Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 University of Tehran
2 Shahid Chamran University, Ahvaz, Iran
Abstract
This study examined the effect of two different authentic topic-familiar rhetorical L2 listening tasks (expository and argumentative) differing in reasoning demand on the listening comprehension scores of a number of Iranian EFL advanced learners. Sixty homogeneous advanced learners were recruited based on their performance on an English Language Proficiency test (Fowler & Coe, 1976). Then they took a researcher-made test of the two rhetorical listening tasks. The results showed statistically insignificant effect of topic-familiar rhetorical listening tasks on the participants’ listening scores. However, learners’ performance on familiar expository tasks was statistically, though not meaningfully, better than their counterparts’ performance on the argumentative tasks. It was also shown that general, vague topic familiarity cannot exclusively help affect listening quality, but it seems different rhetorical listening tasks would expose more cognitive and linguistic complexity demands on the participants’ performance. The main implication would be that Iranian advanced language learners need more precise instruction on different rhetorical tasks in conjunction with elaborated social and cultural background knowledge of topics. In addition, participants’ general proficiency level should be cautiously construed as their proficiency in listening skill, too.
Keywords
Aidininlou, N. A, Nasab, M. B., & Motlagh, S.F.P. (2012). The impact of content related information on Iranian EFL learners’ listening comprehension. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, 3(10), 1-12.
Anderson, J. R. (2004). Cognitive psychology and its implications (6th ed.). New York: Worth.
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Anderson, A., & Lynch, T. (1988). Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Andrews, R. (2010). Argumentation in higher education: Improving practice through theory and research. New York: Routledge.
Askehave, I. & Swales, J. (2001). Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution. Applied Linguistics, 21, 195-212.
Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language testing in practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bacon, S. M. (1992). Phases of listening to authentic input in Spanish: A descriptive study. Foreign Language Annals, 25, 317-334.
Baddeley, A. D, Eldridge, M., Lewis, Y., & Thomson, N. (1984). Attention and retrieval from long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 518–540.
Bain, A. (1967). English composition and rhetoric (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton & company.
Bloomfield, A. Wayland, S. Rhoades, E. Blodgett, A. Linck, J. & Ross, S. (2010). What makes listening difficult? Factors affecting second language listening comprehension. Unpublished Research. University of Maryland. Center for Advanced Study of Language.
Bodie, G., Worthington, D., Imhof, M., & Cooper, L. (2008). What would a unified field of listening look like? A proposal linking past perspectives and future endeavors. The International Journal of Listening, 22, 103–122.
Brooks, C. & Warren, R. P. (1979). Modern rhetoric. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Brown, G. (1995). Speakers, listeners and communication: Cambridge University Press.
Buck, G. (2001). Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burns, M. K., Dean V.J., Foley, S. (2004). Pre-teaching unknown key words with incremental rehearsal to improve reading fluency and comprehension with children identified as reading disabled. Journal of School Psychology, 42(4), 303-14.
Carrel, P.L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19 (4), 727-753.
Carroll, J. (1977). On learning from being told. In M.C. Wittrock (ed.), Learning and instruction (2nd ed., pp. 496-512). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Carroll, D.W. (2008). Psychology of Language (5ed). London: Thomson Wadsworth
Carrell, P., & Eisterhold, J. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 553–573.
Chiang, C. S., & Dunkel, P. (1992). The effect of speech modification, prior knowledge, and listening proficiency on EFL lecture learning. TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), 345–374.
Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (Rev. ed.). New York: Academic Press.
Cook, V. D. (1975). Strategies in the comprehension of relative clauses. Language and Speech, 18 (3), 204-212.
Chang, C. (2006). Effects of Topic Familiarity and Linguistic Difficulty on the Reading Strategies and Mental Representations of Nonnative Readers of Chinese. Journal of Language and Learning, 4(4), 172-198.
Cumming, A. (1989). Writing expertise and language proficiency. Language Learning, 39, 81-141.
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R., & Yuan, F. (2004). The effects of planning on fluency, complexity, and accuracy in second language narrative writing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 59–84.
Fowler, W.S., Coe, N., 1976. Nelson English Language Tests. Bulter & Tannerltad, London.
Freedle, R., & Kostin, I. (1996). The prediction of TOEFL listening comprehension item difficulty for minitalk passages: Implications for construct validity. (TOEFL Research Report No. 56). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Gabrielson, S., Gordon, B., & Engelhard, G. (1995). The effects of task choice on the quality of writing obtained in a statewide assessment. Applied Measurement in Education, 8, 273–290.
Goh, C. C. M. (2000). A cognitive perspective on language learners' listening comprehension problems. System, 28, 55–75.
Haberlandt, K., Berian, C., & Sanderson, J. (1980). The episode schema in story processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 635-650.
Hamp-Lyons, L., & Mathias, S. P. (1994). Examining expert judgments of task difficulty on essay tests. Journal of Second Language Writing, 3, 85–96.
Hartman, D. K., & Hartman, J. A. (1993). Reading across Texts: Expanding the role of the reader. The Reading Teacher, 47(3), 202-211.
Hatim, B., Mason, I. (1997). The translator as communicator. London: Routledge
Hayati, M. (2009). The Impact of Cultural Knowledge on Listening Comprehension of EFL Learners. English Language Teaching, 2(3), 144-152.
Huebner, T. (1995). The effect of overseas language programs. In B. Freed (Ed.). Second Language Acquisition in a study Abroad Context (pp.171-193). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kaprova, L. V. (1999). Considering the following when selecting and using authentic materials TESOL Matters, l9 (2), 15-16.
Kobeleva, P. (2012). Second language listening and unfamiliar proper names: comprehension barrier? RELC Journal, 43(1), 83 –98.
Kuhn, D., & Franklin, S. (2006). The second decade: What develops (and how)? In W. Damon, R. M. Lerner, D. Kuhn, & R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 2): Cognition, perception, and language (6th ed., pp. 953-993). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Lantoff, J. (1999). Second culture acquisition: cognitive considerations. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Leeser, M. J. (2007). Learner-based factors in L2 reading comprehension and processing grammatical form: Topic familiarity and working memory. Language Learning, 57(2), 229–270.
Long, M. (1985). Input and second language acquisition theory. In S. Gass &C. Madden (Eds), Input in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Long, D. R. (1990). What you don’t know can’t help you: An exploratory study of background knowledge and second language listening comprehension. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, 65-80.
Lu, X. (2011). A corpus-based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college level ESL writers’ language development. TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 36-62.
Mackey, A. & Gass, S. (2005). Second language research: methodology and design. Lawrens Erlbaum Associates, Publisher: Mahwah, New Jersey.
Markham, P. L., & Latham, M. (1987). The influence of religion-specific background knowledge on listening comprehension of adult second language students. Language Learning, 37, 157-170.
Martínez, A. C. (2013). The use of various assessment tasks in the analysis of the effect of prior knowledge and interest on l2 reading comprehension. RESLA, 26, 289-306.
Martos, R. M. (2004). Second language acquisition, psychological factors, cognitive factors. Aldadis.net La revista de educación, 9, 51-54.
Meyer, B. J. F., & Freedle, R. O. (1984). Effects of discourse type on recall. American Educational Research Journal, 21(1), 121– 143.
Mueller, G. A. (1980). Visual contextual cues and listening comprehension: An experiment.Modern Language Journal, 64, 335-340.
Nation, I. S. P. & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. Routledge.
Nunan, D. (1998). Approaches to teaching listening in language classroom. In proceedings of the 1997 Korea TESOL Conference. Taejon, Korea: KOTESOL.
Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.
Pulido, D. (2007). The Effects of Topic Familiarity and Passage Sight Vocabulary on L2 Lexical Inferencing and Retention through Reading. Applied Linguistics, 28(1), 66-86.
Ravid, D. (2004). Emergence of linguistic complexity in written expository texts: Evidence from later language acquisition. In D. Ravid & H. Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot (Eds.), Perspectives on language and language development (pp. 337–355). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Reynolds, D. W. (2002, December). Linguistic and cognitive development in the writing of middle-grade English language learners. Southwest Journal of Linguistics.
Richard, J. C. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, P. (2010). Situating and distributing cognition across task demands: The SSARC model of pedagogic task sequencing. In M. Putz, & L. Sicola (Eds.), Cognitive processing in second language acquisition: Inside the learner's mind (pp. 239-264). Amsterdam /Philadelphia PA: John Benjamins.
Rost, M. (1994). On-line summaries as representations of lecture understanding. In Flowerdew, J. (ed). Academic listening. Research perspectives, 93-127. Cambridge: CUP.
Rost, M. (2005). L2 Listening. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Second Language Teaching and Learning. (pp. 503– 528). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Rubin, J. (1994). A review of second language listening comprehension research. The Modern Language Journal, 78(2), 199–221.
Sadeghi, B., Hassani, M., & Noory, H. (2014). The Effect of Teaching Different Genres on Listening Comprehension Performance of Iranian EFL Students. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(3), 517-523.
Sadighi, F. and Zare, S. (2002). Is listening comprehension influenced by the background knowledge of the learners? A case study of Iranian EFL learners. The linguistics Journal, 1(3), 110-126.
Schmidt-Rinehart, B. C. (1994). The effects of topic familiarity on second language listening comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 78(2), 179-189.
Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford University Press.
Skehan, P. & Foster, P. (2001). Cognition and tasks. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 181-203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, C. S. (2003). Modes of discourse: The local structure of texts. Cambridge. University Press.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vandergrift, L. (2007). Recent developments in second and foreign language listening comprehension research. Language Teaching, 40 (3), 191–210.
Vidal-abarca, E., Reyes, H., Gilabert, R., Calpe, J., Soria, E., Graesser, A. (2002). ETAT: Expository text analysis tool. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 2002, 34 (1), 93-107.
Waters, G. S., & Caplan, D. (1996). The measurement of verbal working memory capacity and its relation to reading comprehension. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49 (1), 51-74.
Weigle, S. C. (2002). Assessing writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yildirim, K., Yildiz, M., Ate, S., & Rasinski, T. (2010). School students’ listening and reading comprehension levels with regard to text types. Theory & Practice 10 (3), 1879-1891
Yang, W. (2009). Topic effect on writing fluency and linguistic complexity of ESL writers and predictive values of writing fluency and linguistic complexity of ESL writers on writing scores (Unpublished course paper). Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA.
Yang, W. (2014). Mapping the Relationships among the Cognitive Complexity of Independent Writing Tasks, L2 Writing Quality, and Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency of L2 Writing. Unpublished Dissertation. Georgia State University.
Ying-hui, H. (2006). An investigation into the task features affecting EFL listening comprehension test performance. The Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 8(2), 33–54.
Yun, Y. (2005). Factors explaining EFL learners' performance in a timed essay writing test: A structural equation modeling approach (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois.
)