Thai EFL Undergraduate Students’ Use of Listening Strategies and Listening Problems in Comprehending Academic Lectures
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine Thai EFL undergraduate students’ use of listening strategies and problems in comprehending academic English lectures. The main research instrument used in this study was a listening strategies questionnaire. The questionnaire contained 57 five-point Likert scale items relating to three main types of listening strategies, namely metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective. This questionnaire had to be completed by participants after listening to the lecture, including mentioning problems from their listening. The number of participants was 30 – all third-year students in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand. The results showed that the participants’ frequently-used strategies were cognitive strategies of Imagery, Inferencing/Guessing, Association/Elaboration, and metacognitive strategies of Monitoring. The frequently- used socio-affective strategies were Encouragement, Monitoring Emotions/Lowering Anxiety, and Questioning/ Clarification. Furthermore, data from the questionnaire revealed that participants’ listening problems concerning the lecture included their inability to catch the main point or/and the keyword, to keep up with the teacher’s speech rate, and to understand the teacher’s English accent. The benefits of the obtained data from this study could be utilized by teachers to train or guide their students on employing listening strategies to help them perceive and deal with listening problems in academic lectures more effectively.
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