Strategy training in the classroom to improve listening skills

Abstract

Mexican students learning English as a second language (ESL) face difficulties in listening due to factors such as anxiety and lack of strategies to deal with listening. Some listening training sessions to provide learners with memory, cognitive, and compensation strategies like identifying key words, getting the main idea, making predictions, inferences that help them to comprehend the speaker’s message and to manage this problem took place and results are reported here. The aim is to investigate whether providing explicit strategy training helps to improve listening skills, and how much influence the training has in the Intervention Group (IG) in comparison to two control groups (CGs). To that end, the IG and the two CGs were tested before and after receiving training and the scores were computed using a correlated samples t-test (t) as well as ANOVA (F) - statistics of group differences. The ANOVA (F) outcomes indicated non- statistically significant differences in the three groups for listening skills. Correlated samples t-tests (t) findings showed non significant results for two groups (intervention group (IG) and control group one (CG1)) while for control group two (CG2) was the opposite. The results suggest that explicit strategy training is not the only factor that affects listening improvement. A positive increase in the use of memory, cognitive, and compensation strategies was found.