Section 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 had presented quantitative results of the experiment
control vocabulary
background
Treatment types
8.5
8
7.5
7
Estimated Marginal Mean s
High Low proficiency grouping
data answering five research questions. In this section, we came to the investigation of qualitative data to answer the last research question:
RQ 6: What are participants’ affective reactions and attitudes toward different types of pre-listening supports?
Post-listening open-ended questionnaires written in Chinese with seven sub-questions were implemented. The first three questions served to screen out those students who either had relatively high related background knowledge or had learned the target vocabulary prior to the experiment. In terms of the content familiarity, results showed that among the 32 background group students, 4 of them (12.5%) ticked 0-25% familiarity, 12 of them (37.5%) ticked 25-50% familiarity, 15 of them (47%) ticked 50-75% familiarity, one of them ticked 75-100% category, and one did not respond (see Table 4-11). Namely, the majority of participants in the background class were relatively less familiar with the background of both listening passages. And the only one student who chose 75-100% familiarity was excluded from the analysis.
As for the vocabulary familiarity, among the 33 vocabulary group students, 6 of them (18%) ticked 0-25% familiarity, 17 of them (52%) ticked 25-50% familiarity, 9 of them (27%) ticked 50-75% familiarity, and one student ticked 75-100% familiarity (see Table 4-11). In other words, the majority of students in this class did not find target vocabulary familiar prior to the instruction and the only student who ticked 75-100% familiarity was not included in the data analysis.
Table 4-11: Summary of Q2 & Q3
Question 0-25 25-50 50-75 75-100
Q2:Are you familiar with the content of “Easter Eggs” or
“A Christmas Party” before the current experiment?
4
Q3: Are you familiar with the vocabulary that was taught in class before the current experiment?
6
Question 4 and 5 continued to examine whether participants’ affective reactions toward the pre-listening supports were identical to their self-evaluation of the effects of such supports on their post-listening comprehension performance. For the background class, the majority of students held positive attitudes toward this type of support: 17 participants (53%) reported that they liked the enhanced background knowledge pre-listening support activity and 21 participants (66%) believed that such activity helped them do better on comprehension questions. Most of these students considered this activity interesting and claimed that they could have a rough idea of the context as well as the content of the listening passages (see Excerpt 1), they could guess what would happen, they focused more on finding answers to the questions (see Excerpt 2), they understood better when they listened to the passages, and they found listening tasks less difficult. Some students even claimed that they felt like
“predictors” (see Excerpt 3) and they were less nervous than they were used to be when doing the listening tasks (see Excerpt 4). What is more interesting, 4 students mentioned that the new words they learned during the background knowledge pre-teaching also helped them listen better in listening tasks (see Excerpt 5). This response seemed to be an advantageous side effect, since the focus of this type of support was not on vocabulary instruction.
Familiarity (%)
Excerpt 1~5:
Excerpt 1:
「喜歡，可以知道一些關於主題的內容，也可以增加一些知識，認識更多的事物」
(“Yes, I like it. I can know something about the topic, have more knowledge about it, and know more things.”)
Excerpt 2:
「有，先前做的活動會加強去聽活動中的問題(答案)」
(“Yes, it helped. The pre-listening activity helped me listen more carefully to the answers to comprehension questions.”)
Excerpt 3:
「喜歡，因為猜測遊戲讓我覺得我是「預告師」！」
(“Yes, I like it. Doing the predicting activity, I felt like I am a master predictor!”)
Excerpt 4:
「喜歡，因為可以先知道等下聽力的大約內容，較不會緊張」
(“Yes, I like it, because I can know the rough content of the listening passages. So I felt less nervous.”)
Excerpt 5:
「…有些單字沒看過，經過老師講解後，再聽聽力，就更明了 CD 內的內容」
(“I did not know some of the vocabulary, but after teacher’s explanation, I understood better the listening in CD when doing the listening tasks.”)
Although the majority of participants in the background class held positive attitudes toward this pre-listening support, 11 students (34%) just “kind of” liked it (they used words like “so-so”, “okay”, “more or less”) and 5 students (16%) thought background knowledge support “more or less” helped them on comprehension tests (they used words like “so-so”, “a little bit”). Some of them claimed that the activity was a little bit boring but it did help them settle into the context sooner (see Excerpt 6). Also, one student mentioned that he did not like this support very much because he was not in a good mood that day. Finally, there were also participants who did not like the background knowledge pre-teaching and did not give credit for this support either.
Four students (13%) expressed negative feelings toward this activity, most regarding it as a very “boring” or “useless” activity. One student even mentioned that he did not
like the support because he did not like English. Besides, six students (19%) did not think the support facilitated them in the comprehension tests. Most of them claimed that the listening tasks were still too difficult or that the speech rate was too fast that they could not grasp the main idea of the whole text (see Excerpt 7).
Excerpt 6~7:
Excerpt 6:
「還好，還蠻無聊的，不過可以早點進入狀況」
(“So-so, it was quite boring, but I could get into the context sooner.”)
Excerpt 7:
「說太快，抓不住重點」
(“They speak too fast, I can’t grasp the point”)
As to the vocabulary class, the majority of learners held positive attitudes toward this type of support: 27 participants (82%) reported that they liked the vocabulary pre-teaching support, and 23 students (70%) regarded this activity helpful for their comprehension tests. Most of them thought this support was fun and they were happy to know the meaning of the unfamiliar words that would appear later in listening texts. They also believed that learning these new words helped them understand the listening passages better (see Excerpt 8) and if there had been no such support, they might not have understood a word (Excerpt 9). Some students even mentioned that the method of vocabulary teaching helped them form deeper impressions of the taught words (see Excerpt 10) and that it was easier for them to memorize these words. But interestingly, five people also said that the reason why they liked vocabulary pre-teaching support was because they could learn new words.
This is a rather interesting phenomenon because they liked the activity not because they think they could understand the listening better with the help of word knowledge,
but because they could “learn new words” in the activity.
Excerpt 8~10:
Excerpt 8:
「有，因為有事先了解單字，聽了之後會較懂」
(“Yes, it helped. Because I learned the words before hand, I understood better the listening texts.”)
Excerpt 9:
「有，因為這樣，聽的時候才不會都聽不懂」
(“Yes, it helped. Without it, I might have not understood a word.”)
Excerpt 10:
「 喜歡，因為可以加深(單字)印象」
(“Yes, I like it, because it helped me have deeper impressions of the words I had learned.”)
On the other hand, five people (15%) claimed that they had neutral attitudes toward the vocabulary pre-teaching support and eight people (24%) thought this type of support more or less helped them do better in comprehension tests. Most of their comments were that pre-learning words helped them understand sentences appearing in the listening passages but they still did not understand the whole passage. Finally, there was one student who did not like the support activity and two students who did not think it help them comprehend better the listening passages. One of them explained that it was because he still did not know the answers to all the questions after the instruction.
As a review, the responses to question 4 and 5 provided by two treatment classes were summarized in Table 4-12. Useful implications could be drawn by examining this table. First, the great majority of students in both classes did not repel the pre-listening supports they received and most of them found the support helpful for their listening comprehension. Second, by examining whether participants’
affective reactions toward the pre-listening supports were identical to their
self-evaluation of the effectiveness of such supports, two classes showed incongruent opinions. Fifty-three percent of the students in background class liked the support activity, but 13 percent more (that is, a total of 66%) believed it to help their comprehension. On the other hand, eighty-two percent of the students in vocabulary class liked the support while only seventy percent of them found vocabulary pre-instruction helpful. This suggested a slight dissimilarity between students’
affective preference and their subjective evaluation of listening supports. Further discussion would be presented in chapter five.
Table 4-12: Summary of Q4 & Q5
Question Positive Neutral Negative
Background 17
Q2: Do you like the pre-listening activity?
Voc 27
Q3: Do you think the pre-listening activity is helpful for your listening
Finally, question 6 continued to ask participants of the reasons why they were not able to answer the comprehension questions right. Question 7 was to elicit suggestions for the pre-listening activities from students’ points of view. Most of the learners in background class mentioned that the fact that they didn’t completely understand the listening passages was the reason why they could not answer correctly
Response
the comprehension questions. The rest of the learners offered other explanations. For example, six students blamed the unfamiliar vocabulary appearing in the listening passages; four students said that they were not concentrated enough; and two students believed that it was because foreigners have different accents and intonations from those they were more used to. As to the suggestions for this type of pre-listening support, the majority did not have any comments, but for those who did, they included:
“Add more test questions”, “Explain clearer the procedures of the activity”, “Have more student-student interaction”, “Teach more about the two listening topics in later classes”, “Substitute the written test questions with pictorial prompts.”
Similar to background class, some students in enhanced vocabulary class mentioned that the main reason why they were not able to answer questions correctly was because they did not understand the passage completely. For the remaining students, ten blamed that the speech rate was far too fast, six blamed other unfamiliar words (not taught prior to the test) to impede their comprehension, four said that they just drifted away, two blamed their own English proficiency, and one blamed the different foreign accents. As to the suggestions for this type of pre-listening support, most of the students suggested that more chances to review newly-learned vocabulary should be offered. One student also suggested that the teacher can put phonetic symbols beside the English words, another student expressed the need to learn more vocabulary so that he could listen better, and still another suggested that the teacher can teach more usages of the target words.