The impact training on improving the English language listening skills

Abstract EN

This study aims at examining the effect ofpractice and training on the improvement of the students’ English listening skills at the university level.

The researcher conducted an experiment in a listening course for English majors at Al-Quds open University, ?alestine in the second semester 2010 -2011 on a group of (74) students.

The method used was providing intensive practice and training by listening to all types of listening materials including a lot of on-line materials, media, and by using various types of lis-level, listening is not practiced sufficiently either (Farris,1993).

It is quite known that listening is the most important method of communication It is closely related to speaking since we cannot speak well if we do not comprehend what the speaker says.(Moses, (2011).

This study therefore presents the need for more emphasis on listening comprehension in English language learning/ teaching.

According to Mor-ley (1991, p.82), “We can expect to listen t^ce as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.” Until recently, there has been little research interest in the listening skill (Goh,1997 ) There is much more research on reading, writing or speaking.

Some of the reasons for this lack of research interest come from the fact that speaking was always considered a more “valuable” skill to focus on in the classroom; that researchers and teachers have often considered that listening was something which could just be “pieked up”; and as rese^chers and teaehers had not been taught listening themselves, they saw little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teaching listening (Miller, GO^Fortunately, listening comprehension has received considerable attention in the fields of applied linguistics, ^^holinguistics and second language pedagogy during the last two decades (Anderson ه Lynch, ( 1988); Rost, (1990); Underwood, ( 1989)).

Resuits of the large body of research have shown that listening is not a passive process in which the listener simply receives a spoken message, but rather a tening strategies.

Apre- test at the beginning of the semester was given and the final exam was used as a post- test.

The scores of the two tests were compared to check the development of the students’ listening abilities.

The hours of training for each student were calculated and the correlation between the hours ©f training and the improvement in the achievement in the post- test was analyzed using the suitable statistical methods.

The experiment showed significant improvement in the performance of the students which varied in degree according to the amount of practice each student received.

The resuits showed also that the more practice in listening comprehension the students get, the more improvement they achieve.

Hence, the study recommends that practice in this important skill should be encouraged and that training in using the suitable listening strategies is essential for improving the level of the students’ listening skill.

It is also recommended that teachers should select appropriate, various & interesting listening materials to help the students achieve better results.

Key words : receptive skills , productive skills, listening strategies,