The main purpose of this case study research was to find an appropriate way to enhance listening comprehension ability through self-access materials for a group of less-skilled university language learners in Thailand. The study was conducted in three phases: the exploratory, the material development and the main study. The participants of the exploratory study were ten good EFL listeners completing a set of three standardized listening comprehension test tasks. Stimulated recall protocol was undertaken in order to manifest strategy use in a listening comprehension process. The participants of the main study were fourteen less-skilled first-year university students who learned listening skills and strategies in a self-access learning way through self-access materials especially adapted to support their learning for a period of 12-14 weeks before taking a posttest. The findings from qualitative data analysis revealed that good EFL learners effectively orchestrated various metacognitive and cognitive strategies in three stages of pre, while and post listening in a listening comprehension process manifesting their underlying language proficiency. Contrary to the good EFL listeners, the results indicated that less-skilled learners used less listening strategies and were unable to use them as successfully as good EFL listeners did. Based on the findings from the third phase, the quantitative result of Wilcoxon signed-ranks test unveiled that there was a significant difference between the pre and posttests mean scores at the 0.001 level. The result was further supported by the recall qualitative analysis indicating that the less-skilled participants employed a greater amount of metacognitive and cognitive strategy use after the self-access learning process. In their learning diaries, the less-skilled participants further reported an increase of posttest scores, giving reasons for the improvement that listening skills, strategies and practice through self-access materials helped them become better listeners. The findings from questionnaire and learning diary in terms of attitudes towards self-access learning and materials showed that there was a positive attitude towards the self-access materials and learning in a self-instruction way. Almost all of them reported that they had more confidence to learn independently and liked self-access learning more than the past. The research findings shed a light on how to support EFL learners not only to become better listeners but also to become autonomous language learners.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:560268 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Suriyatham, Watjana |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/50450/ |
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