Listening skill teaching: Some pedagogical considerations Pedro Luis Luchini, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina

Mabel Arguello, Instituto Superior Josefina Contte, Argentina

1. Introduction

Keywords: Listening comprehension; Teacher training; Language awareness

The purpose of this teaching article is to explore those factors that seem to have a pedagogical effect on successful L2 listening comprehension. To do this, a small-scale listening comprehension project was carried out in 2006 with a group of forty student teachers--whose first language was Spanish--attending an English Language course at a Teacher Training Program, Corrientes, Argentina. In this project, data were drawn from students interviews and questionnaires before and after instruction which were, later on, critically analysed and interpreted. The results emerging from this project showed the importance and usefulness that should be given to the convergence of listening skill teaching with affective and environmental factors, pronunciation, and listening materials if L2 learners are meant to overcome recurrent difficulties in comprehending oral discourse. In the light of these findings, some future directions for research in this area were suggested.

Over the last two decades, it seems that listening skills teaching has been a neglected area in the English Language Teaching mainstream. In fact, there is a general belief that being able to speak, read, or write in a given L2 (second language) is a parameter to be able to claim that L2 learners are proficient in communicating in that language (Nunan, 1999). In view of this assumption, many L2 teachers have ignored the true importance that listening has as a source of oral input from which L2 learners can acquire the target language.

Oftentimes, in a regular L2 listening class students are made to listen to recorded material and then answer some questions about what they have heard. Unfortunately, this type of class does not aim at teaching listening skill but only at testing it (Hedge, 2005). This generalized disconcerting attitude on the part of many L2 teachers, through which they somehow underestimate the teaching of listening skill, affects their L2 learners communicative and linguistic competence.
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This paper will take the format of a report on the results obtained from a project carried out with a group of forty student teachers in Argentina enrolled in English Language I, a course taught in year one at a Teacher Training Program in Corrientes, Argentina. The teacher in charge of designing and implementing this project along with her supervisor wrote this report. The purpose of this paper will be to explore those factors that seem to have an effect on successful L2 listening comprehension. In the first section of this paper, the empirical background to the study will be presented which will partly help to explain the complex processes underlying listening comprehension. In the next sections, the participants, the context and the instruments of data collection will be described. Finally, after analysing and interpreting the findings obtained, some pedagogical suggestions will be given for the teaching of L2 listening skills. 2. Background

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

For the last few years, in the ELT literature, listening skill has been referred to as a skill taken for granted or overlooked (Hedge, 2005, p. 229). This view, which is still held by many authors and practitioners worldwide, has been fostered by methods and beliefs for teaching a foreign language which are chiefly based on the assumption that listening skill develops by simply exposing learners to the language, and by making them practise grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Indeed, Nunan (1999) sustains that, in second language learning, listening has been given relative importance for it has been subsumed to the speaking skill as a means to accomplish speaking.

Similarly, Anderson and Lynch (1988) consider listening as an overlooked skill by L1 users. These authors claim that L1 speakers do not fully realise the importance and usefulness of listening for attaining effective communication. These speakers are not aware of the complexity of the listening process and its contribution to the development of speaking skills both in L1 and L2. The act of listening plays a vital part in the life of a human being. Rivers and Temperley (1978), Oxford (1993), and Celce-Murcia (1995), among other researchers state that listening takes the greatest part of communication compared to the other three skills. In fact, 45% corresponds to listening, 30% to speaking, 16% to reading and 9% to writing (In Hedge, 2005). Although listening skill has been somewhat neglected in the field of SLA (second language acquisition) in many contexts, since the 1980s, there has been a growing concern for developing this ability. Browns research in the field of L1 (2000), for instance, showed that oracy should be developed to the same extent as literacy in schools. Research in both L1 acquisition and SLA has attached significant importance to listening in acquiring a given language. Research into L1 acquisition has proved that L1 speakers are listeners before

As much as listening plays a primary role in learning L1, so it does in learning an L2. Listening is present in two of the three basic conditions needed to acquire a L2. These conditions require, firstly, that the L2 learners be motivated to learn the L2. The second condition calls for the presence and intervention of a native speaker of the target language or a L2 teacher to provide learners with oral input and the necessary feed back to help them throughout the development of their L2 learning process. The third condition involves the number and type of classroom opportunities L2 learners are given to interact using the target language. This interaction between L2 learners and L2 native speakers or L2 teachers is referred to -in SLA research- as the linguistic environment (Rost, 2002, p. 90). That is, while interacting with proficient speakers of the target language, L2 learners can derive linguistic input that will eventually help them acquire the new language (Rost, 2002). In fact, there are two overlapping processes in L2 listening. On the one hand, L2 learners have to comprehend the input, that is, understand what is being said to them. On the other hand, learners should learn the L2 through the oral input (Rost, 2002). This theory partly belongs to Krashens input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985) where he postulates that learners acquire language by being exposed to comprehensible input which contains structures that are beyond L2 learners current level of competence.

they are speakers. Conversational skills like turn taking, paying attention to the listener and focussing the listeners attention on the on-going interaction are developed before L1 users can actually talk (Kaplan, 1969). Indeed, listening underlies the process of acquiring L1. Under normal circumstances, in their early stages of life, human beings exposed to their L1 learn to listen as the first step in their unconscious process of language acquisition.

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In addition to comprehensible input, affective factors like motivation, selfreliance and anxiety are closely related to language acquisition. Krashens affective filter hypothesis aims at explaining how affective factors can influence language acquisition (in Ellis, 1995). Likewise, Anderson and Lynch (1988) consider that learning a foreign language implies understanding it first. Thus, comprehensible input becomes a key point in the processes of learning a second language. However, they argue that the same input is unlikely to serve two purposes: 1) input to understand and 2) input to learn the L2.

Although Long (1985, 1996) partially agrees with Krashens theory, he admits the importance of context and modified input in making Krashens input comprehensible theory applicable. Indeed, Long extends Krashens theory by introducing the notion of interactive input (Ellis, 1995, p. 273). He emphasizes the importance of the modifications that the input undergoes in

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negotiating meaning when there is a problem of communication (Ellis, 1995). Longs theoretical position that both interaction and input play an important role in SLA is known as the Interaction Hypothesis. In reference to the vital role of interaction and input for the development of L2, Brown points out that: [...] In a radical departure from an old paradigm in which L2 classrooms might have been seen as contexts for practising grammatical structures and other language forms, conversation and other interactive communication are, according to Long, the basis for the development of linguistic rules (2000, p. 287)

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

The predominant type of listening activities which have traditionally been carried out in many L2 classrooms settings in Argentina consist of exposing learners to a variety of listening material recorded on audio-tape exclusively. After having listened to this taped material, L2 learners are made to answer a set of given questions which generally aim at checking understanding and at reconstructing what they have heard. Oftentimes, to the learners frustration, completing this type of listening activities casts the students in the role of eavesdroppers or over hearers(Nunan,1999, p. 205-215).

This connection between interaction and acquisition has also been supported by Swain and Lapkin (1998); Gass, Mackey, Pica, (1998); van Lier (1996), among others. In her Comprehensible Output Hypothesis, Swain (1985) argues that learners need the opportunity for meaningful use of their linguistic resources to achieve full grammatical competence. When learners experience communicative failure, she claims, they are pushed into making their output more precise, coherent, and appropriate (in Ellis, 1995).

As a consequence of becoming over hearers, these learners lack the opportunity to clear up doubts or ask for repetition of what they have not understood, things that they would probably and normally do if they were involved in a face-to-face conversation. This type of passive listening, in which students just listen to recorded material without having the opportunity of interchanging their roles with speakers is known as nonreciprocal listening in the ELT literature (Nunan, 1999). Anderson and Lynch (1988) as well as Nunan (1999) state that nonreciprocal listening encourages a passive characterisation of the listeners as they merely listen without providing their interlocutor with any kind of feed back. These authors believe in designing listening tasks in which L2 learners are made to perceive that being effective listeners will eventually lead them to become successful speakers.

Although non-reciprocal listening may impose some constraints on the integration of listening with speaking, this type of listening is widely used in many L2 classrooms (Nunan, 1999). Indeed, before this present project was implemented, non-reciprocal listening was the most widely used type of teaching technique in the context where this project was carried out. Unlike non-reciprocal listening, the reciprocal type of listening allows for the integration of listening with speaking. This kind of listening enables both speakers and listeners to alternate their roles. Thus, listeners play a more active role which pushes them to decode the incoming speech to be able to interact with their interlocutors.

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To help L2 learners become effective listeners, then, it is necessary to understand the complex nature of the listening comprehension process. The acoustic signals listeners perceive are decoded to form words and words are linked together to form phrases, phrases to form utterances and utterances are linked to form complete meaningful texts (Nunan, 1999, p. 200). In so doing, listeners make use of different kinds of clues at hand to understand the speech in progress. Hedge (2005) suggests that these clues consist of the learners knowledge of some prosodic features such as the basic rules for word and sentence stress and the location of pauses, the meaning of certain key words and the use of some linking devices. These linguistic clues together with paralinguistic features supply listeners with the necessary information to help them comprehend the incoming speech (Luchini, 2005, 2007) It is an inherent characteristic of the oral English language that words loaded with high information, that is, content words, are liable to be stressed under normal circumstances. Thus, the listeners attention is focused on those parts of the speech which are made to stand out as a result of stress. These stressed words become clues to help listeners understand oral input (Roach, 1995).

In relation to this, Halliday (1985) sustains that the distribution of pauses constitutes another important clue which is present in oral interaction. These pauses are used by speakers to signal the boundaries of tone units. Tone units are the shortest stretch of speech that can advance any act of communication. These intonation units or intonation phrases, as Wells (2006) refers to them, often coincide with grammatical structures such as phrases, clauses and sentences. In fact, an intonation phrase usually corresponds to a syntactic boundary. Besides these phonological clues, listeners knowledge of the meaning of words and the relationship that exists between words also constitute helpful features for learners to make inferences. At the discourse level, the use and function of different linking words also provide listeners with important cohesive clues which allow listeners to predict what is to follow in what they are listening to. Since the above mentioned clues supply listeners with

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valuable information to decode and process the incoming speech, teachers should raise their students awareness of how these linguistic features function in discourse with the intention of helping them become better L2 listeners.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

As was said earlier, L2 learners usually experience certain difficulties or uncertainties in trying to understand the incoming speech. Hedge (2005) categorizes these uncertainties into internal and external problems. Uncertainties such as lack of motivation, high level of anxiety, lack of knowledge of the topic under discussion and unknown vocabulary of what is being heard can be listed as internal problems. Listeners lack of understanding as a result of the speakers failure to transmit successfully their message together with environmental noises, which often distracts listeners attention, on the other hand, can be considered external problems. Besides these uncertainties, there are also other external factors, specifically within the domain of phonology, which may turn out to be a real hindrance for L2 listeners aural comprehension. The diversity of speakers accents, the substitution, omission, and addition of certain sounds and differences in the use of intonation contours, together with some features of ultra-rapid speed, among other phonological aspects may contribute to impede L2 learners comprehensibility. The length of listening taped-texts, the low quality of the recordings, the distance between the students and the tape recorder and the learners low frequency of exposure to listening materials may also become significant external obstacles that oftentimes impair L2 learners ability to comprehend. The lack of knowledge of some listening strategies may contribute to hinder L2 learners aural comprehension. Guessing from context, avoiding listening to word by word, using knowledge of the language to understand key words and activating general knowledge may contribute to improve L2 learners aural comprehension.

But listeners also need to rely on their prior knowledge of context and situation within which the listening takes place to make sense of what they hear. This prior knowledge consists of the mental frameworks listeners hold in their memories for various topics (In Hedge, 2005, p. 232). Prior knowledge and situational knowledge (routine events) enable listeners to infer, deduce and make judgment of what they hear. In view of this, L2 teachers should help to develop their learners awareness of how these processes operate in tandem. Efficient L2 listeners have an active role in the process of understanding. Listeners construct a mental model of what they hear by combining their schematic knowledge and their knowledge of the situation they are listening to with their systemic knowledge.

This article explores and provides answers to the following questions: 2. 1.

The theoretical assumptions presented in this section along with the results emerging from the listening project shown below will help to answer partly the three questions initially posed. 3. METHOD

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3.1. Participants

3.

The participants of this listening project--carried out in 2006--were forty student teachers attending English Language I (ELI) and their teacher. ELI is a language development course taught in first year at Instituto Superior Josefina Contte, a Teacher Training Program, in Corrientes, Argentina. The purpose of this course is to enable the prospective teachers to acquire a highly acceptable L2 proficiency in the four basic skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Which are some of the complex processes underlying listening comprehension? Which are some of the most recurrent difficulties that L2 learners encounter in comprehending oral discourse? How could L2 teachers help their learners to overcome some of these difficulties in order to become more efficient listeners?

To enrol in this program, the students have to take and pass an entrance exam on English language proficiency equivalent to what the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages considers as Independent Users B1(information about this exam can be found at: http://www.tudelft.nl/). Their classes meet in 2 -hour sessions twice a week over a nine-month academic period. 3.2. Implementation of change

Mabel was the teacher in charge of the design and implementation of this project and the co-author of this article. She has been teaching ELI at Instituto Superior en Bellas Artes e Idiomas Josefina Contte, Corrientes, Argentina since 2003. Before the implementation of the pedagogical changes made, she had somehow relegated from her teaching plans the inclusion of listening skills. When she worked with listening comprehension in her classes, she said that she used a rather traditional approach. That is, she exposed her learners to a taped-recorded text and asked them to answer a set of content questions on it. Guided by a misleading perception in which it is assumed that as long as L2 students are able to read, write and speak the target language, they should be able to communicate effectively, she perhaps disregarded the usefulness of incorporating the development of listening skill teaching in her classes.

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In 2006, at an evaluative meeting with other colleagues, this teacher was introduced to the results of a survey carried out by another instructor in charge of Introduction to Teaching Practice (ITP), a course also taught in first year in parallel with English Language I, at this same Teacher Training Programme in Argentina. The results of this survey showed that their students had ranked listening as the most challenging skill when compared with the rest of the skills worked on in class. As a general rule, to pass ELI, the students are required to take and pass three comprehensive term-tests during each academic quarter. These term tests mainly aim at assessing the four skills. The type of tasks comprised in these tests is consistent with the kind of activities done in class. In the area of listening skills, for example, the learners are required to listen to a recorded text and answer a set of content questions revolving around the topic under discussion.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

Table 1. First Term-Tests Mean Scores (2006) Reading Speaking Writing 7.12 6.40 6.15

On looking at the first term test results that year, it was observed that listening skills ranked below the standard level (grade: 6) of what was considered satisfactory for the objectives set for ELI. The mean scores belonging to the different skills assessed in that first term-test that year are presented below in the form of a table. Listening 5.25

Listening skills obtained the lowest score among the four skills being assessed. This information correlated with the findings emerging from the survey administered by the other instructor in charge of ITP. Pushed by the consistency of these data, Mabel decided to make a change to help her students overcome this situation.

Among the changes implemented, Mabel designed and incorporated a comprehensible set of activities to the already existing teaching materials, with a strong focus on the teaching of listening skills. This was done with the intention of raising the students awareness of the importance of incorporating listening comprehension in their classes for the development of their overall language competence.

To improve her teaching-learning context, Mabel decided to make some pedagogical changes in the way she taught listing skill. The fundamentals of these changes were based mainly on the literature she had read and also on her own teaching experience as a language teacher. The first step consisted in identifying the types of factors that she thought were hampering her

students listening comprehension. To do so, she designed and administered a questionnaire to her students (Appendix A). She also held semi-structured interviews with six students chosen randomly. Next, she designed a set of activities with a focus on listening skill to be taught in four teaching sessions of 2 hours each. Finally, Mabel gave the forty students a post-lesson questionnaire (Appendix B), and she held post-intervention interviews with the same six students. That she did with the intention of gathering some data which she thought would enable her to compare and contrast results, and this way, evaluate the effectiveness of the changes implemented. 3.3. Procedure For this project, data were gathered from the students questionnaires (before and after the pedagogic intervention), the students interviews (before and after intervention), and from a set of activities designed and administered by the teacher-researcher in four teaching sessions. 3.3.1. Students questionnaire before intervention With the aim of finding out which problems the students believed they had in performing listening comprehension activities, the students were given a questionnaire (Appendix A) which mainly focused on two broad areas. Area 1 required that they expressed their perceptions about listening comprehension tasks. Area 2 asked the students to assess their own performance in listening comprehension using a scale ranging from 1 to 5. The numbers represented how successful the students thought they were when completing a listening task: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Not able to achieve a listening task. Not able to achieve the listening task adequately. Able to perform the task satisfactorily. Able to perform the task well. Able to complete the task very well.

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The results coming from Question 1 were grouped and classified into categories to facilitate their analysis. These categories fell into 5 factors that the students considered affected their listening comprehension: (1) pronunciation, (2) affective factors, (3) environmental factors, (4) listening material, and (5) skills.

1. Pronunciation: Speakers accents, segmental features, speech rate. 2. Listening material: Type of listening text (song, narrative, dialogue), length of the listening text, understanding the instructions and the complexity of the given task, low frequency of exposure to listening materials, low quality of recorded materials, the distance between the students and the tape recorder.

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81.6

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

93.3

Figure 1 below shows the top five factors that affected the learners degree of comprehension. These factors are presented below in order of importance followed by their percentages in numbers: 1) pronunciation, 2) listening material, 3) affective factors, 4) skills and 5) environmental factors.
76.6 80 88.3
Skills Environment

3. Affective factors: anxiety, nervousness, among others. 4. Skills: Students need to be able to (1) guess from context, (2) avoid listening word by word, (3) predict what the speakers on the tape are going to say, (4) use their knowledge of the language to understand key words or phrases, and (5) activate their general background knowledge. 5. Environmental factors: Noises from the street, weather, crowded classrooms.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

On looking at Figure 1, it transpires that before the intervention phase, the students had some knowledge of which factors influenced their listening comprehension. These factors, as reported by the learners, correlated significantly with their teachers initial perception. This information is also consistent with the data coming from Question 2.

Figure 1. Factors inhibiting students listening comprehension.

Pronunciation

Listening Material

Affective Factors

Figure 2 below shows that 35% of them considered that they were not able to complete most listening tasks adequately, and 40% reported they were able to complete them moderately. These percentages show that these learners

were well aware of those areas that they thought they needed to work on more if they meant to improve their listening comprehension skills.

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These results reinforced the teachers initial perception that certain crucial changes had to be implemented in her pedagogy if she meant to help her students develop their listening comprehension skills to become competent language users.
45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

35

40

25

Percentage

3.3.2. Interview to students before intervention

Figure 2. Students perception about their performance in listening comprehension tasks.

To expand the information gathered in the first questionnaire, six students were chosen randomly with whom the teacher held semi-structured interviews. At the interviews, the students talked about their feelings and perceptions about their previous experiences with recorded materials. In their talks, they referred to their listening skills and the type of materials listened to, including the pronunciation of the recorded tapes. They also pointed out those affective and environmental factors that affected their listening comprehension. These data indicate that these students acknowledged both environmental and pronunciation factors as the ones which brought about the most difficulties in their L2 listening comprehension process. Indeed, these factors reached 100%, followed by listening materials (83%), affective factors (67 %), and skill factors (50%) respectively. One possible reason why

0
5

pronunciation scored the highest percentages might have been that, at the time this project was implemented, these learners lacked a solid knowledge of the segmental sound system of English. With regard to the environmental factor, the students reported that the external noises coming from the street, their over-crowded classroom, and the hot weather in this particular region of the country also affected their L2 listening development. Figure 3 below shows the results in percentages of those challenging factors that, according to these students, inhibited their listening comprehension.
skill factors 50% 83% 100% 67% 100% percentage

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affective factors environmental factors

pronunciation factors

listening material

Figure 3. Factors that inhibited students aural comprehension.

Table 2. Students Answers Given in the Questionnaire and in the Interviews Students Questionnaires % Students Interviews Listening Material 93.3 Listening material Environmental factors 88.3 Environmental factors Affective factors 82 Affective factors Pronunciation factors 80 Pronunciation factors Skills factors 77 Skill factors

On comparing and contrasting the data coming from the answers given by the forty students in the first questionnaire and the answers given by these six students during the interviews, some similarities as well as discrepancies can be observed. Table 2 below shows these results in percentages. % 83 100 67 100 50

Although the students gave different degrees of importance to the difficulties which each factor represented, these learners agreed that listening material and environmental factors should be prioritised in their listening classes. This information is presented in both the questionnaire and the interviews. Similarly, these students agreed on allotting the skill factors the least importance for the development of their listening skills. Based on these findings, the next step consisted in designing a course of action to help these students improve their L2 listening skills. First, a set of listening activities was designed. These tasks contemplated, as closely as possible, most of the students needs as presented in the findings above. Second, based on the students suggestions, four classes were taught where some of these pedagogical changes were implemented. Finally, post-intervention data were gathered to compare and evaluate results. 3.3.3. Pedagogic Intervention: Focus on Listening Prior to the instrumentation of this listening project, the listening classes at the institute were basically product-oriented in that they mainly sought to test the students listening comprehension rather than teach them listening strategies per se. As a general principle, listening classes usually started out by eliciting some information from the students about the topic of the listening material they would later on be exposed to. Then, the students were made to listen to the recording, and, after this, they were put to work in pairs to complete some kind of activity, which aimed primarily at checking the students level of listening comprehension. Finally, the students were made to check the right answers and, later on, they were occasionally engaged in some kind of speaking task related to the topic of discussion.

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Based on the literature review, the students suggestions made in their questionnaires and interviews and on the teachers experience, a few noteworthy changes were implemented. First, the teacher divided the whole class into two groups with which she would work separately at different times. Second, whenever they had to work with a listening activity, she exceptionally moved to an aired-conditioned classroom at the college. As all the classrooms at the college look out into the street, they are all extremely noisy. Therefore, this external factor -noise- had to be overlooked. Third, the teacher ensured the quality of the taped material she used. She also made sure that the distance between the tape recorder and the students was adequate to enable everybody in the classroom to listen to the recorded text without much difficulty. The teacher designed a battery of tasks with a focus on listening skill and implemented them in four consecutive lessons. Each of these classes was divided into three stages: Pre-listening, While-listening, and Post-listening activities (Hedge, 2005). As these stages pursued different

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aims, they comprised a set of assorted comprehensible tasks, all with a focus on the development of listening skills.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

For the first two classes, she chose a short story as the listening text to work with the students. The story was narrated by a woman who spoke at a relatively slow pace. Her accent was RP (Received Pronunciation), which was the model accent the students were most familiar with in their Phonetics and Phonology I classes. On the recorded material, there were not many instances of ultra-rapid connected speech features, a fact that facilitated comprehensibility. The aim of these first two lessons was three-fold: (1) to activate the students knowledge of the topic of the listening material (embarrassing situations), (2) to familiarise the students with the listening text per se, (3) to activate previous knowledge and guessing strategies. Difficulties with the perception of incoming L2 speech data could be partly solved if students were aware of how certain aspects of pronunciation intersect with listening comprehension. If students were pushed to notice prominent words, distinguish strong from reduced forms, identify cases of elision and assimilation in free speech production, just to name a few fundamental phonological characteristics of the spoken discourse, most L2 learners would be able to cope with listening comprehension difficulties more successfully (Celce-Murcia, 1996).

Interestingly, by the time this project was implemented, the students participating in this study had already been exposed to some of these phonological features (weak forms and assimilations) in Phonetics and Phonology I, a course taught in first year in parallel with English Language I. Bearing this in mind, for the other two lessons, Mabel designed a set of listening activities which chiefly aimed at raising the students phonological awareness of how some of these phonological features work in oral discourse with the intention of facilitating her students receptive skills. 3.3.4. Students Questionnaire after intervention After these four lessons with a strong focus on listening, the students were given a post-intervention questionnaire (Appendix B). This questionnaire aimed at making the students compare their development of their listening skills before and after the implementation of change. In this second questionnaire the students indicated those factors that they reported had hindered their listening comprehension before intervention, the skills they had turned to complete the set of activities done in the four listening lessons, and their perception as regards their development of their listening comprehension.

The students rated their listening comprehension based on a scale ranging from VERY GOOD to NO ANSWER. On looking at Figure 4, the outcomes

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

43%

suggest that the majority of the students perceived that there had been some improvement in their listening skills after being exposed to these four lessons. 43% of the students rated their listening comprehension as very good, and 20% as good. Although 28 % of the students did not answer, they personally confessed that after their teachers intervention, they considered their listening comprehension had improved moderately. It would be very unlikely to think, however, that these students actually achieved this improvement after having had only four lessons with a strong focus on the development of listening skills. It would be more sensible to believe that after having had these lessons, they were able to develop a positive sense of achievement and self-awareness of those linguistic, environmental and affective factors that they needed to work on more in order to improve their listening skills. Further research should be done in this area contemplating a longer period of teacher intervention under these or similar circumstances.

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20%

28%

Percentage

8%

Figure 4. Students self-evaluation: Post-intervention questionnaire.

very good

good

fair

improved

no answer

After the students were made to analyse and reflect on the set of activities done during these four listening lessons, they were asked to write a report on them where they had to name and describe those skills they considered they had resorted to while being engaged in these listening tasks. The outcome of the students reports is displayed in the form of a matrix (see Table 3 below) which consists of two rows. The skills the students thought they had used in their lessons are shown on the left of this matrix and the number of students who used these skills are presented in percentages on the right of this table.

3%

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Surprisingly, those skills that the students recurrently referred to in their reports more often and which were allotted the highest percentages (activate general knowledge: 95%, guess from context: 72%, and concentration on prominent words: 87, 5) were the ones that the teacher looked at and worked on more during the implementation of this project. This might mean that after her pedagogical intervention these students noticed the importance of using and developing these skills for the betterment of their listening comprehension, a fact that in the past they had probably ignored. Table 3. Skills Used to Complete the Set of Listening Activities Proposed
Skills the students thought about to complete the set of listening activities I tried to understand everything. I tried to listen word by word. I tried to activate general knowledge of the topic to understand the listening text. I guessed in order to understand when I missed information. I thought ahead generally, what was going to be talked about while listening. I used my knowledge of the language. I concentrated on particular words which were made prominent. I assumed success that understanding was relatively easy and that there would not be serious breakdowns in communication. % 60 % 12.5 % 95 % 72.5 % 57.5 % 70 % 87.5 % 62.5 %

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

35% 30% 15% 10% 5% 0% 25% 20%

33%

45% 40%

40%

10%

Percentage

15%

Figure 5. Pronunciation factors.

A lot

Very much

Fairly

A little

None

In the second questionnaire, the students were also asked to refer to those same factors which they had reported as barriers for their understanding in the first questionnaire. The aim of this was to see if, after the implementation of this change, these learners thought that these factors still affected the

3%

30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

28%

These findings reaffirmed the belief that pronunciation factors still posed a problem for the students understanding of taped materials. Affective factors, together with pronunciation factors, received the highest percentages. Figure 6 below shows information about how the students perceived affective factors after the implementation of change.
25%

development of their listening skills. Thus, the students ranked these factors on a scale ranging from A LOT, VERY MUCH, FAIRLY, A LITTLE, to NONE and supported their answers. Figure 5 above shows the results in percentages about pronunciation factors.

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20% 15%

13%

Percentage

Figure 6. Affective factors.

A lot

Very much

Fairly

A little

None

On looking at these results and comparing them with those coming from Figure 1 (affective factors: 81.6 %) and 3 (affective factors: 67%) above before the pedagogical intervention took place, a significant decrease in its percentage (25%) can be noticed. It seems that the introduction of some changes in the listening classes contributed to lessen some of the negative effects these factors had on most of the students. Although, in general, there is a significant decrease in the percentage allotted to these affective factors, the extent to which these factors hindered each students listening comprehension may have varied because of their individual differences.

As regards environmental factors such as the basic infrastructure of the school building, most of the classrooms at the institute are relatively small compared with the great number of students enrolled in each class. Most of these

50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

35%

45%

classrooms are located near the street, which is usually very noisy during class-time. Figure 7 below shows the results about environmental factors after the pedagogical innovations.

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8%

10%

Percentage

A lot

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

20%

43%

Figure 7. Environmental factors.

Very much

Fairly

A little

none

3%
Percentage

15%

15%
A little None

Figure 8. Listening material.

A lot

Very much

Fairly

Interestingly, the highest percentage of the students considered that they were able to understand taped stories more easily than dialogues. This might be related to the inherent characteristics of a story. Stories are generally narrated at a slow speed of delivery and, as a consequence, those phonological

8%

After the four lessons with a focus on listening, the students said they had noticed a relative improvement in their overall listening comprehension. This betterment in the students listening comprehension, perhaps, was the result of (1) the good quality of the taped material used, (2) the fact that stories make students not only activate their previous knowledge of context but also their knowledge of the structure that a discourse like a tale has, (3) it could be that the narrative genre is easier for them to process than other types of discourses. Any of these could have been some of the reasons why many of the students claimed they preferred taped stories to dialogues. The results in Figure 9 suggest that tasks which promote the awareness of listening skills, as the ones used in these four particular lessons, have a notorious beneficial effect on the students improvement of their listening skills.
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

features of connected speech such as assimilation and elision, which the students claimed affected their aural comprehension, are less frequent than in dialogical speech. Figure 8 above shows the results about the type of material used during the pedagogical intervention.

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50%

Percentage

20%

20% 5%

A lot

Figure 9. Skill factors.

Very much

Fairly

A little

None

The majority of these students acknowledged the importance of being taught listening strategies for the improvement of their listening comprehension. All in all, it seems that the changes Mabel implemented in these four lessons arose a feeling of self-reliance and confidence on the students that, in the past, under a traditional approach to teaching listening had almost been nonexistent.

5%

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3.3.5. Interview to Students after intervention

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

The aim of this second round of interviews was to gather post-intervention data and to compare these results with those coming from the instruments used before the intervention. The purpose of doing this was mainly to test out the validity of the data and to encourage ongoing reflections on them as part of the process of data analysis. In qualitative educational research, as is this case, validity is an essential criterion for evaluating the quality and acceptability of research.

The teacher held semi-structured interviews with the same six students who had been interviewed before the implementation of change. At the interviews, the learners talked about those factors that, as they had pointed out before the instrumentation of this project, had hindered their listening comprehension. They also referred to their feelings and perceptions regarding the set of activities they had been made to complete in those four lessons classes.

0%

0%

Figure 10. Post-intervention interview outcomes.

On comparing and contrasting the findings displayed in Charts 1 and 3 to the ones presented in Figure 10, it can be observed that the negative influence produced by those factors which had initially inhibited the students listening

0%

20% 10%

17% Listening material Affective factors Skill factors Environmental factors

40% 30%

33%

60% 50%

50%

In order to facilitate the analysis of the findings obtained in the interview, the students responses were grouped into categories and the results transferred onto a Figure. Figure 10 below shows those factors that still seemed to affect the development of the students listening skills. The results are shown in percentages.

Percentage

Pronunciation factors

comprehension, prior to the teacher intervention, diminished considerably. After the changes implemented, the students did no longer consider affective and skill factors as obstacles for understanding. It seems that after the teachers intervention, the students awareness listening skills increased notably. This awareness-rising process might have given the students some insight into how to deal with the listening materials they had to work with in class. This, in turn, could have decreased their level of anxiety and pressure in the listening class, a fact that could have enhanced their understanding capacities.

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However, Figure 10 indicates that the students still think that pronunciation, the type of listening materials and some environmental factors are impediments for their listening comprehension. This implies that these three factors should be given higher priority in the classroom in the future to lessen their negative impact on these learners. Of these three factors, however, the environmental one was allotted the lowest percentage. This might be the result of having fulfilled some of the students needs to be able to carry out a listening activity successfully.

As was said earlier, although the number of lessons taught as part of this project was limited in number, the results obtained here helped to explain more in detail what happens pedagogically with a group of learners when they are engaged in a listening task. The pedagogical changes effected in this small-scale project brought about a positive attitude and reaction on these students. To be able to state that these learners will be able to turn these positive attitudes into real language acquisition gains in the future, more of these lessons with a strong focus on the development of listening skills should be offered to them as part of their classroom daily activities. 4. Discussion

A tentative conclusion from studying these data is that, at least, in this preliminary stage of the development of this small project, the results obtained so far seem to be beneficial for these students. However, in this section, some observations will be made regarding the implementation and results of this listening experiment.

Time was the most crucial limitation to the implementation of this present project. This project was conducted during the second term before the school summer break. If the teacher had had more time to work with her students, she would probably have expanded on the factors explored and added some more to work with. Although the majority of the students claimed they were able to gain some knowledge of how to deal with a listening task after the intervention stage, it would be unrealistic to believe that only four lessons brought about some

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kind of linguistic improvement. In any case, these classes might have helped them lessen those feelings of anxiety, frustration and dissatisfaction they said they had experienced during their previous listening classes, which inhibited, in some way, their understanding. However, as was said earlier, more intervention time should have been used to be able to fairly claim that these students improvement in their listening skill was the exclusive result of the changes made during the short period of the pedagogic intervention.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

In order to make more conclusive claims, it would have been interesting to have given these students a pre-listening test before the implementation of the pedagogical changes and another one right after this. This evaluation technique might have allowed the teacher-researcher to have gathered quantitative data which, combined with qualitative results, would have enabled her to make more assertive claims. Notwithstanding these observations, close examination of the findings reveals that the implementation of this project, at least at this embryonic stage, which aimed mainly at developing the students awareness of how listening skills are made to work, turned out to be valuable for both students and teacher alike. 5. Conclusion

This exploratory pedagogic article reported the design, implementation and later evaluation of a listening comprehension project carried out in a public institute in Corrientes, Argentina. Emerging from the information obtained, some pedagogical assumptions can be made. First, a brief description was given in the literature review section which aimed to help understand the complex process underlying listening comprehension. Along with this description, some of the data coming from this small project confirm the importance and usefulness of including listening skill teaching in L2 classes for communicative purposes. Second, the convergence of listening skill teaching with some affective and environmental factors, pronunciation, and listening materials, among others, should be given high priority if L2 learners are meant to overcome the most recurrent difficulties they repeatedly encounter in comprehending oral discourse. Thirdly, based on the information emerging from this small project, we hope that some L2 teachers could help their learners surmount some of these difficulties to become more efficient listeners. Although this work has its own limitations, some of which were discussed in the previous section, the results presented in this article showed that this project had a beneficial effect on the students listening comprehension. This benefit was partly demonstrated by a strong sense of willingness on their part to go on learning the target language. However, more research in this area

should be done with larger populations and in other contexts to be able to corroborate these findings. The Authors Pedro Luis Luchini (luchinipedro@fibertel.com.ar) is an ELT graduated from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (UNMDP). Luchini holds an MA in ELT and Applied Linguistics from Kings Collage, University of London. He is currently teaching English Phonetics and Phonology and Language at the Teacher Training Program, UNMDP. He also teaches Phonology III and IV at Instituto Superior IDRA, Mar del Plata, Argentina. Mabel Arguello (mabel_luisa@yahoo.com.ar) is an ELT graduated from Instituto Superior Josefina Contte, Corrientes, Argentina. She holds a graduate degree as Licenciada en Lengua Inglesa from Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNDN). She has been a member of the teaching profession for more than 20 years now, and is currently in charge of English Language I at Instituto Superior Josefina Contte, Teacher Training Programme, in Corrientes, Argentina. She also teaches youngsters, adolescents and adults at different levels at several private institutions in Corrientes, Argentina. References Anderson, A. and T. Lynch. (1988). Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Celce Murcia, M., D.Brinton and J.Goodwin. (1996). Teaching Pronunciation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, D. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains Pearson Education Limited.

Ellis, R. (1995). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hedge, T. (2005). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krashen, S. (1985). The Input Hypothesis. London: Longman.

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Retrieved from the internet on September, 2006. URL: http://www.tudelft.nl/

Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London; Baltimore, Md., USA: Edward Arnold. Kaplan, E.L. (1969). The Role of Intonation in Acquisition of language. PhD. Thesis. Cornell University.

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Long, M. H. (1985). A role for instruction in second language acquisition: taskbased language teaching. In Hyltenstam, K., & Pienemann, M. (eds.), Modeling and assessing second language development (pp. 77-99). Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters. Luchini, P. (2007). Raising learners speech awareness through selfassessment and collaborative assessment in the pronunciation class. IATEFL Speak Out! Newsletter of the IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group. 37, 17-23.

Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In Ritchie, W. C., & Bahtia, T. K. (eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413-68). New York: Academic Press.

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

Luchini, P. (2005). A New Approach to Teaching Pronunciation: An Exploratory Case Study. Journal of Asia TEFL: Refereed Journal of the Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. 2(2), 3562. . Parrot, M. (1993). Tasks for Language Teachers. Glasgow: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, D. (1999). Second language Teaching &Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Roach, P.(1995). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wells, J. (2006). English Intonation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

APPENDIX A

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Questionnaire Before-Intervention A- Factors involved in effective listening. Use this scale to rate your listening. 0 1 1. How would you rate your listening comprehension in relation to other abilities in the language? 2 3 4 5

B- Personal factors which may facilitate or inhibit effective listening comprehension

2. Are there any circumstances in which it may seem better or worse? 1. Make a list of personal factors which might inhibit effective listening comprehension and give reasons why this might be so. 2. Make a list of personal factors which might facilitate listening comprehension and give reasons why this might be so. 3. Look at the following list of personal factors and indicate which you consider to be characteristic of effective and ineffective listening by writing either E (effective) or I (ineffective) against each item.

Example: The learner is afraid of appearing silly by getting the answer wrong. Imagine that you are the learner. The learner:

a) Tries to understand everything. b) Tries to listen word by word. c) Tries to activate general knowledge of the topic to help him understand. d) Guesses in order to help him understand when he misses information. e) Thinks ahead generally while listening (guesses what is going to be talked about). f) Uses his knowledge of the language to narrow down the range of possibilities with regard to what the next key word or phrase may be. g) Varies his attention during the listening process, concentrating on particular words which are stressed, and on stretches of speech which are pitched relatively high in the voice range. h) Assumes success (assumes that understanding is relatively easy and that there will be no serious breakdowns in communication).

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APPENDIX B

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Second Questionnaire (post-intervention) Questionnaire adapted from Parrot, Martin (1993). Tasks for Language Teachers. Glasgow: Cambridge University Press. Post listening activities I ) Reflection on experience 1. After completing the set of listening activities how would you rate your listening comprehension?

2. Are there any circumstances in which your comprehension may be better or worse?

II)

3. Make a list of those factors which might have inhibited effective listening comprehension and give reasons why this might have been so.

Factors which may facilitate or inhibit effective listening comprehension

4. Make a list of those factors which might have facilitated effective listening comprehension and give reasons why this might have been so.

Look at the following items and indicate which one you took into account complete the set of listening activities done in class. Refer to each one of these items by writing YES / NO next to them.

Extra comments:

a) I tried to understand everything b) I tried to listen word by word c) I tried to activate general knowledge of the topic to understand the listening text d) I guessed in order to understand when I missed information e) I thought ahead generally (what was going to be talked about) while listening . f) I used my knowledge of the language to narrow down the range of possibilities with regard to what the next key word or phrase may be .. g) I varied my attention during the listening process, concentrating on particular words which are prominent . h) I assumed success that understanding is relatively easy and that there will be no serious breakdowns in communication .

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III)

How far and to what extent do you think that the factors listed below may affect the development of your listening skills? Rank these factor on a scale from a LOT- VERY MUCH- FAIRLY- A LITTLENONE- according to their importance and provide a brief explanation for your choice. (1) Pronunciation (accent of speakers, speed of delivery, features of connected speech)_______

(2) Affective factors (feeling anxious, nervous) _______________

(3) Environmental factors (crowded classrooms, noises) ______________

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(4) Listening material (type of listening material, story, dialogue, frequency of exposure to listening activities) ______________

Pedro Luis Luchini & Mabel Arguello

(5) Skills (ability to avoid listening word by word, understand key words, predict, activate general knowledge of the topic, cope with the speakers rapid speech.) ____________

Thank you for your cooperation