Chapter 5 Conclusion
In this chapter, summary of the results of the present study is first presented. The following is the pedagogical implications for classroom teachers. Last but not the least, limitations and directions are suggested for future study.
Summary of the Results
Based on the data analysis and the results of the statistical analyses, the major findings of the present research are presented as follows. First, the researcher was interested in looking into how Questions Before, Questions After, and Sandwich differ in affecting participants’ listening comprehension. Hypothesis 1 which generalized Sherman’s (1997) research speculated Sandwich procedures would excel Questions Before and Questions After. From the Two-Sample test analysis presented in Chapter 4, it clearly verified that Sandwich was the procedure yielding highest scores, followed by Questions Before and Questions After. And the differences between any two of them were manifested to be significant. In other words, Sandwich procedure advanced participants’ listening comprehension most compared with the other two procedures. This result agreed with Sherman’s (1991) findings and thereby Hypothesis 1 was confirmed. Given the fact that Sandwich was the best-performing procedures, it could be elucidated Sandwich tended to drive the listeners to listen in an all-around manner first. Having a rough picture of the text, listeners could further deepen their impression on the text by previewing the questions after listening. By contrast, regarding participants in Questions Before, they might search for the answers urgently right at the beginning, causing them unable to construct an overall
picture of the text from the listening. Since so, they might lose some essential information to write a more complete and correct answer.
Secondly, the researcher also aimed to investigate how participants of high, intermediate, and low proficiency level diversify in the performance of the listening test with different procedures. Hypothesis 2 was in accordance with Mueller’s (1980) assumption that previewing is relatively more influential on low-level participants whereas it exerts no effect on high-level ones. However, based on the study outcome, there was no interaction occurring between variables of procedures and levels. To be more specific, test procedures did not yield different outcome to different levels.
Hence, Hypothesis 2 was not supported. As the speculation provided in the discussion, participants’ levels were probably not heterogeneous enough. Although each level was proven statistically distinctive among one another, the sample selection was still not as wide as expected. In the present study, the involved participants included 121 English majors and 50 non-English majors. Compellingly grouping them into three levels based on their TOEFL risked the possibility that low level participants were actually not real low at all. As a result, the expectation of different efficacy to different levels brought by the three procedures was not demonstrated.
The third research question was concerned with how the effects of global questions, local questions, and inferential questions differ with different procedures.
Hypothesis 3 was roughly based on Shohamy and Inbar’s (1991) assumption which argues comprehending global questions is more challenging than local questions and Nunan’s (2002) assertion that inferential questions pose a tough task to students.
Hence, it predicted that previewing global questions and inferential questions would be relatively more meaningful than local questions. Nevertheless, the result indicated that there was no statistically significant interaction between procedures and question types. That’s to say, the effects of different question types did not differ with the three
procedures. Although the significant interaction was not found, there was a tendency that the scores of global questions were much higher in Questions Before and Sandwich. Besides, the outcome also showed that global questions were relatively simpler, followed by local questions and inferential questions. It seemed to signify that the simpler the question types were, the more meaningful the previewing would be. The local and inferential questions, especially the latter ones, were relatively harder so that the effect of previewing was abated. Consequently, Hypothesis 3 was not supported, and neither was Shohamy and Inbar’s (1991) argument. As this was only a preliminary analysis, more research needed to be done in this area.
The final research question inquired what participants feel and think about Questions Before, Questions After, and Sandwich. Due to the fact that participants expressed the most positive attitude toward Questions Before in both of Sherman’s (1997) and Shih’s (2004) questionnaires, Hypothesis 4 also expected that participants would most favor Questions Before. However, the questionnaire result showed the surprising outcome, in which the overwhelmingly high percentage of participants reported they preferred Sandwich. This could be explained by the fact that most of participants were English majors whose proficiency and confidence were higher than the ordinary. They did not have to depend on previewing questions at the very beginning to strengthen their sense of security. They preferred listening to the text in an overall manner and then previewed the questions which were predicted to further heighten their comprehension. In addition to the item of “preference,” Sandwich was also the procedure which derived the most positive comment on the rest of items in the questionnaire. On the contrary, Questions After was the one which acquired most negative feedback. In some of the items like “anxiety” and “difficulty,” its percentage was incredibly high, which displayed participants’ detestation against Questions After.
Pedagogical Implications
In view of the significant effect of Sandwich procedure on listening
comprehension, teachers are suggested to incorporate it into listening training.
Doubtlessly, Questions Before and Questions After are still the procedures adopted by most of teachers. Yet, summing up the statistical result and questionnaire findings in the current study, Sandwich is a procedure worth recommending. Most of the teachers are aware that previewing questions could foster listeners’ listening comprehension by setting up a listening purpose (Brown and Yule, 1983; Buck, 1991), activating the relevant schemata (Boyle, 1984; Oxford, 1993; Van, 1997), enhancing top-down processing (Shohamy & Inbar 1991) and heightening listeners’ attention (Oxford, 1990; Scarcella and Oxford, 1992; Cohen, 1990; Mendelsohn, 1984). However, giving the previewing questions in the middle of the two hearings (Sandwich) seems to achieve better effect than granting them prior to the listening (Questions Before).
Better listening comprehension is not the sole advantage of Sandwich. From participants’ affective perspective, Sandwich is also a less anxiety-provoking procedure than Questions Before. Since listening has long been regarded as tension-stimulating activity, adopting Sandwich to train or test students would help reduce the possibility that tension degrades their performances. Given the fact that Sandwich is the procedure with most enhancement and least anxiety, the present study strongly urges teachers who used to adopt only Questions Before and Questions After to incorporate it in the listening class.
Another suggestion to make is that teachers may try to implement Sandwich or Questions Before first, especially for freshmen, who do not receive a particular listening training in their senior high school. If students are rather unaccustomed to listening, teachers may first introduce Questions Before since students are more familiar with it than with Sandwich. After they get on the track of listening training,
teachers may shift to Sandwich by postponing previewing questions until the first hearing. When doing so, teachers can inform students of the following preview in advance and encourage them to listen in an all-around manner first. In this way, students will not suffer from sudden withdrawal of questions and appear fairly nervous. When students develop more proficiency and confidence in listening, teachers may progress to Questions After. But it should be noted that Questions After is more suitable for proficient students. An overwhelmingly high number of participants in the present study have indicated that Questions After is a formidable task to handle, seeing it arduous and anxiety-provoking. Therefore, teachers had better not implement it to students right at the beginning. Employing Questions After should be the ultimate procedure rather than the initial one for listening training. After all, the aim of procedure manipulation is not to conquer students. Rather, it intends to vary the methods of listening training and equip students with the diversifying listening experiences. Most of all, it also attempts to promote students’ ability and confidence in the listening comprehension.
Furthermore, the study also reminds teachers that students are quite deficient in coping with inferential questions. As Nunan (1999; 2002) points out, inferential questions compel the learners to make extra associations and process the incoming text more deeply. It is the question type in which students are confronted with considerable difficulty. With a view to improving this situation, teachers may integrate the training with more inferential questions. If students feel that inferential questions are beyond their capability, teachers can conduct them with Sandwich procedure, which might slightly lessen the difficulty of inferential questions based on the study result.
Last, in accordance with the study, students are better in coping with number problems such as time and year but not necessarily when confronting with location. It
reminds teachers that they should no longer confine the training to numbers. In order to facilitate students to manage all kinds of local questions, teachers are supposed to give more weight to name and location training because they are also popular in question designs (Liang, 2005). While listening, teachers should tell students to pay attention not only to questions of “When” but also to questions of “Who” and
“Where.”
Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research
With the restriction of limited sources, the present study did not include sufficient number of non-English majors. Originally, there should be more non-English majors involved. Since the researcher recruited the participants on her own, it was unreachable to obtain the expected number of the participants. Some of participants promised to come but did not show up on the day of the test. If more non-English majors are included, the participants’ proficiency levels can be more distinctive. In this way, the interaction between procedures and levels probably can be shown. Regarding the suggestion for future study, it is advised that the sample collection should be further broadened. Despite the inclusion of more non-English majors, involving superior students who study in the graduate institute of English department is another possible way. By adding superior level or inviting more low level students to the present study, proficiency differences may hope to be more heterogeneous.
Another limitation lay in the questionnaire design. Since the researcher privately asked participants for feedback after the experiment, it was found that they often provided valuable comments. Thereby, the questionnaire should be re-designed to glean the qualitative data so that participants’ perspectives can be more profoundly probed into. Besides more deeply apprehending participants’ inner feelings,
qualitative data sometimes may help further clarify the intricate phenomenon derived from quantitative result. Consequently, it suggests that future study can add an area for free comments below each question of the questionnaire.
The final suggestion is to remind future study that the issue of the interaction between procedures and question types is a promising field, which is worth further researching. Although their significant relationship was not verified in the study, it could preliminarily tell that global questions were particularly meaningful to preview in Questions Before and Sandwich. The scores of inferential questions could be heightened to the same scores of local ones when implemented with Sandwich. Since this is just rudimentary result and this area of research has its potential, future study may replicate it or extends the line of research to make further verification.
