The purpose of this research project was to examine theories of learning, theories of teaching, and theories of listening comprehension with a view to developing and testing a computer-enhanced listening comprehension system for English as a Foreign Language within the Thai university system. In addition to carrying out an in-depth literature review, factors contributing to difficulties in the listening process were also carefully examined in order to build a sound foundation for dealing with listening comprehension. A brief history and analysis of Computer Assisted Language Learning were presented together with a review of some computer programs with the aim of determining their characteristics. An Individualized CELL Listening Comprehension Program was then developed on the basis of four theoretical frameworks: the Constructivist approach, the need to use authentic spoken passages, reduction of cognitive load and response to learner differences. The system was then used by twenty students of Suranaree University of Technology (SUT), Thailand for a period of fifteen weeks. Students were volunteers from different proficiency levels. SUT midterm and final examinations were employed, in part, to observe the effect of the program on proficiency levels. The SUT examinations, which were usually in a multiple-choice format, tested students on minor details through short, simple conversations. These tests might not fit entirely within best practice for listening but they seem to be a common way of measuring listening development in several educational contexts. Pretests and posttests examining global ideas and specific details in written and multiple-choice formats were then developed so as to provide a more accurate gauge of improvement in listening skills. Log files were kept in order to scrutinize in detail students� interactions with the system. Questionnaire and interview techniques were applied to seek out students� attitudes towards the program. The results revealed that the participants performed better than their peers in the same proficiency levels in SUT midterm and final examinations although the difference was not at a statistically significant level. However, posttest scores were better than those of pretest at a statistically significant level in most aspects except in case of the global ideas. The log files revealed that all students tended to focus on the word level by attempting to understand and decode every word in the transcriptions. This fixation is likely to explain the low global ideas scores. Analysis was complicated by the fact that some students were not able to use the program frequently enough, usually because of unexpectedly heavy schedules. However, the data extracted through questionnaires and interviews showed that most students demonstrated a positive attitude towards the various features of the program and felt that use of the program had improved their listening skills. In addition to findings relating to the development of listening comprehension, the study revealed that the majority of students felt that they did not think listening comprehension and, more generally the study of English, was sufficiently important to spend time on. This interesting but shocking discovery needs to be attended to immediately as it may have a strong effect on how Thai students prioritize their learning of English, and how this may impact on the levels of proficiency which they might subsequently attain.

This study examines the listening comprehension difficulties of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language at the tertiary level by means of two listening comprehension tests that were specifically designed for this paper and administered to 50 students in the English Department of ERWAI (the Peking Foreign Language Institute No. 2). The students' listening comprehension ability is evaluated on the basis of the results of multiple-choice test items, and the students' oral performance in answering questions, all of which have been recorded and transcribed in full. Proceeding from the date and from the theory and practice of language teaching and learning, suggestions relating to this area are discussed. Chapter 1 introduces the background to the problem, in which some basic facts concerning the teaching of English as a foreign language at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels in China are provided. This serves as a general review of tertiary students' entry behaviour in learning English as a foreign language. In addition, the aims and objectives of foreign language teaching based on ERWAI students' future professional needs are discussed. Chapter 2 moves to a discussion of the format and procedures of the two listening comprehension tests, followed by the description and interpretation of the test results. Chapter 3 discusses the nature of the listening process and surveys the listening strategies needed for successful communication. In Chapter 4, proposals for improving the teaching of listening comprehension at ERWAI are recommended.

Phonological awareness (PA) can be defined as the ability to recognize that orthographic patterns represent specific phonemic elements of speech (Nitrouer, 1999). Alternatively, some view PA as a purely linguistic skill that involves the ability to recognize and manipulate specific speech sounds (e.g., Catts, 1991). A large body of research indicates the primary problem for children who do not learn to read is a deficit in PA (e.g., Morris et al., 1998; Stanovich, 1988). Far less work has examined what drives the development of PA (Metsala & Walley, 1998). Recently, it has been suggested that oral language skills influence the acquisition of PA (e.g., Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Olofsson & Niedersoe 1999). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the development of PA skills in children classified with a reading disability who evidenced either typical or below-average oral language skills based on measures of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and listening comprehensions skills. In addition, this study examined whether differing conceptualizations of PA resulted in differential findings concerning the relationship between oral language skills and PA. Finally, this study examined the relationships that exist between different domains of language and different aspects of reading achievement. Elementary school age students participated in the study with 211 students receiving 70 hours of small group reading intervention. Sixty-eight students served as a control group. Children’s PA was assessed at three time points throughout the school year. Repeated measures ANCOVA and HLM analyses were conducted with letter sound knowledge and phonological processing skills as dependent variables. Students with below-average oral language skills evidenced significantly (p < .05) lower scores on both measures compared to students with typical oral language skills. Children with below-average oral language skills did not acquire PA skills at a significantly slower rate than children with typical oral language skills. Analyses also indicated that the relationship between oral language skills and PA skills remains consistent across different conceptualizations of PA. SEM analyses showed that receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary knowledge independently contributed to PA skills. Only expressive vocabulary knowledge entered into a relationship with word identification skills.

本研究的目的在於探究合作學習的教學模式對於國民中學的學生在降低英語聽力焦慮和提升聽力能力雙方面上是否有效。本研究的研究對象是54位來自台灣北部地區的一所國民中學的學生，學生來自於經S型分班後同質性的2個普通班，2個班分別設定為對照組和實驗組，兩組在數量、性別、背景、聽力焦慮及聽力能力起始程度上皆相似。對照組施以傳統英語聽力教學模式：學生聽寫，教師給答案並講解的方式施教；實驗組則施以合作學習英語聽力教學模式：同學聽完練習後，交互討論練習答案的方式來學習。師生利用每週四堂英語課的前15分鐘來進行英語聽力合作學習，經過了約12週的教學後，兩組皆接受聽力焦慮量表的後測，及南一書局出版的聽力測驗。量表及測驗皆以獨立樣本t檢定來進行統計分析，研究結果顯示：實驗組和對照組相較之下，聽力焦慮降低的程度達到顯著差異；而聽力能力的部分，雖然實驗組比對照組在測驗分數上有進步，但進步幅度有限，未能達到顯著差異。除此之外，訪談問卷中的質性資料亦支持了量化結果。本研究冀希成為對於有意利用合作學習教學模式來教聽力的老師，在降低聽力焦慮和提升聽力能力上，一個教學上的參考。最後，研究者根據實驗的過程及結果，對未來合作學習或是聽力教學的研究，提出需要避免的情形及一些可進行的研究方向。 / This study is mainly to explore if the mode of cooperative learning can reduce junior high school students’ listening anxiety and promote their listening comprehension ability. The participants in this study were junior high school students from northern Taiwan. They were chosen from two homogeneous classes formulated by the normal s-style distribution. Two classes, decided as the control group and the experimental group, were the same in number, gender, background, listening anxiety as well as the listening comprehension ability. The control group was treated with the traditional mode of teaching listening: Students listened and wrote down their answers; the teacher gave answers and explanations. The experimental group was treated with the mode of cooperative learning: After students finished their listening practices, they exchanged notes and discussed answers by themselves. The initial fifteen minutes in every English class were employed to process the learning of cooperative learning four times a week. After twelve weeks, students in the two groups took the post-test of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale and the listening comprehension test issued by Nan I Book Enterprise. Both instruments were measured by an independent-samples t-test. The result showed that the significant differences were attained in the listening anxiety. Nevertheless, the significant differences were not attained in the listening comprehension ability though the average score of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group. Besides, the qualitative data from the questionnaire also sustain the quantitative results. Hopefully, this study can serve as a reference for those teachers who would like to teach English listening comprehension by the mode of cooperative learning. Eventually, the researcher provided some directions to follow and some awkward situations to avoid for future studies based on the experimental process and results in this study.

Listening comprehension strategies have been explored almost exclusively in uni-directional listening when learners are listening to audio recording. The lack of research on students' strategy use in understanding the teacher in the classroom is surprising, given how pervasive it is for students to listen to the teacher. In order to fill this research gap, this study explored the listening strategies adopted by learners in comprehending the teacher's input in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom in Hong Kong (HK). A Likert-scale questionnaire was developed and administered to 867 HK Secondary 3 students, 646 of whom also completed two tests of linguistic knowledge (LK) - a receptive Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and a grammaticality judgement task (GJT). A sub-sample of 59 students then took part in an innovative computer tracking programme which simulated classroom learning and incorporated different types of teacher input while eliciting learners' strategy use targeted at these inputs. Lesson observation and stimulated recall interviews were also conducted to give insight into learners' strategy use in an authentic lesson from a more qualitative point of view. Findings suggested that there were some strategies which were specific to the context of listening to the teacher in the ESL classroom. Furthermore, while learners with low and high LK demonstrated some differences in their strategy use, there existed a sub-group of learners with low LK who were at least comparably strategic with learners with higher LK, providing some evidence that strategy use is not wholly dependent on levels of LK. Finally, findings also pointed to the importance of the type and difficulty of teacher input on learners' strategy use. Implications for further research and pedagogy are discussed.

This diploma thesis deals with differences in the quality of phonematic listening as well as listening comprehension by pupils with above-average and below-average musical-auditory abilities. The goal of this work is a quantitative comparison of results from both tests. In the first part of the work is examined the theoretical basis of listening comprehension, phonematic listening and of musical abilities and skills. The work follows up musical-auditory abilities, their development and their influence on listening skills in German including researches in branches of other languages. In the practical part, we look by means of tests into the degree of comprehension to the German text and into the degree of phonematic literacy of pupils in German language. These are further compared by musically above-average and below-average group. The results of the work are exploitable for the teaching of listening comprehension, or for the development of phonematic listening.

Listening and reading comprehension form an important part of the educational needs of the child. Learning and development are dynamic processes and educators must take cognisance of the continually changing needs of the environment. The relationship between and development of listening and reading comprehension is complex and interlinked. Theoretical and developmental strategies need to be explored to help us understand assessment and teaching procedures. This study aimed to compare listening and reading comprehension using two assessment tools - the Sentence Verification Technique and the Performance Test: Listening and Reading Comprehension English First Language (HSRC). Three groups, standard 2, 3, and 4 students, were tested on both tests and reading and listening scores were compared in each test. Then the two tests were compared. Some qualitative analyses were carried out. The HSRC test showed listening and reading to be similar in all three groups, while listening was significantly better than reading on the SVT test. These differences may be related to the fact that the subjects were able to reread in the SVT 'reading test. A developmental trend was clear in both tests in that the scores in both reading and listening showed increases with each group. The results between the two tests were similar in the listening mode but showed differences in the reading mode. This implies that they cannot be directly compared but that both still play valuable, but different diagnostic roles. The results led to a discussion of the clinical and future research implications. / Dissertation (MCommunication Pathology)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / Unrestricted

This study sets out to investigate whether and to what extent activities involving Extramural English (EE) have an impact on how students in the sixth and ninth year of the Swedish school-system perform on the national tests of listening and reading comprehension issued by the National Agency for Education. In order to test this, the students participating were asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their contacts with English outside of the classroom environment and were then administered old national tests of reading and listening comprehension as part of their regular classroom instruction. The data collected was analysed in SPSS in the form of correlation analysis and ANOVA. It was found that EE-activities may indeed impact how well the students perform in tests assessing receptive skills and that certain activities (such as reading, gaming, engaging in oral communication) yielded greater gains than others (such as watching movies and TV-series). In addition to this, the study indicates a difference between how profound of an impact EE-activities have depending on the age of the students, with the older students benefiting more from EE than the younger.

No description available.

Denna studie handlar om elevers upplevelse och förståelse av högläsning. Syftet är att undersöka huruvida formatet på högläsningen, ljudbok eller fysiskt högläst text, påverkar elevernas förståelse för innehållet och intresset för att lyssna. Detta har studerats genom gruppintervjuer och gemensamma diskussioner med elever i årskurs 1. Även lärare har fått delge sina tankar om de olika formaten utifrån ett frågeformulär. Resultatet i denna studie visar att förståelsen inte påverkas av vilket format som används. Däremot framkommer det att bilder och möjligheten att kunna avbryta läsningen har en positiv effekt på elevernas förståelse. Eleverna påpekar dock att det kan vara problematiskt att få någon, främst utanför skoltid, att vilja läsa för dem. De upplever att vuxna tycker att det är jobbigt och att de inte vill. Trots att forskning och lärarna i studien uttrycker samstämmighet om att högläsning skapar nyfikenhet och är språkutvecklande på flera plan upplever eleverna att dialogisk högläsning sällan finns tillgänglig.