Listening comprehension is not innate to elementary school students: they need to be taught listening strategies

ABSTRACT

This study investigates what early elementary students do during a new listening task and the effects of teaching listening strategies. An instructional programme was implemented in four classes of 6- to 7- year-olds in low socioeconomic index schools in French-speaking Belgium. In three classes, there was explicit teaching of listening strategies, but not in the fourth class. Twelve students (three students with different learning profiles in each class) were observed and interviewed while performing two text/image association listening tasks. A qualitative analysis was conducted on the videos of students at work and the metacognitive interviews with them. All students had broadly the same type of difficulties with the task the first time. When the task was repeated, the students with average and high-performance profiles used the instructed listening strategies and were successful. Struggling students and those with an average profile who did not receive listening strategies instruction acted similarly, and were unsuccessful both times. The study shows a need to teach listening strategies to students, regardless of their learning profile. It also invites further research on listening strategies, their teaching and use by students.

KEYWORDS:

• oral comprehension
• listening skills
• teaching listening strategies
• elementary school

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nathalia Lyon Lopez for her involvement in the data collection in the school where the strategies were taught.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Socio-economic index of 1 (lowest socio-economic index). The socio-economic index of a school is determined by a decree organizing a differentiated environment to ensure that each student has equal opportunities for social emancipation in a high-quality educational environment. The index is calculated by considering a total of 11 variables based on five main categories: per capita income, level of education, unemployment rate, professional activities and housing comfort. A formula is used, weighting each of these indices, to arrive at a synthetic index attributed to each student according to his or her sector of residence (De Villers and Desagher 2011).