Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to identify Iranian EFL freshman university students’ listening proficiency levels and the listening strategies they employed to investigate the relationship between these two variables. A total of 92 freshmen were involved in this study. The Oxford Placement Test was employed to identify the learners’ listening proficiency levels and a Listening Strategy Questionnaire was used to identify the strategies they employed in listening. The descriptive analysis of the listening strategy questionnaire revealed that Iranian EFL freshman university students at advanced, intermediate, and lower-intermediate levels employed meta-cognitive strategies more frequently and actively; followed by cognitive and socio-affective listening strategies. The Pearson Correlation analysis also indicated that there was a significant positive correlation between the listening strategies employed by advanced, intermediate, and lower-intermediate freshmen and their listening proficiency levels at p<0.01 and p<0.05 levels respectively.
Highlights
Listening is an essential skill which develops faster than speaking and often affects the development of reading and writing abilities in learning a new language (Scarcella and Oxford, 1992; Oxford, 1993)
Meta-cognitive strategies are employed by students to increase comprehension and second language retention, and include planning, monitoring, evaluating and problem-solving; cognitive strategies are utilized by listeners to cope with the material to be learned or to apply specific techniques, such as inferencing, repeating, deduction, imagery, elaboration, note taking, and translation; and socio-affective strategies are employed by language learners to cooperate with classmates, to question the teacher for clarification, or to apply specific techniques to lower anxiety (O'Malley, Chamot, & Küpper, 1989; Vandergrift, 1997)
The data for the present study were gathered from a group of 92 (n) out of 120 (N) Iranian EFL freshman university students randomly selected from five classes at a university in south of Esfahan based on the sample size table developed by Krejcie and Morgan (1970).The learners were all females and majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course
Summary
Listening is an essential skill which develops faster than speaking and often affects the development of reading and writing abilities in learning a new language (Scarcella and Oxford, 1992; Oxford, 1993) This is because one receives input through listening to instructions or explanations prior to responding orally or in writing. Vandergrift (1996, 1997, and 2003) asserts that listening is a complex, active process of interpretation in which listeners try to suit what they hear with their prior knowledge This process is more complex for second language learners who have limited memory capacity of the target language (Richards, 1983) requiring them to utilize various listening strategies. Meta-cognitive strategies are employed by students to increase comprehension and second language retention, and include planning, monitoring, evaluating and problem-solving; cognitive strategies are utilized by listeners to cope with the material to be learned or to apply specific techniques, such as inferencing, repeating, deduction, imagery, elaboration, note taking, and translation; and socio-affective strategies are employed by language learners to cooperate with classmates, to question the teacher for clarification, or to apply specific techniques to lower anxiety (O'Malley, Chamot, & Küpper, 1989; Vandergrift, 1997)
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