The Effects of Listening Journals in the Development of University Students’ Listening Skills

This paper presents the implications of the use of listening journals in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, exploring the results and difficulties faced by students after the implementation of this activity. Considering that the use of different listening materials can facilitate the students’ development of listening skills and reduce their resistance and anxiety, the purpose of this action research was to check whether listening journals could reduce students’ resistance when doing listening exercises. A questionnaire was used in order to analyze how this activity affected learners, and then the data collected were described and analyzed. It can be concluded that the activity affected students in a positive way and made them feel more capable of attending a lecture in English. The results show that they showed less resistance to the listening skills as they felt more comfortable, confident, and prepared to attend lectures and classes in English. Mariana Ruiz Nascimento THE EFFECTS OF LISTENING JOURNALS University of Oregon 2018 152 Introduction Teaching listening in a foreign language has always been a challenging experience for both teachers and students. The fact that people assume it to be a skill that is naturally acquired leads to activities that assess listening without teaching it properly, and consequently it receives less attention in the classroom (Schmidt, 2016 & Thron, 2006). When it comes to the university context, listening plays an important role. Many subjects in international universities are taught in English and they require students to understand and interact in specific genres, such as lectures and seminars. However, many students in Brazil arrive at universities with an unsatisfactory level of proficiency in English, which can prevent them from reaching a high level of academic performance. One thing that I have noticed as an English teacher is that students consider listening the most difficult skill, and they often show some resistance during listening activities. It is common to hear them complaining about the listening part of an exam, or affirm that they do not understand what the speaker says, and even that some accents are extremely difficult to understand. These difficulties certainly frustrate and discourage learners from studying and improving their listening skills. In order to reduce students’ resistance when doing listening exercises, I developed and implemented listening journals (LJ) during an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. Then, the following question was developed: Can the use of listening journals in English classes reduce university students’ resistance to listening exercises? I start from a hypothesis that the use of different listening materials can support the development of student listening skills and reduce their resistance and anxiety. This action research aimed to verify whether listening journals could reduce students’ resistance to listening Mariana Ruiz Nascimento THE EFFECTS OF LISTENING JOURNALS University of Oregon 2018 153 comprehension, making them feel more comfortable when listening to audio or watching videos in English. Therefore, this paper aims to present the implications of the use of listening journals in three groups of students, including the results of a questionnaire administered to students. Literature Review Some aspects of current practices for teaching listening are unsatisfactory and do not attend to learners’ needs. As reported by Thorn (2006), listening texts are scripted and performed by actors in a recording studio and therefore do not resemble the spoken English students will encounter outside the classroom. In recent years there have been moves to incorporate more authentic-sounding listening texts in course books, but these are still a shadow of the real thing (p. 66). In the same way, Wolvin (1977) mentioned the lack of listening training in higher education. Evidently, there is also a lack of research on listening comprehension and a need for systematic investigation, which makes it the least understood aspect of language teaching (AlNouh & Abdul-Kareem, 2017). Academic Listening According to Wilson (2008), when compared to general English, ESP classes—which include English for Academic Purposes (EAP)—require a different approach. ESP classes often do not follow a generalized grammatical syllabus, they are goal-oriented in order to meet student’s needs, tend to be for adults who have at least an intermediate level in English, and the learner and the teacher work in a collaborative way. Regarding the listening skill, it is important to use authentic materials and tailor them for student’s needs. ESP teachers who want to improve their student’s listening skills need to find appropriate passages and prepare a pedagogical Mariana Ruiz Nascimento THE EFFECTS OF LISTENING JOURNALS University of Oregon 2018 154 sequence for them. As much as possible, teachers need to collaborate, sharing and storing texts, worksheets, and recordings so they have a bank of materials. Academic listening is mainly concerned with the transmission and acquisition of knowledge, and it also includes the transmission and comprehension of attitudes, beliefs, values, culture and body language (Flowerdew & Miller, 2014). Flowerdew & Miller (2014) pointed out the main issues that students deal with in an academic context include adapting to the speed of extensive monologue; dealing with different lecturer accents and a heavy vocabulary load; recognizing the overall structure of the lecture, its main ideas and supporting details; taking effective notes; and dealing with examples used by the international lecturers to illustrate their main points. Al-Nouh & Abdul-Kareem (2017) explored EFL college female undergraduate students’ perceptions of the difficulties of comprehending academic English lectures, and they found that students experienced difficulties with unknown vocabulary and speed while listening to academic English lectures, even those who rated their listening proficiency as “very good” and “excellent.” In addition, the authors concluded that non-linguistic factors have greater impact on students’ listening comprehension than linguistic problems, yet non-linguistic factors are usually ignored by teachers. Listening Journals A listening journal is “a book in which students record their extensive and intensive listening practices, as well as reflections on their listening experiences” (Schmidt, 2016, p. 3), and some researchers used listening journals as a tool to develop students’ listening skills and raise students’ awareness (Fauzanna, 2017; Galloway & Rose, 2014). Mariana Ruiz Nascimento THE EFFECTS OF LISTENING JOURNALS University of Oregon 2018 155 Fauzanna (2017) aimed to evaluate the usefulness of a listening journal to improve students’ extensive listening practices at an Indonesian university. The findings show that the habit of reflecting on their learning helped students to improve their listening comprehension, especially with vocabulary and pronunciation. In addition, the use of authentic materials was engaging and provided a variety of topics. Galloway & Rose (2014) utilized listening journals as an autonomous learning tool to introduce Japanese students to the diversity of English. In this activity, students listened to speakers from English-speaking backgrounds for around ten minutes each week. They reflected on what they heard, noting the speakers’ nationality and the reasons for their choice, and made extended reflective comments. The results suggest that listening journals can be a useful tool to show that mutual intelligibility is more important than native-like proficiency. The authors also concluded that increased exposure to the diversity of English can encourage students to see themselves as competent multilingual English speakers, not as inferior non-native language speakers. Lastly, according to Goh (2014), listening proficiency depends on the speed and accuracy of the processing of spoken input, so “an important aim of listening instruction is to help learners enhance the interconnected networks of their cognitive processes though better linguistic knowledge and effective use of skills and strategies” (p. 86). Although teachers cannot directly manage these processes, they can provide the necessary conditions for students to learn about these processes and practice them, which can help the improvement of their performance. Mariana Ruiz Nascimento THE EFFECTS OF LISTENING JOURNALS University of Oregon 2018 156 Methods Research Context and Description of Participants This action research was carried out at a public higher education institution located in Minas Gerais state, Brazil. It took place in the program Language Without Borders (Idiomas sem Fronteiras, in Portuguese), which aims at encouraging professors, scholars, staff and students to learn foreign languages (the program includes English, Spanish, French, Portuguese for Foreigners, Japanese, German, and Italian) as well as providing a comprehensive change in the teaching of foreign languages in Brazilian universities. This program was developed by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), and it plays an important role as a teaching development program in Language Teaching undergraduate courses in many universities in Brazil. Language Without Borders is also part of the internationalization project of Brazilian universities. Considering the aims of the program, the English team offers free ESP courses for the university community, focusing mainly on academic English. One of the courses offered by them is “Listening Comprehension: Lectures,” which was the course chosen for this action research. This course was 32 hours long, with classes twice a week (2 hours per class), and it was offered in the second semester of 2017. The objective was to improve students’ listening comprehens