Teaching independent listening comprehension online: findings of the preliminary study

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Teaching independent listening comprehension online: findings of the preliminary study

Olga G. Kvasova

Phd of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor,

Associate Professor at the Department of Methodology of Teaching Ukrainian and Foreign Languages and Literatures, Institute of Philology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

Phd of Pedagogical Sciences, Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from English Institute of Philology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

Phd of Pedagogical Sciences, Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from English Institute of Philology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of teaching independent listening comprehension in the emergency distance education (EDE) caused by Covid-19 pandemic. The paper describes the preliminary study of developing university students' listening skills in on -line instruction mode.

The authors consider the main challenges that practitioners face while building students' listening skills. These include difficulties ranging from text selection, linguistic and conceptual complexities of authentic audio/video materials and task construction to organizing listening practice beyond the classroom as well as checking students' comprehension upon listening/viewing. The hypothesis of the research states that due to the enhanced digital literacy of teachers and learners as a result of EDE listening could be practiced effectively in the asynchronous format as an independent activity. This would allow learners a certain degree of autonomy and would spare the virtual contact time for practicing oral production and interaction in the synchronous mode. The authors have surveyed 75 second-year students of Linguistics at three Ukrainian universities to elicit their perceptions of the on-line instruction effects on the development of four language skills and listening in particular. The survey also gave the possibility to elicit preferences in topics, text types and sources in independent listening practice, as well as views on organization of independent listening (frequency of listening practice sessions, length of texts, etc.). The survey findings presented in this article helped the authors to outline the parameters of the independent listening that would benefit the development of students' listening skills and consequently develop the methodology of teaching these skills independently. The latter has already been designed and implemented in practice, thus making up a focus of further research.

Keywords: teaching listening comprehension; online instruction; independent listening.

НАВЧАННЯ САМОСТІЙНОГО АУДІЮВАННЯ ОНЛАЙН: РЕЗУЛЬТАТИ ПОПЕРЕДНЬОГО ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ

Квасова Ольга Геннадіївна

У статті розглядається питання самостійного навчання аудіювання в умовах екстреної дистанційної освіти (ЕДО), спричиненої пандемією Covid 19. У центрі уваги даного дослідження є розвиток умінь аудіювання студентів вищих навчальних мовних закладів у режимі онлайн навчання. Автори дослідження висвітлюють основні проблеми, з якими стикаються викладачі під час розвитку вмінь аудіювання, навчаючи англійської мови як іноземної. Вони охоплюють широкий спектр труднощів, які варіюються залежно від вибору текстів, лінгвістичних та змістовних труднощів автентичних аудіо/відеоматеріалів та розробки завдань до організації навчання аудіювання за межами аудиторії та перевірки розуміння студентами прослуханого/переглянутого матеріалу. Гіпотеза дослідження полягає в тому, що завдяки підвищенню цифрової грамотності викладачів та студентів у результаті ЕДО аудіювання можна практикувати в асинхронному форматі як самостійну діяльність. Це надало б студентам певної автономії та додатковий час для відтворення інформації в усній формі в синхронному режимі. Автори провели опитування 75 -ти студентів мовних спеціальностей трьох українських університетів, щоб виявити та проаналізувати рівень сприйняття студентами онлайн навчання, уподобання студентів щодо самостійного аудіювання (СА) (теми, типи текстів, джерела тощо), а також їх ставлення до організації СА за межами аудиторії (частота СА, тривалість текстів тощо). Результати опитування, представлені у цій статті, допомогли авторам окреслити параметри СА, корисні для розвитку вмінь студентів в аудіюванні, а також розробити ефективну методику навчання СА.

Ключові слова: навчання розуміння на слух; онлайн навчання; самостійне слухання. distance education independent

Introduction

Problem statement. Listening, which is the primary mother tongue skill that develops naturally during individuals' early life, appears to be notoriously demanding in L2 acquisition. Building listening skills in the classroom environment is fraught with multiple difficulties that range from issues linked to psychology of listening as a mental process to the issues of facilitating a quality presentation of audio/video texts including rate of speech and number of replays.

Analysis of recent research and publications. Being referred to as "a problematic skill" [1], as "a Cinderella skill" which "all too often has been overlooked by its elder sister: speaking" [2], listening has been addressed in a relatively limited number of theoretical studies (D. Nunan [3], A. Anderson and T. Lynch [4], G. Buck [5], J. Field [1], [6], T. Lynch [7], P. Ur [8]). Although evidently under-researched by theoreticians, this skill is considered in detail in the CEFR 2020 [9] and is included in all current language curricula. It is taught and assessed in the classroom on a day-to-day basis and therefore should not be overlooked by both theoreticians and practitioners.

With the pandemic-forced transition to remote instruction in 2020, teachers from across the globe had to adjust their teaching strategies to the new online mode. Clearly, this mode has affected the teaching of all four skills [10], introducing essential changes to the teaching content and its delivery as well as to the assessment for and of learning. Researchers across the globe responded to the issues raised by the emergency distance education (EDE) exploring this phenomenon from multiple perspectives [11].

The development of L2 listening skills unfolds on the basis of a complex of intertwined physiological and psychological mechanisms/processes that make listening "the most difficult skill to teach" [12]. The primary challenge confronted by teachers of listening pertains to the selection of audio/video texts, which are to be further framed as meaningful and exciting classroom activities. Text selection procedures have been addressed by every instructor and/or researcher seeking to teach listening, of no exception are the authors of this article R. Radchuk (Vikovych) [13] and Y. Trykashna [14].

Another area of concern for practitioners relates to tackling linguistic and conceptual complexities of authentic audio/video materials. Universally accepted is the necessity to engage students in pre-listening activities whose purpose is to activate students' schemata, psychological mechanisms such as long-term memory and anticipation, as well as actuate their background language knowledge and skills. Among a plethora of tasks a teacher needs to solve on the preparation stage R. Blake points to deciding "which words are to be glosse d, what cultural information is essential to understanding the video, which pragmatic and sociolinguistic considerations are assumed to be common knowledge for the listener, and, most importantly, what follow-up activities can be generated beyond the mere act of aural comprehension so as to continue to put into practice the specific language routines learned during the listening activities" [10, p.132].

Although certain happy solutions to efficient application of internet resources were offered to the technology-literate teachers within Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) approach by P. Donaldson and A. Haggstorm [16], K. Kohn [17], E.A. Hellmich [18], these solutions remain the province of professionals united in special interest groups (e.g., CALL SIG of the Japan Association of Language Teaching, or European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning). The technological innovations offered by CALL have been applied in teaching listening skills by H. Nachoua [19], H. Meihamiet [20], W. Yaiche [21], K. Khoiriyah [22], but they have not as yet reached a broad community of practicing teachers, probably because this process requires major reformation of the syllabi and approaches to instruction [15].

Apart from application of technologies, teaching listening has yet another unresolved issue immediately related to language pedagogy. This refers to checking students' comprehension upon listening/viewing. The approach to comprehension check via setting post-listening tasks in the format of tests has created an impression that listening is not taught but only tested [15]. In cases when listening comprehension is chosen to be checked in the whole-class or small-team discussion, measuring the outcomes of listening is downplayed in favour of the outcomes of speaking produced in the discussion (e.g. R. Vikovych [13]). As a result of such speculations, assessment of listening should be made consistent with the objectives of teaching this skill and, additionally, the optimal formats of assessment should be empirically established [23]. On the whole, the mentioned challenges are only a few of those typically encountered by practicing teachers.

No one of the authors of this article had been experienced in on-line instruction before the EDE, so like thousands of our colleagues, we had to struggle with the dramatic transformations in our professional setting to maintain appropriate instruction. However, the shared research interest - teaching and assessing listening comprehension - urged us to critically evaluate the new situation and the affordances it has provided as far as teaching of the skill based on and inseparable from internet technologies is concerned. The hypothesis that we developed is as follows: given the enhanced digital literacy of both teachers and learners as a result of EDE, listening could be practiced in the asynchronous format as independent activity. This would allow the learners a certain degree of autonomy and would free up the virtual contact time for practicing oral production and interaction in the synchronous mode. The development of this hypothesis led us to setting the following research questions (RQ) for the preliminary phase of the study:

Questionnaire. Overall, the questionnaire intended to find out the attitude of students of Linguistics to on-line instruction. Specifically, it aimed to elicit the platforms and websites that the students became familiar with and tended to use during EDE. More importantly, we sought to elicit and analyze students' perceptions of the on-line instruction effects on a number of selected language skills, students' preferences in independent listening in terms of topics, text types, and sources as well as their views on organization of listening beyond the classroom. The data obtained during the preparatory phase of the study were to be used as a base for the further developed methods of implementing and assessing independent listening.

The questionnaire consisted of 10 questions including seven selected response questions, two open-ended and one question requesting rank-ordering.

Participants. The participants in the survey were 75 students of three Ukrainian universities (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Lviv Polytechnic National University and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv). Participation in the survey was anonymous and voluntary. The questionnaire was formulated in English although the students were allowed to answer the open-ended questions in their mother tongue to ensure their full answers. Nonetheless, nearly all of the participants (95%) preferred to present their views in English.

Findings

The resolution of RQ1 was based on the answers to Q1-4. Question 1 purported to elicit information about the students' attitude towards online instruction, in particular its advantages and challenges. Open-ended format of the question provided students' expanded answers. The advantageous aspects of distance learning were demonstrated through a total of 35 comments, the disadvantageous aspects - through 30 comments, and the option "not at all" got 14 responses.

The main arguments that the respondents gave in favour of distance learning were: sparing time on commuting to university in favour of spending more time for self-study; feeling more comfortable and safe studying from home during the pandemic; opportunity to attend (online) classes even if they were sick and could not leave home. Some respondents presume that students' attendance has increased due to online learning, e.g., "Even with the extensive use of technology, I've become more organized, responsible, and self-disciplined. I have already adapted to distance learning, and it is very convenient for me. In my opinion, I master the material well". However, having mentioned advantageous aspects of distance learning 5% of the students point out that they would go for offline learning.

Among the challenges and drawbacks of learning English online the majority of the respondents noted technical issues, such as poor Internet connection and audibility, possibility of cheating, as well as lack of live communication between teacher and students, e.g. "There's no live communication; sometimes technologies let down and due to technical problems you miss a class. Assessment is unfair sometimes as some students cheat copying or reading from the screen".

Another focus of the questionnaire was language skills that had been positively/negatively affected by online instruction. Thus, Question 2 purported to elicit the degree of satisfaction with online learning of such skills as reading, writing, speaking and listening. The data of descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1.

Perceived positive impact of on-line instruction on skills development