Second Language Listening Strategy Research: Methodological Challenges and Perspectives

Exploring the relationship between listening development and strategy use

“…As a means of eliciting data on strategy use, a verbal report is not without its critics, some of whom claim that it does not fully reflect 'internal reality' (Seliger, 1983: 180), and there may be some forgetting of information regarding strategy use by learners as they complete the task which may in addition be distorted by the process of verbalization (for a more detailed discussion, see Macaro et al, 2007). While acknowledging these shortcomings, and as commented on in Santos et al (2008), we would argue that verbal reports give a fuller picture of strategy use than other methods such as questionnaires can do, and that the measures we took in allowing learners to choose when to verbalize, when to rewind and pause, combined with some but limited prompting and training, went a certain way towards minimizing these shortcomings.…”

“…We thus endeavoured to ensure a certain uniformity in the fullness of the verbal reports given by each learner, although individual variation was impossible to avoid altogether, and indeed was an important aspect of the data. We also wanted to avoid what Macaro et al (2007, p. 167) call the 'artificially channeling' of learners' thoughts, which, they argue, can occur through extensive training in verbalization (see also Santos et al, 2008). Students had control of the tape recorder and were free to pause and rewind as they wished.…”

“…Participant and parental consent was obtained for all aspects of the study. For full details of the methodological considerations addressed in the study, see Santos et al (2008).…”

“…These were transcribed verbatim. After a preliminary qualitative analysis conducted by two researchers, a taxonomy of strategies was established (Appendix 2), partly based on definitions found in pre-existing taxonomies (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990;Vandergrift, 2003), but also incorporating new ones where the former did not adequately describe strategies found in the data (as outlined in Santos et al, 2008;Graham et al, 2010).…”

La enseñanza de la destreza auditiva en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera: percepciones, dificultades y efectos de la integración de la descodificación fonológica como medio para acelerar el desarrollo de la escucha

“…Otros investigadores también han encontrado una relación positiva entre estrategias metacognitivas y el desempeño en la escucha en una L2, aduciendo que esta conciencia metacognitiva puede mejorar la comprensión auditiva (Goh & Hu, 2014;Bozorgian, 2014, Rahimirad & Shams, 2014. No obstante, Bozorgian 2014 (Macaro, Graham, & Vanderplank, 2007); además resulta muy difícil comparar estudios que evaluan la competencia lingüística de diferentes maneras (Santos, Graham, & Vanderplank, 2008). Adicionalmente, Graham, Santos, & Vanderplank (2011), en un estudio realizado en Inglaterra con aprendices de Francés, observaron un uso no efectivo por parte de aprendices de bajo nivel de estrategias consideradas adecuadas para la escucha como por ejemplo el monitoreo, lo cual cuestiona la idea de la enseñanza a los aprendices menos competentes de estrategias que producen buenos resultados en los buenos oyentes.…”