The Effectiveness of Explicit Instruction of Certain Decoding Skills in Improving Chinese EFL Listeners’ General Comprehension Performance

Abstract

The importance of decoding skills has long been neglected in L2 listening classes, especially in a Chinese EFL context. To help foreign language teachers and learners see the value of decoding skill instruction, a quasi-experimental study was designed to test the effectiveness of certain decoding skills in improving learners’ general listening comprehension performance. Sixty non-English major freshmen were made the experimental group, and another 57 such students were made the control group. The intervention was 6-week-long explicit instruction of basic decoding skills, mainly based on the training framework proposed by Goh (2000). Data was collected in pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test. The results of data analysis show that the performance of both groups improved in post-test and delayed post-test. However, the experimental group made significantly greater progress in both tests. This study shows that explicit instruction of decoding skills, together with well-designed skill training, contributes to learners’ better understanding and control of the L2 listening processes and thus helps them improve their general comprehension performance. A series of recommendations for both L2 listening pedagogy and future research are also offered.