自主聽力對於台灣中學生聽力理解與聽力認知的影響

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(1)國⽴台灣師範⼤學英語學系碩⼠論⽂ Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. ⾃主聽⼒對於台灣中學⽣聽⼒理解與聽⼒認知的影響. The Influences of Autonomous Listening on Listening Comprehension and Perceptions of Listening for EFL Middle School Students. 指導教授：林⾄誠 Advisor: Dr. Chih-Cheng Lin 研究⽣：林⾠樺 Student: Olivia Chen-Hua Lin. 中華民國⼀百零五年⼀⽉ January 2016.

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(3) 摘要本研究⽐較⼀般聽⼒教學與⾃主聽⼒教學，旨在探討⾃主聽⼒對於中學⽣的英語聆聽能⼒與英聽學習看法之影響。研究對象為台灣某國中之⼆年級三個班級共⼀百位學⽣，控制組為⼀般聽⼒課程，實驗組⼀為⾃主聽⼒課程，實驗組⼆為引導式⾃主聽⼒課程。第⼀週為聽⼒理解前測，⽽在⼗週的課程當中，三組受試者都必須在當週課程結束時書寫聽⼒札記，札記內容包含受試者⾃⾏紀錄聽⼒⽅⾯的學習項⽬、學習困難，以及對課程的看法，第⼗⼆週則為聽⼒理解後測。聽⼒測驗結果採⽤重複量數單因⼦變異數分析，聽⼒札記所記錄之內容兼採質性與量化分析，課程結束後半結構式⾯談也納⼊實驗結果的佐證。研究結果發現三組受試者在聽⼒測驗表現⽅⾯並無顯著差異，在英聽學習⽅⾯則有不同看法。控制組學⽣的學習項⽬多為測驗時的作答技巧，學習困難為容易分⼼與跟不上語速，英聽程度較佳之學習者者在課程後期表⽰感到較為無趣；實驗組兩組學⽣的學習項⽬主要為習慣英語語速、熟悉英語發⾳及韻律、記憶字彙，學習困難為接觸許多不熟悉之字彙，學習者不論程度，皆對於課程安排表達肯定的看法，優點包括擁有選擇權、愉悅感、課中動機提⾼也較為投⼊。然實驗組⼀之期末回饋顯⽰課程當中有時會遇到阻礙，認為學習效率較低，強烈希望教師能給予更多的引導和指⽰；實驗組⼆之期末回饋則普遍顯⽰⾼度滿意，課後主動練習聽⼒的時數亦遠⾼於實驗組⼀。. 關鍵字：⾃主學習、聽⼒、學習者觀感、教師引導. i.

(4) ABSTRACT The present study aims to investigate the impacts of autonomous listening on listening comprehension and listening perceptions by comparing formal listening instruction and autonomous listening instruction. school.. The participants were 100 second-graders in a junior high. The control group received regular listening course, the first experimental group. autonomous listening (AL) course, and the second experimental group guided autonomous listening (GAL) course.. During the ten-week intervention, the participants were required to. keep a listening log, the contents including learning points and learning problems in listening, and their opinions of the course.. The results of listening pretests and posttests were analyzed. by repeated ANOVA, and the logs were examined both quantitatively and qualitatively. Follow-up semi-structure interviews were also incorporated as support for the findings.. The. results indicate no significant difference among the groups in listening comprehension; yet diverged opinions were presented. The control group marked test-taking skills as main acquisition, tendency to get distracted and inability to follow delivery speed as main obstacles, and better listeners appeared uninterested in the later phase.. The experimental groups. indicated getting accustomed to delivery speed, being familiar with the prosody, and memorizing lexicons as main acquisition; encountering many unfamiliar words as a main obstacle; and positive attitude was showed regardless learners’ proficiency.. The merits of. autonomous listening included having right to choose, pleasure, and higher motivation and engagement in class.. Nevertheless, the AL group revealed a strong desire for teacher. guidance and assistance due to the lower efficiency and occasional problems in the process from their end-semester feedback.. The GAL group, on the contrary, generally displayed a. great satisfaction in the course, and they also listened longer after class than the AL group.. Key words: autonomy, listening, learner perception, teacher guidance ii.

(5) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT After realizing my dream of being an English teacher, I have always got the feeling that I should have finer art to convey the knowledge of this language. bring the pleasure of learning to my students.. I should be more capable of. Therefore I tried my best to study at this. NTNU, a birthplace of many excellent teachers in different fields, to sharpen my teaching. During the period of taking courses, I was so lucky to have met so many wonderful peers and passionate, professional instructors.. I could not specify how much I enjoyed being with. them and how much I learned from them. Despite the happy hours in being a learner again, I was so worried about writing a thesis, the most challenging part.. Thanks to Sylvia, my classmate, I had a smooth start on it.. What’s more, without the help of the people mentioned below, I could not complete this task. First of all, I would like to show my profound gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Chih-Cheng Lin.. He always raised questions that inspired me, and gave me great freedom and shrewd. suggestions for my research.. He taught me the importance of reflection and seeking answers. on my own. Likewise, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my committee members, Prof. Mei-Zhen Wu and Prof. Huei-Chun Teng.. Their critical, valuable feedback. on my thesis expands my understanding of my efforts and adds the depth of my thesis. Owing to their insightful opinions, I get to complete this thesis. Also, I am grateful to all of my adorable students, regardless of the moments when they were being annoying.. Without their cooperation, my work could end up a mess.. Learning. with them at the same time (literally!) made me a more thoughtful teacher. Last but not least, I want to thank my dear, loving family, for I was bad-tempered sometimes when being stressed, and busy writing and thus spent less time with them together. Their care and tolerance cheered me up unconditionally so that I can make it today.. iii.

(6) TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………….…….vi LIST OF FIGURES…………………….…………………………………………………..vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….….1 1.1 Background and Motivation……………………………………………………….…1 1.2 Research Questions of the Study…………………………………………………..…3 1.3 Significance of the Study……………………………………………………………..3 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………….5 2.1 Learner Autonomy……………………………………………………………………5 2.1.1 What is Learner Autonomy? ………………………………………………….5 2.1.2 Approaches to Foster Learner Autonomy……………………………………..8 2.1.3 Empirical Studies on Autonomy and Language Gains……………………....12 2.1.4 Why Autonomous Listening and What Makes Autonomous Listening? .......16 2.2 Listening Comprehension………………………………………………………...…19 2.2.1 Cognitive Listening Processes……………………………………………….19 2.2.2 Cognitive Listening Difficulties in One-way Communication………………22 2.2.3 Current Common Listening Instruction…………………………………...…26 2.2.3.1 Strategic Listening……………………………………………………27 2.2.3.2 Extensive Listening…………………………………………………..30 2.3 The Present Study…………………………………………………………………...32 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………..34 3.1 Participants……………………………………………………………………….….34 3.2 Intervention………………………………………………………………………….34 3.3 Materials……………………………………………………………………………..37 3.4 Instruments…………………………………………………………………………..42 iv.

(7) 3.5 Procedure……………………………………………………………………………44 3.6 Data Analysis………………………………………………………………………..46 CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS and DISCUSSIONS……………………………………....47 4.1 The Effectiveness of Autonomous Listening on Listening Comprehension………..47 4.1.1 Performance of the Listening Comprehension Tests………………………...47 4.1.2 Discussion on the Effectiveness of Autonomous Listening………………....48 4.2 The Perceptions of the Listening Program………………………………………….51 4.2.1 Records from the Listening Logs……………………………………………51 4.2.2 End-Semester Feedback after the Program………………………………….56 4.2.3 Discussion on the Perceptions of the Program………………………………62 4.3 The Perceptions of the Teacher’s Role……………………………………………..70 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………….76 5.1 Summary of Major Findings………………………………………………………..76 5.2 Pedagogical Implications…………………………………………………………...79 5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions of Future Research……………………..80 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………...82 Appendix A Listening Test Sample………………………....………………………………90 Appendix B Listening Log…..………………………………………………………………92. v.

(8) LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Features of Spoken English (Adapted from Lynch, 2009) ………………………24 Table 2.2 Problems Related to Different Phases of Listening Comprehension……………..25 Table 2.3 Listening Instruction Stages and Related Metacognitive Strategies……………...29 Table 3.1 A Comparison of the Listening Exercises for the Three Groups…………………37 Table 3.2 The List of Available Websites in the Present Study……………………………..43 Table 3.3 The Timetable of the Present Study………………………………………………46 Table 4.1 Descriptive Statistics of Listening Tests for the GAL, AL and Control Groups…48 Table 4.2 One-way repeated ANOVA for Effects of Listening Instruction on Listening Comprehension……………………………………………………………………………….49 Table 4.3 The Learning Points Recorded…………………………………………………….53 Table 4.4 The Listening Problems Recorded………………………………………………...55 Table 4.5 Advantages Proposed by AL and GAL Learners in the Feedback………………..57 Table 4.6 The Advantages of Listening Learning from Learners’ Quotes…………………..58 Table 4.7 The Advantages of Autonomous Learning from Learners’ Quotes………………60 Table 4.8 Disadvantages and Suggestions Proposed by the AL and GAL Learners...............62 Table 4.9 The Disadvantages of Autonomous Listening from the AL Learners’ Quotes.......63. vi.

(9) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 A Snapshot of Educoco…………………………………………………………..38 Figure 3.2 A Snapshot of an Online Audiobook with Animation, Text and Sound................39 Figure 3.3 A Snapshot of an Online Audiobook with Text and Sound Only………………..40 Figure 3.4 A Snapshot of Website VoiceTube (Listening Mode)……………………………41 Figure 3.5 The Vocabulary Review Interface on VoiceTube………………………………...41 Figure 3.6 A Snapshot of the Listening Test Mode………………………………………….42 Figure 4.1 After-class Listening Hours during the Ten-Week Intervention…………………56. vii.

(10) CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background and Motivation Due to the rapid progress of technology and the easy accessibility of information, the way of learning has drastically changed.. Just as what has been expatiated in a flip classroom,. nowadays the most key concept in education is learners’ learnability; that is, what really matters is that students know how to learn rather than what to learn.. A teacher should. develop a learner’s competence to absorb, to adapt instead of rigid skills.. Therefore. language learning is no longer constrained to the classroom, the teacher is no longer the only authoritative resource of knowledge, and the learner is by no means a passive receiver of substantial language knowledge.. In an era of information explosion, all these changes have. made individual learnability and access to acquire knowledge highly-valued.. Autonomous. learning—no matter on campus or out of campus—has become a focus in the domain of language learning and teaching. Though English education in Taiwan has been around for more than thirty years, the lecture hours has been focused on reading and writing, and mostly conducted in a teacher-directed manner.. Listening and speaking attract insufficient attention from both. English instructors as well as learners since the graduation exam for junior high school students used to test only English reading competence.. Not until 2014 listening was decided. to be incorporated in the Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students does listening ability become a concern for stakeholders in the context.. Indeed,. listening is actually being learned prior to all the other three communication skills in everyone’s mother tongue and should be learned earlier or at least simultaneously so that successful second language learning is more likely to take place.. Thus, exploring a more. effective method to teach English listening is one of the top priorities in the presence of 1.

(11) English education in Taiwan. Concerning instructional schemes, principal listening types have been categorized, including intensive, selective, interactive, extensive, responsive and autonomous (Rost, 2011). The main part in current empirical studies are listening strategy instruction (Cross, 2011b; Goh & Taib, 2006; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010) and extensive listening (Chang, 2011; Chang & Millett, 2013; Reinders & Cho, 2010; Verdugo & Belmonte, 2007).. In the late. 1990s, it was and is still noticeable that the training of strategies has been promoted to the extent that seem to occupy a great deal of teaching time.. Under this structure listening in. class are often directed at three stages, i.e. pre-, during-, and post-listening activities (D. Brown, 2006; Field, 2009).. Views became different approximately after 2000.. To start. with, Wilson (2003) proposed ‘discovery listening’, a relatively bottom-up thinking process compared to strategy teaching, which is rather top-down.. Later extensive listening, which. places an emphasis on a large amount of practice on authentic materials catches considerable attention.. The debate for both parties had been heated (Blyth, 2012; Renandya & Farrell,. 2010; Siegel, 2011).. So far they still own respective proponents and reasons to support.. Meanwhile, it is no doubt that English has become an international language, meaning that it changes constantly and rapidly for English speakers of different mother tongues add new elements to it anytime.. If learners want to keep up on the path to successful language. learning, the key must be that they need to be motivated and responsible for their learning. Holec (1981) introduced the concept ‘learner autonomy’, and follow-up research studies regarding autonomy extend with themes like computer-assisted language learning (Kessler & Bikowski, 2010; Sullivan & Lindgren, 2002), self-access (Gardner & Miller, 1999; Little, 1997; Littlejohn, 1997), sociocultural influence (Ho & Crookall, 1995; Humphreys & Wyatt, 2013; Jones, 1995; Littlewood, 1999), the principles of developing autonomy (Cotterall, 1995; Field, 2007; Lee, 1998; Smith, 2003), the relationship between learner autonomy and learner 2.

(12) autonomy (Phil Benson, 2001; Little, 1995), etc.. Among the empirical studies, many. investigated the motivation change/improvement (Kemp, 2010; Yashima, 2014) or learner perception and attitude toward autonomy (Dişlen, 2011; Gao, 2009), where most of the data elicitation is from subjective self-reports. Even though there exist experiments of learner autonomy implementation on language acquisition, most of them observe the effect on the general language proficiency (Cotterall, 2000; Dam, 2011).. Direct observation of single, specific communication skills or areas like. grammar or vocabulary was scant, and the participants in the studies on listening instruction were mostly tertiary school students (Kemp, 2010; Mideros & Carter, 2014) rather than secondary school ones.. In view of the previous research, the current student intends to. explore the effect of autonomous listening for middle school students in terms of their listening comprehension and perceptions to common listening problems.. 1.2 Research Questions of the Study The present study expects to investigate the following questions: 1. Are there any significant differences between formal listening, autonomous listening and guided-autonomous listening groups in terms of listening comprehension after the intervention? 2. What are the perceptions of the autonomous listening as well as the roles of the teacher on learners’ learning listening?. 1.3 Significance of the Study In the field of research for learner autonomy, it must be accentuated that although there are the cases of positive feedback from learners and instructors on the implementation of 3.

(13) autonomy, these often depended on personal perception or subjective observation from those involved (Benson, 2001).. This study aims to explore the influence of learner autonomy in. terms of actual language gains, to complement and strengthen what has been undervalued in the past studies.. At the same time, it is hoped that this study can demonstrate autonomous. listening, taking advantage of existing dominant listening instruction and the application of CALL, has the potential to present a more effective method for second language listening instruction and hence provides a ready access for second language learners and brings the inception and sustainment of practice on autonomous learning.. 4.

(14) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Learner Autonomy 2.1.1 What is Learner Autonomy? The concept of ‘autonomy’ is first attended by Holec (1981) in Council of European Modern Languages Projects.. He defines autonomy as ‘the ability to take charge of one’s. own learning’ in language learning field.. More specifically, learner autonomy entails the. learner’s decisions regarding the following aspects: determining their goals, describing the materials and progressions, choosing learning methods and techniques, monitoring the procedure of acquisition, and evaluating their acquirement (p.3). Many scholars later considered autonomy as the characteristics of individuals on the basis of Holec’s ideas.. Little (1990) views autonomy as ‘essentially a matter of the learner’s. psychological relation to the process and content of learning’.. Thomson (1996) refers. learner autonomy to learning in a setting where the learner ‘take responsibility for their own learning’.. Lee (1998) suggests that the ability to self-direct learning is one potential. manifestation of learner autonomy.. Phil Benson (2001), for a further step, defines autonomy. as ‘the capability to take control of one’s own learning’, concretizing the ability or responsibility which the learner is usually assumed to own.. Still some researchers discuss. autonomy within the framework of learning environments.. As Dickinson (1987) put it,. autonomy can be seen as ‘the situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his learning’.. Allwright (1988) argues that autonomy was. concomitant with a fundamental reform of traditional classrooms and language teaching methodology.. In short, the concept shared in these descriptions is that the pivotal. accountability in language acquisition has swung from the teacher to the learner. However, there are also a range of misconceptions of learner autonomy. 5. Little in his.

(15) book (1990) clarifies what autonomy is NOT: it is not self-instruction, it does not mean the elimination of teacher’s responsibility, and it is never a single teaching method.. Two. decades later, Dam (2011) also echoes these viewpoints when he concluded his long-term teaching experiences, emphasizing what learner autonomy does not imply by three more dimensions (p.49): -. A do-as-you-like tasks for learners. -. About learners learning by themselves. -. Something teachers do to learners, but something teachers do with learners. (Dam, 1999) Having the core concepts of learner autonomy as a starting point, issues related to learner. autonomy or autonomous learning have been associated with a wide range of research like CALL, self-access and sociocultural differences.. Firstly it would not be an exaggeration. that the advent of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) originates from autonomous learning since it is true that technology [is] in the service of language learning (Garrett, 1991). According toWarschauer and Healey (1998), the role of CALL experiences three stages: behavioristic (CALL as a tool for drill and test), communicative (as a tool to achieve non-linguistic or difficult linguistic projects like the use of corpus) and integrative (as a resource for rich both verbal and non-verbal input).. The Internet has magnified the strand of. interactive CALL for its availability and affordability.. All of these are supposed to support. the learner in developing language skills and competence as well as growing more autonomous. Next, self-access is also one of the most widely explored field in second language learning.. Besides early contributions to numerous independent articles (Little, 1997; Nunan,. 1997; Ryan, 1997), an exclusive journal Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal was also launched in 2010.. Gardner and Miller’s book (1999) offered a comprehensive introduction. to self-access learning.. They stress that self-access language learning is neither simply ‘a 6.

(16) collection of materials’ nor ‘a system for organizing resources’, but ‘an integration of a number of elements which combines to provide a unique learning environment’.. Though. Benson (2001) indicates that self-access does not entail the learner’s ability to manage his or her own learning, the authentic texts provided in self-access centers can ‘develop confidence in the face of the target language’ and ‘accommodate the two-way relation between language learner and language learning’ (Little, 1997), which is of great importance in the development of learner autonomy. Third, the practice of autonomous learning within the classroom has been discussed as well, which in turn brings the concern for social and cultural influence.. The initial. assumption of learner autonomy was learners’ independent learning; then it was followed by a conversion that learner-learner interdependence, teacher-learner cooperation pattern, and scaffolding from important others (Benson, 2001; Dam, 2011, Humphreys & Wyatt, 2013; Kessler & Bikowski, 2010; Lee, 1998).. At the same time, a more recent propensity centers. on cultural, social, and even political influence on the fostering of learner autonomy since the interaction of autonomous learning occur not only inside the classroom but also with the world out of campus.. For instance, the issue whether learner autonomy is exclusive to. western culture is seen as a typical theme that is often debated. Scollon and Wong Scollon (1994) proposed an astute reflection of students’ expectation for teachers, the authority figure in the classroom, The Asian focuses on the care, nurture and benevolence (or their absence) of the person in authority while the western tends to focus on the restriction, limitation and dependence of the person over which the authority is exercised. Jones (1995) also cautioned that it should not be assumed that ‘autonomy is an interculturally valid objectives’, implying any establishment for fostering autonomy should be adjusted to its own cultural and educational setting rather than being fixed. 7.

(17) To examine whether this particular cultural distinction is a hindrance to autonomy, (Ho & Crookall, 1995) brought a large-scale simulation in a Chinese classroom setting.. In this. experiment, they found the learners’ progress in language competence as well as cooperation with peers; moreover, it was testified that through clear instruction and gradual practice Chinese students can also walk on the path towards being autonomous. Littlewood (1999) further investigated the features of autonomy that might be most deeply-seated in East Asia traditions and their assistance in language learning.. In his article,. he proposes an insightful distinction between two types of autonomy—proactive autonomy and reactive autonomy.. The former is usually the mode recognized in western culture, with. which learners are expected to ‘affirm their individuality and set up directions’ themselves. On the contrary, the latter is the mode which ‘once a direction has been initiated, enables learners to organize their resources autonomously in order to reach their goal’ (ibid: p.75). In order to discover a more suitable implementation of autonomous learning in East Asian context, he created a questionnaire that based on several hypotheses and predictions which are widely believed to be shared by learners in East Asia.. The results showed that those. generalizations are not always true and sometimes even contradictory to what is expected, and that a wide range of individual differences exist as well.. He then concluded that educators. should consider the ‘collective structure of autonomy’, adjust in-class learning pattern for culturally-specific traits and can thus successfully develop learner autonomy.. 2.1.2 Approaches to Foster Learner Autonomy In the previous section, autonomy is defined as ‘the ability to take control of one’s own learning’, which is a characteristic of the learner, as in contrast to autonomous learning, a certain form of learning setting (Phil Benson, 2001).. Although some see autonomy as an. attribute of the learner that may not be ‘taught’ or ‘learned’, others consider it can be 8.

(18) ‘fostered’.. Nunan (1997) argues that every learners can take charge of their own learning; it. is just a matter of different degrees.. Benson (op. cit.) further categorizes educational. practices planned to promote autonomy into six main types: Resource-based approaches, technology-based approaches, learner-based approaches, classroom-based approaches, curriculum-based approaches, and teacher-based approaches. In resource-based approaches, it is the utilization of learning materials that are emphasized. Resource-based learning empowers learners to make their learning plans, to select learning materials, and to evaluate their learning achievement independently. the most common manifestation of these approaches is self-access centers.. One of. Self-access. centers, which appear in a variety of forms according to diversity of cultural and educational environments, can play either a central, equal or peripheral part along with formal classroom instruction (Little, 1997).. Littlejohn (1997) also redefines the function of self-access work:. it must help transform the learner from a passive material consumer to a proactive producer to make best use of it.. Other resource-based approaches like self-instruction and distance. learning are beneficial to some highly-motivated learners as well (Rowsell & Libben, 1994). However, the effectiveness of these approaches are seldom investigated.. Indeed, it seems. that the success of resources-based approaches lies in the presumption that ‘the learner already possesses some of the skills associated with autonomy’ (Phil Benson, 2001). Technology-based approaches share many features with resourced-based approaches, but diverge their focus on the technologies learners use to interact with those resources.. Much. of the attention nowadays is devoted to computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and the Internet.. At the initial development of CALL, it primarily serves as a tutor for individuals,. yet later evolves as a tool for integration of language skills for its interactive elements.. The. Internet is powerful in supplying learner with limitless, or at least abundant sources of authentic materials.. The value of the technology-based approaches, as that in resource-based 9.

(19) ones, is that learners are provided with opportunities to direct their own learning.. But still,. those benefits can only be realized when the learner has already owned a certain degree of autonomy. The third type of approaches Benson proposes is learner-based approaches, which put in central place ‘the production of behavioral and psychological changes that will enable learners to take greater control over their learning’ (p.142).. The origin of these approaches. came from the idea of learning strategies, strategy training, and learner development. relationship among use of strategy and learner autonomy is complicated.. The. Cohen (1998). maintained that explicit teaching of strategy use can help learners search for what suits them best and succeed in pursuing better language performance, and during this process, learner autonomy is thus encouraged.. In effect, explicit strategy instruction proves to be effective in. improving learners’ language performance; nevertheless, rare research has demonstrated evidence in its profound influence on them for becoming more autonomous. Next come the other three approaches that attend to the decision-making for students within conventional instructional settings: classroom-based approaches, curriculum-based approaches, and teacher-based approaches.. All of these are presumed to operate in. environments where students support or collaborate with others. To foster autonomy by classroom-based approaches, learners are given control over classroom activities.. In some experiments where learners had a chance to plan or direct their. in-class learning procedures and content collaboratively, there was a significant increase in their motivation for language learning (Assinder, 1991; Cotterall, 2000).. In addition to. designing classroom learning, self-assessment, which involves reflection on goal-setting, goal-achieving and criteria for assessment, is also critical.. Accounts of several studies reveal. that learners are able to evaluate their own language proficiency under the condition of sufficient training or support from teachers.. In the same way, learners may become capable 10.

(20) to discover appropriate methods and materials for their learning through classroom-base approaches, but this is also confined to the extent to which the content has been predetermined. The fifth type to develop learner autonomy is curriculum-based approaches.. Unlike. classroom-based approaches, curriculum-based approaches expand learners’ control from in-class learning to a widespread arrangement of the holistic curriculum.. To illustrate, the. process syllabus, in which learners can determine what to learn and how they proceed learning accompanying the negotiation with and the scaffolding from instructors (Breen & Littlejohn, 2000), embodies these approaches.. The strong and weak versions of the process. syllabus are distinguished by a different level of the presupposition of curriculum content: the former has no presumed curricular content or method, while the latter are often presented in the form of group projects.. The appraisal of the success of curriculum-based approaches. usually depends on whether they can endure. well-established.. So far there exist few examples. Of these successful cases, once again, the role of the teacher is definitely. not ignorable. Last come teacher-based approaches, which underscore the significance of the professional development of teachers and the training of teachers.. To promote learner. autonomy, Voller (1997) listed three basic teacher roles—facilitator, counsellor, and resource. He states that those roles should be able to support learners technically (e.g. helping learners to plan, implement, and evaluate their own learning) and psycho-socially (e.g. motivating them and raising their awareness with each teacher’s uniqueness).. Apart from teacher role,. Thavenius (1999) asserts that teacher autonomy is a prerequisite in order to foster learner autonomy because ‘it is not just a matter of changing teaching techniques; it is a matter of changing teacher personality’. cultural contexts in question.. Teachers must reflect on their teaching under social and Teacher-based approaches to foster learner autonomy involves 11.

(21) the interaction among the teacher, the learner and the whole learning environment, which makes the learning situation and causes for outcomes rather complex.. So far little research. has conducted to discover its effectiveness.. 2.1.3 Empirical Studies on Learner Autonomy and Language Gains From previous review we learn that learner autonomy should not be seen as a single method, but rather an ultimate goal to strive for (Wenden, 1987) through environments in which learners can practice learner autonomy or at least trained to practice it.. In the. meantime, this educational goal is not likely to be accomplished by a single approach. Learner autonomy may be most successfully fostered by ‘a combination of different approaches’ (Phil Benson, 2001).. To date, most of the empirical studies are concerned with. learner motivation increase (Assinder, 1991; Cotterall, 2000), use of materials or resources (Little, 1997; Nunan, 1997; Ryan, 1997), learner-learner interdependence (Kessler & Bikowski, 2010) or teacher-learner relation/collaboration (Cotterall, 1995; Dam, 2011; Little, 1995) in varied learning settings.. Nonetheless, in the framework of language learning and. teaching, the acquisition of language knowledge or the performance of language skills are at the core of this research area, but related studies are insufficient to offer strong evidence. Existent empirical studies that concern autonomy and specific language skills includes listening (Kemp, 2010; Mideros & Carter, 2014), speaking (Cotterall, 2000; Gao, 2009), reading (Cotterall, 2000), and writing (Sullivan & Lindgren, 2002). Lee (1998) presented a rather comprehensive article that contains discussion about several key themes.. A group of Hong Kong college students participated in a course that. aimed to nurse their ability to self-organize their own learning.. The results showed that it. was the more enthusiastic learners that considered themselves making progress.. According. to the reports collected from the students and teachers and some limitations he noted, he 12.

(22) proposed the following implications: learners would become more autonomous through a systematic training; teachers’ guidance plays an essential part and should be stressed; adequate supply of authentic materials would enable learners to exercise genuinely with the target language; and lastly cooperative learning would provide a more friendly environment for self-directing learning.. In brief, there are a number of factors that are interdependent in. the process of helping learners to stay on the path of learning independently of teachers. Owing to the somewhat disappointing reactions from the participants in Lee’s study, he underscored the importance of supportive systems as a requisite in fostering autonomy.. To. respond to the call from Richard, Cotterall (2000) and Dam (2011) both proposed the principles of establishing an autonomous learning classroom based on their practical experiences. Cotterall (2000) described what the principles for planning an autonomous language learning program are and how the practice of these influenced on learner learning experiences and language competency.. The principles include that 1) the goals are. determined by students, 2) students are acquainted with a basic language learning theory, 3) course tasks imitate real-world situation, 4) discussion and exercise about strategy use are desirable, and 5) reflection on learning has to be promoted.. A more recent study by Dam. (2011) examines the principles, practices and results in primary and secondary school contexts.. In addition to unambiguous rules for students, a focus shifted from teaching to. learning, genuineness of language use, and significance of assessment, Dam emphasized that the existence of choice ‘motivates’ learners, ‘requires reflection’, ‘heightens awareness of learning’, have learners ‘feel responsible’, and support ‘self-esteem’ (p.43).. More examples. of positive results can also be seen in his and his co-researcher’s previous studies (Dam, 2006; Dam & Legenhausen, 2010; Legenhausen, 2001).. Through questionnaires, interviews and. discussion with teachers, Humphreys & Wyatt’s study (2013) also approved of these generally shared conceptions: that the opportunity for learners to make their own choice on 13.

(23) goal-setting and activities, to collect their retrospective thoughts on learning process.. The. idea they raised—guided autonomy—also highlights teachers’ role to equip learners with the skills to take charge as well as their responsibility to provide authentic language use that simulate real-life tasks. The success of autonomous learning from earlier empirical articles was mostly determined by relatively subjective perception of learners or instructors towards language learning, but in the last decade the tendency has altered to the research with more focuses on specific language communicative skills.. A qualitative study by Sullivan and Lindgren (2002). investigated the effects of self-evaluation and reflection on writing skills in an EFL context. Four Swedish adult students were provided with a computer software package that helps to the writers to trace and further analyze the development and revision during their writing process.. This served as a reference for the participants, assisting them to monitor their. writing habits and strategies.. All of the participants agreed that the application of such a. technology did lead them to be more autonomous. With regard to speaking, a study by Gao’s (2008) may provide us an insight.. In his. research, the operation of ‘English Corner’, a social supporting community in which Chinese learners of different backgrounds gathered and volunteered to meet regularly and practice spoken English, and its impact, were analyzed.. Opinions from a group of at least fifty. learners’ towards this kind of English club was collected from their natural interaction and response posts on an online forum, lasting more than half a year.. The results showed that. whether the central organizers or the follower members both found a sense of self-confidence for being in such a friendly, encouraging environment where passionate language users met. While their perception of identities experienced some positive changes, autonomous learning was fostered and along the process as well.. The researcher suggested that this affirmative. feedback may be a momentum that inspires language teachers to attempt incorporation of 14.

(24) such extracurricular activities into formal school course. As for listening, Kemp (2009) presented how keeping the listening log strengthened students’ motivation, increased their involvement and reflection of listening exercises, and thus promoted their awareness of applying learning skills.. Since listening is an active. mental activity which entails consciousness and engagement (Rost, 2011), the participants, tertiary students with mixed abilities, were asked to keep their listening experiences in the log with a minimum of five or six entries every week for two months. the date, source, content and reflection of the listening activity.. Each entry must contain. From such a process,. students took control over the materials according to their personal interest or learning styles and thus motivation was increased.. During every meeting session, they discussed and. shared their listening strategies or gaining.. The teacher serves as a facilitator, examining the. logs regularly and giving feedback and suggestions.. The results showed that students did. become more engaged along the process, acquire linguistic knowledge, and are more aware of their improvement.. Despite that there were some negative response to these activities such. as student complaint about time consumption as well as some demand on the instructor like technique required to train learners to notice seeming unimportant details, it is proved that keeping listening log is beneficial for learners to perceive their listening advance and for teachers to offer individualized advice.. Learners can self-regulate the procedure by planning,. monitoring and evaluating their learning process. Another research project concerning listening instruction conducted by Mideros and Carter (2011) sought for what practices promote the development in listening skill and what involves learners to take initiative when learners regard autonomy as ‘socially oriented agency’ (Toohey & Norton, 2003) in an advanced listening course for a group of sixty Spanish majors in Caribe (Spanish as a L2).. Students searched suitable audiovisual. materials of their own interest, posted them and shared the reasons why they recommended on 15.

(25) online forum, and were encouraged to give response to others’ posts.. Data was collected. through learner evaluation at the end of semester, in-depth retrospective interviews, observation and field notes from the teaching assistants and the teacher-researcher.. Their. study indicates that the process-oriented approach to listening, collaborative context and interdependence on peers can: 1) lower the anxiety and timidity of some learners, 2) increase the amount of their listening exercises both in class and out of class, and 3) more importantly, improve learners’ proficiency along with the speaking and interactive skills.. Among all the. positive feedback, one small defect is that there was still a small but noticeable minority of learners who resisted the mode of collaboration mainly because they did not get involved in the decision of how the assessment could be executed—for which their performance needed to depend on others.. The research project by Mideros and Carter suggested that the rejection. of these students may be resulted from the exam-dominated educational atmosphere at the primary and secondary education levels.. This may shed some light that learner autonomy. should be fostered as early as in middle school.. 2.1.4 Why Autonomous Listening and What Makes Autonomous Listening? According to Rost (2011, p. 200), autonomous listening is ‘a self-directed listening activity in which learners choose what to listen to, seek feedback on their comprehension, respond in ways they choose, and monitor their own progress’, and exercise types such as intensive, extensive, selective, interactive listening and so on can all be included.. Learners. are empowered to decide their learning resources, arrange learning missions at will, and evaluate their achievement (ibid.).. Accompanied with the modern multimedia learning. environments, autonomous listening can encompass the key elements and major advantages in extensive listening and strategic listening. Strategy-based instruction eases the mental pressure of language learners and makes 16.

(26) genuine listening texts more understandable.. Metacognitive strategies allow beginners to. have easier access to authentic resources (Field, 2000; Ryan, 1997; Vandergrift, 1999), making the learning process more meaningful and stimulating (Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010).. Micro-listening exercises could arm learners with listening skills that a native. speaker is supposed to own and acquaint them with the properties of natural spoken language (Field, 1998).. Some may question the appropriateness and legitimacy of the timing at which. learners should be exposed to ungraded materials when considering the premise they are more likely to feel threatened rather than motivated.. Indeed, beginners who approach these. materials ‘rapid develop confidence in the face of the target language’ in the affective domain. (Little, 1997). Despite the possibility of techniques and strategies being taught was. challenged (Ridgway, 2000), Field (2000) argued that ‘a listener who has difficulties in identifying words in connected speech has no key at all to unlock the text, no matter how stimulating its content’, underlining the prominence of strategic approaches. By the same token, extensive listening facilitates listening comprehension capability through drawing support from authentic materials, but distinguishes itself from strategic listening with a focal point on perception (a lower-level linguistic process) rather than inference.. Renandya and Farrell (2010) maintained that ‘an overemphasis on strategy. training may undermine the value of practice,’ which is indispensable for obtaining ‘procedural knowledge’ like listening ability.. Because of the transient nature of listening. and constraints of human working memory, such an input-based approach offers the opportunities to automatize listening skills. have been suggested.. Two of the explanations for why EL may help. Firstly the importance of laying equal stress on written and. non-written language is widely acknowledged and the understanding of intonation, through the employment of EL, should ‘alleviate the burden of learning of learning English’ since less reliance on the written language is required (Stephens, 2011). 17. Secondly, by means of.

(27) teacher guidance along with a bottom-up approach, EL can compel learners to ‘notice’ the inconsistency between the original content and the regenerated one, spotting their own particular obstacles and therefore to take appropriate steps to solve them (Wilson, 2003). Even though the time consumption committed to EL may be considerable, its value should not hence be eliminated. To summarize, both strategic listening and extensive listening have its own theoretical foundations to be established, and Siegel (2011) also back up this point when he made a pertinent remark that ‘strategy training furnishes students with procedures; EL supplies chances to apply them’ (p.320).. Then here comes an appeal for autonomous listening.. Autonomous listening is a potential manifestation of combining the merits of the two prominent listening instruction, and could ensure the development of learners’ listening competence cognitively, meta-cognitively and more importantly, socio-affectively. Other than early concept of learning ‘independently’, learner autonomy has now ingested a connotation of learning ‘interdependently’ (Benson, 2001: 14).. As what has been. discussed in the previous sections, it is now a universal phenomenon or even almost obligatory to exert autonomy by means of multimedia and the Internet, which has contributed to the revolution of language methodologies to a great degree.. One of the most distinct. plusses of multimedia systems is that such applications transmit both verbal and non-verbal input, i.e. text, image and sound.. The usage of multimedia do assist the second language. acquisition for its mixed modes of delivery (Mayer, 2002).. Simply during 2001 to 2005. there had been nearly sixty empirical articles concerning the application of CALL on the four communicative skills (Stockwell, 2007), and some positive, hard evidence that showed the integration of visual and aural input helps listening comprehension can be found as well (Cross, 2011a; Gruba, 2004; Markham, Peter, & McCarthy, 2001). In addition, the Internet even grants unrivaled power to CALL with a view to develop 18.

(28) autonomy.. Some computer programs or systems make great medium for interaction, either. human-to-human or human-to-device.. Warschauer, Turbee, and Roberts (1996) suggested. that computer networks has the prospect to foster autonomy since students were able to take initiative, and therefore established a social collaborative atmosphere among them and weakened the superior role of the teacher, which has been regarded normal.. Kessler and. Bikowski (2010) demonstrated that on account of an online platform, language learners collected the information for the final product of their assignments, accomplished these with peers, and appraised their own performance.. A dynamic for collaboration and social support. was shaped in the learning environment.. 2.2 Listening Comprehension 2.2.1 Cognitive Listening Processes Three main listening theories—Communication Theory (CT), Information Processing (IP), and Social Constructivism—serve as the momentum and have launched related investigation in this field (Lynch, 2009) .. Earlier theory Communication Theory (Shannon. & Weaver, 1971) originated from mechanical engineering and aimed to improve the efficiency of apparatus for receiving, transferring and analyzing the acoustic signals.. Then. Information Processing revolved the matters around human cognitive ability and constraints to take up the oral information.. A typical example is Anderson’s (1985) three-stage. framework that consists of perception, parsing and utilization, paralleling the processing of instruments in CT.. The last theory Social Constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978)highlights the. influence of the interaction between the individual and the social context, along with extended branches like sociocognitive and sociocultural perspectives. In the literature of listening, processing from a cognitive perspective is most widely discussed and explored listening.. It should be the ‘process’ rather than the ‘product’ of 19.

(29) listening being appreciated in instruction because there is little message from which the latter can make teachers understand learners’ problem and offer aids (Field, 2007; Vandergrift, 2004).. The question-answer pattern that stresses mainly the comprehension grades rather. than the mental process of students has been re-examined.. Some key concepts of the. nature of listening and listening comprehension includes: 1) top-down and bottom-up and 2) metacognition and strategy. The presence of the terms ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ first came in Anderson and Lynch’s (1988) book, where the former is described as apprehending spoken language ‘by working through a serious of stages, starting with individual sounds and gradually build up to an understanding of the whole message’ while the latter means ‘using global expectations about what someone is about to say to help you build up your comprehension of their message.’. In other words bottom-up processing refers to meaning establishment through the. text and language knowledge, which usually entails the accumulation of lower level linguistic units to form higher level ones, like sounds to words; chunks to sentences; utterances to discourses, etc.. Top-down processing, on the contrary, refers to the application of the. contextual cues and/or prior knowledge to construct the message intended to be conveyed. The two terms are sometimes presented in different ways, but the essence of them does not vary tremendously.. Bottom-up processing is also called as the linguistic processing. (Rost, 2011), or the process of ‘decoding’ (Richards, 1988; Vandergrift, 2004).. To. understand spoken language from the raw data, listeners need to accomplish a complex task that entails the following: attention of sounds, then detection and segmentation of words and chunks, capitalization on prosody unique to the target language, adoption of grammar knowledge and employment of non-linguistic hints like gestures or other visual information (Rost, 2011).. In other words this is operated in a ‘data-driven’ (Field, 1999) manner.. the center of exercises that train students bottom-up skills is the ability of ‘recognition’ 20. At.

(30) (Richards, 1988; Lynch, 2009).. Identifying particular items in an utterance, matching the. sound with its textual representation, dictation, choosing the correct stress or intonation pattern are all typical classroom activities of this category. Top-down processing is also referred to the semantic processing and pragmatic processing (Rost, 2011), or simply interpretation (Lynch, 2009).. Since it will never be. sufficient to understand any form of language through pure bottom-up processing, top-down processing also plays a crucial role in listening.. One of the factors that affect interpretation. is context, which means whether the listener has a clear picture of the interlocutors, the theme, and the circumstances and so on.. Another possible factor is schema, which is ‘a mental. framework of knowledge and experience’ that enable us to relate concepts in mind to references in the real world (Anderson & Lynch, 1988).. Or according to Rost (2011),. schema entails personal existent intellectual knowledge and sociocultural knowledge.. A. third element that influences interpretation is pragmatic knowledge; that is the listener’s ability to predict speaker’s purpose, develop extended meaning, and express or respond appropriately (Rost, 2011). 1999) approach.. Top-down processing is therefore a ‘knowledge-driven’ (Field,. The principle for training students to operate in top-down manner values. the ability of ‘inference’ (Richards, 1990).. Exercises like choosing the best response to a. statement or question, or identifying true or false statement in a dialogue are examples of this approach. What is believed of the two processes is that the two approaches are complementary and of complex interaction, and that every listener operates with both processes (Anderson & Lynch, 1988; Field, 1999; Rost, 2011; Vandergrift & Goh, 2012).. However, there is no. convinced evidence show that which processing marks a prominent position in listeners’ mind. For example, Field (2004) in his study found that learners would replace the original word in the text with a word that was considered more logical only in a semantically constrained 21.

(31) sentence, which would partially prove a top-down tactics over a bottom-up one.. Still, there. is no conclusive proof. The ambiguity of which processing matters more also leads to divergent opinions in what causes listening problems as well as disputes over what should be taught as the main portion in an L2 listening classroom.. The proponents who favor top-down skills illustrate. the benefits of strategies or metacognition.. Metacognition was initially defined by Flavell. (1976) as ‘active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes in relation to the cognitive objects or data on which they bear, usually in the service of some concrete goal or objective’.. Since listening comprehension is one of the goals for learners,. several articles were delivered either to promote this metacognitive approach (Field, 1998; Cross, 2011b), or to affirm positive effects from the instruction of metacognitive strategies (Goh & Taib, 2006; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010). On the other hand, the exponents of bottom-up skills emphasizes the primacy of linguistic acuity like speech perception or word recognition, which usually involves the phonology, lexis and syntax of the target language.. Field (1999) claimed that ‘the more. flawed the bottom-up information, the more we [listeners] draw upon cues from top-down sources’, highlighting the prominence of bottom-up since top-down is seen as a compensatory strategy.. To prepare learners for correct or at least satisfactory perceptual listening ability,. practice- and input-based listening pedagogy is commonly endorsed.. Narrow listening. (Dupuy, 1999; Krashen, 1996; Rodrigo, 2003), discovery listening (Wilson, 2003), and more dominantly extensive listening (Chang, 2009, 2011; Chang & Millett, 2013; Holden III; Reinders & Cho, 2010; Verdugo & Belmonte, 2007) are all examination studies in favor of bottom-up skills.. 2.2.2 Cognitive Listening Difficulties in One-way Communication 22.

(32) What makes listening particularly difficult? An understanding of the features of spoken English is requisite.. Many commentators have acknowledged several characteristics of. spoken language that hinder their understanding.. These includes clustering, redundancy,. reduced forms, performance variables, phonological adjustment, colloquial usage, rate of delivery, prosodic features (stress, rhythm and intonation), and interaction (Dunkel, 1991; Field, 2003; Richards, 1983; Ur, 1984).. Lynch (2009) listed the most general characteristics. of spoken English with examples (see Table 2.1).. He further stated that some of them could. act as facilitative elements such as more repetition or shorter utterance, while others of them might hinder comprehension, like implicit reference and ellipsis.. When it comes to. face-to-face negotiation, non-verbal communication like body language and facial expressions also helps (op. cit.).. Table 2.1 Features of Spoken English (Adapted from Lynch, 2009) Grammar. Vocabulary. Information. l. Chaining, rather than subordination. l. Ellipsis (omission). l. Shorter utterance, rather than long speaking turns. l. Unfinished utterance, false starts. l. General turns rather than specific turns. l. Fillers and hesitation markers. l. Deixis (referring things in context). l. Lexical chunks (prefabricated phrases). l. Less explicit or vaguer language. l. Looser information structure. l. More redundancy and repetition. 23.

(33) Goh (2000) delivered a report on the cognitive difficulties of learners’ listening comprehension, and these difficulties were also analyzed in the framework of language comprehension proposed by Anderson (1995), a three-stage model comprising of ‘perception’, ‘parsing’, and ‘utilization’. Data was elicited based on self-reports from learners’ diaries, interviews with the participants and instant retrospective protocol after listening.. Ten. problems she identified were shown in Table 2.2, with the top five followed by frequency. It was also discovered that despite some similarities of both better and weaker learners in the difficulties they encountered, less proficient learners experienced more low level processing problems.. She affirmed the urgency of more research to address the during-listening. problems.. Table 2.2 Problems Related to Different Phases of Listening Comprehension Perception. Parsing. l. Do not recognized words they know (22). l. Neglect the next part when thinking about meaning (17). l. Cannot chunk streams of speech. l. Miss the beginning of texts. l. Concentrate too hard or unable to concentrate. l. Quickly forget what is heard (26). l. Unable to form a mental representation from words heard (11). l. Do not understand subsequent parts of input because earlier problems. Utilization. l. Understand words but not the intended message (21). l. Confused about the key ideas in the message. 24.

(34) Some of the problems also occurred in others’ research.. Zeng (2007, cited from. Renandya and Farrell, 2010) also named the factors that impede listening comprehension: speaking rate, distraction, unable to recognize the words they knew, new vocabulary, missing subsequent input and so on, among which the perceptual and parsing difficulties are once more presented.. Underwood (1989) in his book also mentioned lack of the control over the. speed, limited vocabulary, inability to concentrate, and problems of interpretation regarding problems sources. According to Graham’s (2006) survey from nearly six hundred participants, secondary school students considered listening comprehension was the least successful language skill in their language learning. The major problems are students’ inability to process rapid speed of the spoken text, to distinguish individual words in the continuous speech and to understand the meaning of the words they have recognized.. In profound, semi-structure interviews, the. weaker listeners ascribed their trouble to their inherent incompetence and the great difficulty of the learning tasks and the content of listening materials, while better listeners ascribed their achievement to their effort and competence.. All of the participants, in fact, did not comment. any impressive assistance from strategies taught.. The writers suggest that the reshaping the. learners’ negative thoughts with themselves and with learning to listen might be one of the priority of teachers.. It is inferred so because learners may still be discouraged without a. sense that change and improvement is possible, even by adopting more appropriate strategies. Practice, which is sufficient to improve students’ listening skills, does not address the issue that learners need to feel a sense of control over their listening. Despite top-down approaches attempt to smooth the listeners’ struggle over listening by devoting a great proportion of time to metacognitive strategies, it seems unquestionable that many of the fundamental problems are rooted in bottom-up processing.. Tsui and Fullilove. (1998) analyzed the performance of approximately 20,000 test takers in a public, national 25.

(35) listening examination managed by Hong Kong Examination Authority.. The outcomes. showed that most of those who got correct answer to ‘non-matching’ test items were more proficient listeners, suggesting that compared to ‘top-down’ process, ‘bottom-up’ process is a stronger indicator of distinguishing the listening ability.. Field (2003) also heightens the. importance of understanding the speech per se, ‘a physical phenomenon—with what English sounds like to the non-native listeners and with the features which cause obstacles to understanding’.. At the same time, Wilson (2003) asserts that the real issue falls on ‘whether. there might be a more direct way of actually improving listening ability’.. The ‘discovery. approaches’ he proposed attempts to urge students to pinpoint their specific problems, to figure out the sources of the problems, and to weigh the seriousness of these sources that impeded their listening comprehension.. In other words, how to improve learner’s bottom-up,. perceptual processing with learner-centeredness is of great significance.. 2.2.3 Current Common Listening Instruction The importance of listening in language learning can hardly be overestimated (H. D. Brown, 2001; Field, 2003; Rost, 2011; Vandergrift, 2007) .. However, it has gone nearly. under-researched to the extent that it has acted almost like a supporting role compared to reading and writing in the realm of language learning.. Holding divergent opinions and. knowledge about the differences of the definition of listening and central or specific factors that may affect listening comprehension, researchers and educators develop preferred teaching methodologies for second language listening on their own.. Practical instructional designs. include intensive, selective, interactive, extensive, responsive and autonomous listening (Rost, 2011) with regard to either teaching listening subskills or listening comprehension as a whole. Nevertheless, during the last decades the major empirical studies concerning the approaches to teaching listening are strategy-based listening and extensive listening. 26.

(36) 2.2.3.1 Strategic listening Strategic listening here is referred to the type of listening lessons that are centered on the teaching and practicing of listening skills and related metacognitive strategies.. According to. Field (1998), learners need to get accustomed to the genuine communicative situations where ‘much of the language is beyond their current state of knowledge’, and strategies, which are complementary in nature, came to assistance thereafter.. Field (1998) assumed the listening. subskills can be “taught” respectively instead of merely being “practiced”.. Along with the. more frequent use of authentic materials (for their ability to demonstrate the features of spoken language compared with graded materials), adjusting the learning task is imperative (Anderson & Lynch, 1988), and in the case for less proficient learners, simplifying it. Vandergrift (1999) justified the systematic training of the three metacognitive processes, i.e. planning, monitoring and evaluating, and further supported the structure by proposing a five-phase listening pedagogical cycle (Vandergrift, 2004), presented in Table 2.3. Based on Field (2001) and Vandergrift (2003), the purpose for this model is to help learners ‘use what they know to fill gaps in their understanding’.. Field reasoned this. approach can modify listeners’ tendency in comprehending texts.. For listeners who are. ‘risk-takers’, they will be directed to testify their propositions on account of more cautious, prudent analysis on the text itself, while for listeners who are ‘risk-avoiders’, they will be encouraged to apply their prior knowledge to make sensible guess so as to reach the message more efficiently.. Once learners’ listening competence grows, the use of strategies would. become less important (Field, 1998). Goh and Taib (2006) completed a study concerning the effect of metacognitive instruction which was process-based in listening.. Before taking the public, annual listening. examination, a small number of primary school pupils participated in an eight-week program that included three phases: listen and answer; individual reflection; self-report and group 27.

(37) discussion.. All the young learners reported that they progressed in dealing with the listening. process and that the use of strategy strengthened their confidence.. Two sets of test scores. also demonstrated their improvement in listening performance, especially for the less-skilled listeners.. The authors thus suggested that a well-designed listening course on metacognitive. instruction, comprising of a range of activities like learner discussion, teacher modelling and perceptual exercises, seemed to lend itself to the success of learners’ listening comprehension. This model in Table 2.3 was later implemented in Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari’s (2010) research to explore the impact of a 13-week process-based methodology in teaching listening. The experimental group followed the pedagogical model mentioned above while the control group follow the same procedure but without the teacher’s leading students to engage in the direct discussion on strategy use.. Data was elicited from the Metacognitive Awareness. Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), listening placement tests, and transcripts from retrospective protocols.. The findings revealed that 1) learners become more aware of. metacognitive processing, 2) the experimental group significantly outdid the control group in listening comprehension tests, and 3) it was the poorer listeners that gained the most.. These. implied strategic listening can ‘make authentic texts more accessible’ for learners (ibid.) but a more text-driven element and a diversity of listening tasks should be injected into the model. Both of the two studies revealed positive results for teaching metacognitive strategies; nevertheless, it is not a cure-all.. Vandergrift (2004) pointed out it would be beneficial for. more proficient learners probably when encountering a demanding text or little known topics. Likewise, Cross’s (2011b) study showed partial support to this argument.. In his article,. three quarters of weaker listeners made progress in their listening comprehension, yet only a quarter of the better ones did so as a contrast.. He then contended that even regular. metacognitive instruction may work mainly in favor of weaker listeners.. 28.

(38) Table 2.3 Listening Instruction Stages and Related Metacognitive Strategies Stage of Listening Instruction. Metacognitive Strategies. Planning/Predicting stage 1. Once students know topic and text type, they. 1. Planning and directed. predict types of information and possible words they. attention. may hear. First verification stage 2. Students verify initial hypotheses, correct as. 2. Monitoring. required, and note additional information understood. 3. Students compare what they have written with. 3. Monitoring, planning,. peers, modify as required, establish what needs. and selective attention. resolution and decided on details that still need special attention. Second verification stage 4. Students verify points of disagreement, make. 4. Monitoring and. corrections, and write down additional details. problem solving. understood. 5. Class discussion in which all contribute to. 5. Monitoring and. reconstruction of the text’s main points and most. evaluation. pertinent details, interspersed with reflections on how students arrived at the meaning of certain words or parts of the text. Final verification stage 6. Students listen for information that they could not. 29. 6. Selective attention and.