Abstract
The development of oral comprehension skills is rarely studied in second and foreign language teaching, let alone in learning contexts involving students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE). Thus, we conducted a mixed-methods study attempting to measure the effect of implicit teaching of oral comprehension strategies with 37 SLIFE in Quebec City, a predominantly French-speaking city in Canada. Two experimental groups received implicit training in listening strategies, whereas a control group viewed the same documents without strategy training. Participants’ listening comprehension performance was measured quantitatively before the treatment, immediately after, and one week later with three different versions of an oral comprehension test targeting both explicit and implicit content of authentic audiovisual documents. Overall, data analysis showed a low success rate for all participants in the oral comprehension tests, with no significant effect of the experimental treatment. However, data from the intervention sessions revealed that the participants’ verbalisations of their comprehension varied qualitatively over time. The combination of these results is discussed in light of previous findings on low literate adults’ informal and formal language learning experiences.
Highlights
Instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) research is typically conducted in Western societies and focuses largely on educated, highly literate, middle-class language learners (Ortega 2019)
Very few ISLA studies have been carried out with students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE), even though Bigelow and Tarone (2004) have long called for a more systematic integration of this population so as to better understand the impact of first language (L1) literacy skills on formal acquisition of additional languages (Lx), and even though amount and types of literacy experiences occupy an important place in Hulstijn (2019) individual differences framework of Lx learning
The results show that the three groups of participants were not comparable at the beginning of the intervention and that their listening performance evolved differently over time
Summary
Instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) research is typically conducted in Western societies and focuses largely on educated, highly literate, middle-class language learners (Ortega 2019). 2008; Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari 2010) These classroom interventions differed in terms of number and type of listening strategies (explicitly or implicitly) taught to Lx listeners, they all used elements of metacognition: development of the ability to recognise the mental processes involved in listening comprehension, the ability to examine the (social, cognitive and affective) factors that impede, slow down or facilitate listening, the ability to identify what contributes or hinders sound or word perception, or the ability to choose strategies that foster overall listening development and comprehension (see Vandergrift and Goh 2012). This small-scale study addressed the following research question: Does implicit teaching of listening strategies and metacognition help foster oral comprehension of adults with low levels of education who are learning French Lx?
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