Abstract
Although more and more people have noticed the importance of English listening ability, most junior high school English teachers’ method of teaching English listening is merely to have students do some listening exercises or simply to give listening tests without any instruction. In fact, listening is not an easy task for those beginning learners, and the teachers may be able to do more to facilitate their students’ listening comprehension. One of the ways to aid listening is to teach listening strategies. The present study aimed at investigating the effects of listening strategy instruction on junior high school students in Taiwan. The issue was explored in three respects, the effects on listening test performances, on listening strategy use, and the effects in the affective domain. Based on the experience gained from a pilot study, the present study was conducted, lasting for nearly one semester. The subjects were four classes of second-year junior high school students, with two classes each in the control group and the experimental group. Both group practiced listening tasks in seven class sessions, during which the control group practiced listening tasks without any strategy instruction while the experimental group practiced the same listening tasks and received listening strategy instruction at the same time. The data were collected via a Pretest, listening practices in class, listening sections in monthly exams, a Posttest, a Background Questionnaire, Reflection Questionnaires, a Posttest Questionnaire, and an interview. The results showed that the listening strategies significantly facilitated students’ performances on listening comprehension tests, indicating that the strategy instruction could hold promise for improving beginning EFL learners’ listening comprehension ability. The improvement in the students’ strategy use suggests that explicit strategy instruction can broaden the repertoire of students’ strategies and increase the frequency of using the strategies. Further, the students’ responses on questionnaires and in the interview also indicated that most of them hold positive attitudes toward listening strategy instruction and that their confidence in their own English listening comprehension ability had been increased. The present study demonstrates that listening strategy instruction can be incorporated successfully into the listening training in junior high schools in Taiwan. Based on the findings, some suggestions for listening strategy instruction and listening training are provided. It is hoped that the present study can contribute to the development of teaching listening in Taiwan.