Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Influence of the Assistance from NESTs on Students’ Listening Comprehension
Comprehension Skills
Question 1: Do students who are assisted by NESTs show a better improvement in
their listening comprehension skills than those who are not assisted by NESTs?
The descriptive statistic of less-than-a-year NESTs’ assisting group and
more-than-three-year NESTs’ assisting group is shown in Table 6. Generally speaking,
participants who received NESTs’ assistance for a longer period of time performed
better than those who received shorter ETA instruction throughout the six areas. The
mean score of the participants who received less than a year of NESTs assistance
(mean=61.13) was strikingly lower than those who received more than three of NESTs
assistance (mean=70.23). Table 7 shows how participants performed remarkably
different in terms of the listening comprehension tests between the less-than-a-year
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NESTs-assisting group and more-than-three-year-NESTs-assisting group. There are
statistically significant differences in participants’ listening performance between the
groups (t=-5.61, p<.000). Such result is in line with the previously reviewed studies in
that having NESTs and NNESTs to co-teach can make a better learning environment
thus improve students’ English learning (e.g., Barratt & Kontra, 2000; Benke &
Medgyes, 2005; Poon & Higginbottom, 2000).
Table 6. Descriptive Statistic of Less-than-a-year NESTs Assistance Group and More-than-three-year NESTs Assistant Group
Table 7. Difference of Less-than-a-year NESTs Assistance Group and More-than-three-year NESTs Assistant Group in scores
Mean Difference
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Prior studies have reported that NESTs and NNESTs have their own strengths and
weaknesses and they seemingly make up for each other’s disadvantages (Medgyes,
1992). In this study, we compared groups of participants with less than a year of NESTs’
assistance and with more than three years of NESTs assistance and found that students
outperformed greatly with more years of NESTs’ assistance. The result of the present
study could suggest that NESTs might have actually created a more relaxing and livelier
classroom atmosphere which enhanced students’ learning motivation and thus
influenced their willingness to engage in class (Ryan & Patrick, 2001). The quantitative
analysis of the reports also provides insight to such a finding that classrooms went from
being quiet and teacher-fronted to being interactive and participative in nature. For
example, in the beginning of the school semester, even when the NEST proposed games
or competitions, no obvious excitement was observed on learners. However, at the end
of the term, learners began showing much excitement through clapping and counting
down with the NEST. Furthermore, one of the learners stated that:
“聽不懂就用猜的啊！反正會有人聽得懂，他就會跟我們說老師說什麼。
老師教的課都很有趣，我喜歡上老師的課。我覺得我英文進步了！”
“I’ll guess when I don’t understand! Someone will understand so we just wait for her to tell us what the teacher says. I like attending the teacher’s class, because it is
always very interesting. I think my English improves!”
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It seems that with better involvement of the students in the English class and the
presence of the NESTs with their friendliness and perfect linguistic models, students
were more likely to achieve higher learning satisfaction and thus have a better learning
outcome (Zandvilet & Fraser, 2005).
Some other previous studies found that students performed better with the use of
modified listening passages when taking the exam, these studies either tended to have
a smaller number of participants or have grown-up participants, who might have better
test-taking skills. In this study, we explored the listening comprehension ability of
younger age students and extended the number of the participants to a larger scale,
including students around Taiwan. We found that students with more years of NESTs’
assistance did perform better in terms of listening comprehension tests. It seems that
exposure to authentic input, namely the NESTs’ oral instructions and teaching, is
beneficial for listening comprehension and preferred by L2 learners as previous studies
have stated (Vandergrift, 2007; Yen, 2016). The findings of the present study also
extended those of Wu (2015) and Lin’s (2017) studies, confirming that NESTs do
influence learners’ listening comprehension. In fact, the longer the exposure to NESTs,
the more students show improvement (Wu, 2015; Lin, 2017). In addition, the
improvements of the students’ listening comprehension noted in the present study were
unrelated to any of the specific co-teaching models, because the participants included
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in the present study were randomly selected from different programs implemented in
Taiwan which applied a variety of co-teaching models.
When comparing the listening performance of the participants across five areas
(see Table 8), the differences among the areas became much smaller (F=3.42, p<.05)
with the assistance of NESTs for more than three years than with less-than-a-year
NESTs assisting (F=4.65, p<.001). Although the difference is still statistically
significant, the difference was a much smaller value, suggesting that listening
achievement differences could be narrowed by more years of NESTs’ assistance. This
narrowing of the achievement gap in terms of listening is an encouraging finding
because as there is much discussion (e.g., Bensimon, 2005; Flores, 2007; Haycok, 2001)
on solving achievement gaps in education, not many have found a satisfactory answer
to this gap (Billings, 2006). This might indicate that the benefits of having longer
interaction with NESTs may lead to higher listening comprehension. In other words,
the assistance of NESTs may represent a new approach to mitigate the problem of wide
differences between the English abilities of children from affluent families and those
from poor rural areas in Taiwan (Chang, 2007). As a result, after seeing the encouraging
result of narrowing of the achievement gap in different areas in this study, it will be
worthwhile in future studies to investigate more specifically how NESTs reduce the
achievement differences for these EFL learners.
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Table 8 Participants’ Listening Test Scores among Different Areas with Less-than-a-year NESTs Assistance and More-than-three-Less-than-a-year NESTs Assistance
Area North Middle South East Offshore
When looking at the result from the gender aspect, the listening performance of
both genders improves significantly with the assistance of NESTs for more than three
years (male: t=-4.8, p<.000; female: t=-3.26, p<.01). Table 9 shows how participants
performed remarkably different in terms of the listening comprehension tests between
the less-than-a-year NESTs-assisting group and more-than-three-year-NESTs-assisting
group. As we can see from Table 9, the impact of NESTs on male participants is
particularly worth noticing because the mean score for male participants who received
more than three years of NESTs assistance (mean=68.84) perform significantly better
than those with less than a year of NESTs’ assistance (mean=58.99). This result might
suggest that NESTs might not only had a great effect on raising male learners’ attitude
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towards English learning, but also had an effect on improving their English listening
performance as previous studies (e.g., Gardner, 2008; Green & Oxford, 1995; Wu, 2005)
had explored.
Table 9 Male and female student’ listening test scores with one-year and/or less NEST instruction and three-years and/or more NEST instruction
Mean Score
Green and Oxford (1995) pointed out that males and females hold different
motivations, attitudes, and learning styles to language learning. Furthermore, female
learners were more often identified as global learners than male learners. That is,
females performed better in terms of language learning than males because females
were more capable of utilizing global strategies, such as identifying the main idea and
understand the author’s perspective, and were better at managing new languages.
However, the finding of the present study shows that with more years of NESTs’
assistance, the improvement of the male learners was significantly different from their
female counterparts in terms of their listening comprehension. This might be the result
of their constant interaction with the NESTs which expands the results of existing
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studies such as Lin (2017), Yen (2016), and Wu (2015). The qualitative analysis of the
reports provides insight to such a result. For example, learners stated that:
“我覺得有外國老師的英文課比較好玩也比較有趣。”
“I feel that classes with foreign teachers are more interesting and fun.”
“我可以聽得懂外國老師說的話。”
“I can understand the foreign teacher’s words.”
“我可以輕鬆的與老師用英語交談。”
“I can talk to my teacher in English easily.”
These showed that learners had fun and enjoyed the English class more with the
assistance of NESTs in the language learning classroom. In addition, there seemed to
be the tendency that the learners became more accustomed to listening and speaking
English and felt even more comfortable using English to interact with NESTs. With
higher motivation, lower learning anxiety and more confidence and chance in using
English when interacting with NESTs (Ho, 2013; Huang, 2011; Yen, 2016), it is thus
not surprising to find that learners can perform better in their listening comprehension
after more years of NESTs’ assistance, especially male learners, as the result shown in
the present study. Although many other factors should be taken into consideration, such
as the individual differences of the participants including their family social status,
personal characteristics, the large sample size of this study might be sufficient to
provide a general pattern of learners’ listening performance (Faulkner, 2003).
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The finding of this research question therefore indicates that the benefits gained
from the assistance of NESTs, especially in terms of improving learner’s listening
comprehension skills, may address that such assistance in whichever co-teaching model
is beneficial to students in Taiwan (Barratt & Kontra, 2000; Carless & Walker, 2006;
Chang, 2007; Storey et al., 2001).