Positive Effects Of Listening Comprehension

1.1 Introduction

No one can ignore the remarkable role of listening in our perceptions of the world around us and in what we know as communication. Unless what is said is comprehended efficiently by the audience, we cannot claim that the communicative goal is reached (Rivers, 1983). Numerous mental processes are involved in decoding the spoken language and giving meaning to what is heard known as listening comprehension strategies. Acknowledging and enabling students to use these strategies more efficiently would ease the comprehension process and would make listeners much more competent and elf confident. Goh (2008) mentions some positive effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on students’ listening performance asserting that teaching

Similar to the essential role listening plays in L1 acquisition, it is certainly not less important in second language (L2) learning (Rost, 2011). Due to the growing emphasis on communicative competence in language learning and teaching in recent decades, more and more studies were carried out to enhance the teaching and learning of listening. First of all let’s take a look at what is exactly listening comprehension? Definitions of listening comprehension have been stated by many researchers (e.g., Anderson, & Lynch, 1988; Brown, 2007a; Brown, & Yule, 1983; Rost, 2011). For instance, Brown and Yule (1983b) described listening comprehension as a process of understanding, repeating what was heard, figuring out the meaning of an exact word, and then knowing what an expression refers to. Rost (2011) explained listening comprehension as a process of attempting to understand what spoken language refers to in one’s experience or in the real

Listening is now greatly known as a crucial skill that enables language acquisition happen, both in mother tongue and in second or foreign language (Rost a, 2002). In second language learning, since early 1980s several writers and researchers suggested that listening had a very important role (Winitz, 1981). This prominence on listening was connected to a corresponding fall of the importance given to speaking in the early stages of learning, with several writers saying that speaking early in a course should be strongly discouraged, besides the importance of listening was noticed when researchers began to understand the significance of listening comprehension in language development and placed more value on listening skills in their language instruction approaches (Nation & Newton, 2008, pp. 37-38). However, listening is the skill for language learners that make responsibilities for them, because they must at the same time store information in their short term memory and also try to understand the information. Hence, regardless of the recognition of the critical role it plays in communication, there is much to be understood about the processes involved in language