The Impact of Explicit Teaching of Listening Strategies on Iranian EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Author : Tayebeh Amirian and Majid Farahian, (Iran)

Abstract                                                                           

This study aimed at investigating the impact of explicit teaching of listening strategies on Iranian female EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners’ listening comprehension. Fifty students who were studying at a language school were given a listening test adopted from TOEFL Actual Tests. The purpose of this test was to divide all the participants into three low, intermediate, and high groups in terms of their listening proficiency level. To do so, the mean and standard deviation of the gained scores were calculated. Based on the results, thirty students were selected as intermediate. Students were divided in two groups, the experimental and control group. The experimental group received the treatment in the form of three main types of strategies, meta-cognitive, cognitive and social/ affective strategies. After thirteen sessions, each session taking one hour and thirty minutes, a post-test, the same as the listening test which was used as the pre-test, was given to all participants. The results from the T-test indicated that explicit teaching of strategies helped learners improve their listening comprehension.

Keywords: EFL learners; Learning strategies; Cognitive, metacognitive, and social-affective strategies