The relationship between listening comprehension problems and strategy usage among advance EFL learners

Ehsan Namaziandost,Mehdi Nasri,Fatemeh Mahdavirad,Leila Neisi,Lucia Monacis

doi:10.1080/23311908.2019.1691338

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate listening comprehension problems and strategies used among Iranian advance EFL learners. Furthermore, this study tried to find the relationship between the participants’ listening problems and strategy usage. Listening problems included input, context, listener, process, affect, and task problems while the listening strategies consisted of cognitive, meta-cognitive, and socio-affective strategies. A questionnaire was administered to collect data from 60 randomly selected Iranian advance EFL learners in a private language institute in Ahvaz, Iran. The outcomes demonstrated that the learners suffered from input and affect listening comprehension problems. Meta-cognitive strategy was the chief listening strategy used by the learners. The relationship between listening problems and strategy usage among the learners was statistically significant and negative. Results suggest that it is important for second language teachers to be aware of the different listening comprehension problems so as to enable listeners to use the appropriate strategies.

Highlights

Being the two main channels of language input, reading and listening play a vital role in FL learning
The results indicated that the learners experienced moderate to high levels of difficulty in all three categories of listening comprehension problems, namely perception, parsing, and utilization
The findings showed that the learners suffered from input and context listening comprehension problems

Summary

Introduction

Being the two main channels of language input, reading and listening play a vital role in FL learning. The more learners read and listen, the more they are exposed to language. This exposure is what leads to language acquisition (Peterson, 2001). It is safe to say that language learning is contingent on how much learners read and listen to the FL. Listening is even of more importance to language development than reading because it is the most frequently used language skill (Morley, 1999). Language learners internalize linguistic information without which they cannot produce language (Brown, 2001). Listening is crucial to the development of other language skills, especially speaking (Rost, 2002)

Methods

Results

Conclusion