Assessing L2 listening in CALL and listening strategy use

Abstract

This longitudinal study examines students’ learning strategies of 222 Spanish intermediate learners when taking several listening tests. It also examines the effect of different instructional formats (online-hybrid vs. face2face-blended) on the learners’ strategy use. There were four versions of the same text: an audio format, a video format, a redundancy-enhanced version in audio format, and a redundancy-enhanced version in video format. A pseudo-cross over design was utilized for this study with four listening tests used with each group. Participants completed a questionnaire immediately after each listening test to learn about learners’ strategies before, during and after listening in order to elicit information about the particular strategies that learners used to complete each listening test. Results indicated that there was a listening comprehension strategy development over time without explicit instruction, but participants from different instructional formats developed different strategies. There was a statistically significant difference for intermediate-low learners when perceiving the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, but the effect of redundancy does not seem to have an impact. Intermediate-mid learners did not perceive a difference with the use of strategies when completing listening tests with or without redundancy.