six fifth graders were asked to participate in the experiment. The instruments were a questionnaire, and three listening comprehension tests. The three listening tests were tests with picture cues only, tests with both picture and textual cues, and tests with textual cues only respectively. For the experimental control, the topics in the three tests were the same.

It was found that tests with textual cues only scored the highest (M=82.8), followed by tests with both visual and textual cues (M=82.5), and then tests with visual cues only (M=81.4). However, no significant difference was found among the average scores on the three kinds of tests. The result indicated that picture cues were not a crucial factor to listening comprehension. Chen & Luo found that advanced learners could take advantage of both picture and textual cues in listening process. On the other hand, according to the number of the years of English learning, the subjects were divided into four groups. The results again showed no significant difference among the three tests, meaning that picture cues did not have great influence on listening performance. Moreover, Chen & Luo also tried to compare the performance according to the subjects’ frequencies of listening to English tapes. It was found that the subjects who seldom listened to English tapes at home performed better on the tests with picture cues than on the tests with textual cues only. Those who listened often or sometimes scored the highest on the tests with textual cues only. The findings

indicated that the lower-level listeners tended to rely more on visual cues while advanced learners might benefit more from the textual cues. In terms of the subjects’

attitude toward different test types, the results showed that the tests with both visual and textual cues ranked the first, followed by the tests with textual cues only, and then the tests with visual cues only. Finally, the subjects with the training in using picture and textual cues before were found to perform slightly better than those without the training though the difference didn’t reach a significant level.

2.3.3 Wu (2000)

Wu (2000) investigated the effects of para-linguistic factors on EFL listening performance. One of the research questions was whether text types were significant factors affecting students’ listening comprehension performance. The subjects were 340 first-year senior high school students from four schools in Chia-yi and Kaohsiung with the equal number of male and female students.

The instruments included three listening comprehension tests designed by Wu on the basis of six junior high school English textbooks and one new version of senior high school English textbook. The scheme of each test was developed with references to that in the listening comprehension section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and each test was made up of three parts: Part A (statements), Part B (dialogues), and Part C (passages)¹⁴.

The results obtained from both one-way ANOVA and an LSD post hoc comparison showed that dialogues were the easiest for the subjects, followed by passages, with statements the most difficult part and such difference actually reached a significant difference (p< .01). Wu thus concluded that text types did play a significant role in listening performance.

14 Part A included 10 items set at the single sentence level. Part B consisted of 10 short dialogues (A: B:

or A: B: A: B:). Part C contained 10 questions from narration with four levels of text length (about 50, 75, 100, 150 words respectively). There was only one item type (i.e., the multiple choice).

2.3.4 Teng (1996)

Teng (1996) investigated the EFL listening comprehension strategies used by college freshmen in Taiwan. The subjects were 124 students from the freshmen at National Yunlin Institute of Technology. For the lack of standardized and reliable listening assessments, Teng used their performance in the first semester freshman course “English Listening & Speaking Practice” to divide them into the effective and less effective listeners. The instruments included one questionnaire on the learning background of EFL listening comprehension and one questionnaire on the EFL listening comprehension strategies. The former was designed according to the researcher’s personal teaching and research experiences. The latter, which included 51 Likert-type items, was developed according to the listening comprehension strategy model of Oxford (1990).

The results showed that in terms of the overall strategy use, the rank of the six categories according to the frequency from high to low was: compensation, cognitive, metacognitive, memory, social and affective. As to the use of individual strategies, three most frequently used strategies were translating, followed by repeating, and then transferring; three least frequently used strategies included writing a language learning diary, followed by cooperating with proficient users of the new language, and then using laughter. On the other hand, the findings about the strategy use of the effective and less effective listeners are as follows. First, the effective listeners employed strategies significantly more frequently than the less effective listeners did in all the six categories. Second, concerning the use of six categories, the effective listeners employed compensation strategies most frequently, followed by cognitive strategies, then metacognitive strategies, then memory strategies, then social strategies and finally affective strategies. The less effective listeners employed cognitive strategies most frequently, followed by compensation strategies, then metacognitive

strategies, then memory strategies, then social strategies and finally affective strategies. In general, the effective and less effective listeners showed a great similarity in the ranking of the six categories. Third, with regard to the use of individual strategies, the three strategies most frequently used by the effective listeners from high to low were creating structures by highlighting, formally practicing with sounds and writing systems, and repeating. As for the less effective listeners, the three strategies most frequently used from high to low were repeating, translation, using resources such as dictionaries and grammar books. The strategy least frequently used for the effective listeners was working with native speakers, and that for the less effective listeners was writing listening diaries.

2.3.5 Wang (2002)

Wang (2002) attempted to find out the listening strategy use by Taiwanese senior high school students as well as the effects of gender and proficiency on listening strategy use. The subjects were 301 second-year students from three senior high schools in Chunghua. Finally, 297 valid data were collected, including 153 males and 144 females. The instruments were a listening comprehension intermediate test of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT), a listening comprehension strategy questionnaire, and an interview. The listening comprehension strategy questionnaire¹⁵ was adopted from Lee (1997) and modified by Wang on the basis of previous studies (Bacon, 1992b; Chao, 1999; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Teng, 1996; Vandergrift, 1997).

Several findings were obtained in the study. First, among the categories of listening strategies, metacognitive strategies were used most frequently, followed by social/affective strategies and then cognitive strategies. Second, with regard to the

15 The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the background information and the listening

comprehension strategy use. The second part included 45 items in total and the listening strategies were divided into three main categories: cognitive, metacognitive, and social/affective strategies.

individual listening strategies, the subjects used translation, elaboration, monitoring, bottom-up, self-management, recombination very frequently (from high to low frequency); the strategies with low frequency of usage from low to high were transfer, deduction, top-down, self-encouragement, and voice inferencing. Third, it was found that proficiency affected strategy use to a significant extent. That is, the effective listeners used listening strategies significantly more frequently than the less effective listeners. Besides, the results showed that the effective listeners used every category significantly more frequently than the less effective listeners. The ranking of the three categories for both the effective and less effective groups was the same:

meta-cognitive strategies the first, social/affective strategies the second, and cognitive strategies the third. With regard to individual strategies, the effective listeners used planning, monitoring, self-evaluation, practicing, bottom-up, top-down, note-taking, grouping, summarization, and the social strategy significantly more frequently than the less effective listeners. As expected, the less effective listeners used translation more frequently than the effective listeners.

In a nutshell, in this section, I have reviewed five related studies. In terms of test effects, the findings of Cheng (2000) and Chen & Luo (2001) were inconsistent. From the statistical analysis, it appeared that formats were not a significant factor affecting listening comprehension. However, from the results of the questionnaires, their subjects expressed different opinions about test formats. In terms of text effects, Wu (2000) found that text types had significant effects on listening comprehension and dialogues were easier than statements. As for listening strategy use, Teng (1996) and Wang (2002) both found that the effective listeners used listening strategies significantly more frequently than the less effective listeners. However, they differed in their classification system of listening strategies and in the ranking of categories of listening strategies. Despite the findings, these studies differed from the present study

in some ways. None of them explored the relationship between test/text effects and listening strategies. Besides, except Wang (2002), the other researchers did not adopt standardized tools. Moreover, since there is still no classification system of listening strategies agreed upon by researchers, more explorations are needed to better understand students’ strategy use.