The Importance Of Listening Strategies

. listening strategies

This chapter reviews the relationship between strategies of listening on EFL learnerns and their willingness to speak to other people. The definitions and classification language learning strategies

Listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is defined as a complex and active mental process used in an effort to interpret meaning from oral text.

Listening is a primary skill for language input. A number of researchers argue that listening plays an essential role in language development and second language acquisition ( Dunkel, 1991; Feyten, 1991; Krashen, 1985; Richards, 2005; Rost, 2002; Vandergrift 1999). Dunkel (1986) argues that “the key to achieving proficiency in speaking is developing proficiency in listening

they don’t know the meaning of some words that speaker says. On the other hand if the speaker does not appeal to the listener, it will not attract attention and the listener will not show an interest in listening.

Next problem is the difference in culture. When the speaker speaks about a specific subject, even if the listener knows all the terms used, he/she will not understand the speaker words yet.

In order to overcome these problems, the learners should use some techniques to enhance their listening skill; these techniques known as “listening strategies”.

Some studies write about listening strategies. Oxford (1990 ) defines language learning as the techniques that learners utilize to improve the use of the target language information.

O malley & chamot (1989) categorize listening strategies into two groups.one is cognitive, and second is metacognitive.

Cognitive strategies are techniques which use to solve listening problems and facilitate the learning; that is involved bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up means that learner uses linguistic to find and solve the meaning of content; but top-down means student uses their knowledge to understand the meaning. (Vandergrift,

Willingness to communicate

(wtc) was developed to denote a consistent tendency of communication behaviours in a given native language (L1) across interpersonal communication situations (McCroskey & Richmond, 1990; McCroskey, 1997). McCroskey argued that WTC in L1 is dependent on two precedents: Communication Apprehension (CA) and Self-Percieved Communication Competence (SPCC) (McCroskey, 1997).

CA is “an individual s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person to person” (McCroskey, 1997, p.82). those with a higher degree in CA tend to have less contact with others. Many studies have shown that anxiety has a negative effect on the performance of foreign language and second language learners (Horwit et al., 1986; MacIntyre and Gardner, 1989).

In the other hand research has shown that WTC is more related to SPCC (McCroskey, 1997).

Teachers and environment effect on learner s WTC. They can give motivation to the learners. Teachers behave in a way to get some reward or avoid a possible punishment. Another thing is self-esteem. Brown defined self-esteem as “the most pervasive aspect of any human behavior”(2000, p. 145). So it effects on