Introduction

Listening comprehension is a primary process in understating the words of the speaker.  It is a complex communication process which requires instant thought and individual ability to construct the meaning.  The development of listening comprehension varies depending on the personal, social, and cultural experiences of the student. Effective listeners are able to recognise the speaker’s main points or ideas and identify the supporting details and examples.  Comprehensive listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying.  This involves understanding a speaker’s accent, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and meaning (Howatt and Dakin 1974). Listening comprehension is influenced by the listener’s world knowledge, linguistic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge.

This article tries to test the students’ comprehensive listening skills.  A short news story was played on an audio tape recorder.  Here is the transcript:

Airport Delays on the Rise

From a news story by CNN San Francisco News Reporter Greg Lefevre, January 2004

You often can't get there from here.  At least not on time.  Delays infuriate travellers, and cost the country billions in lost productivity.  A business traveller says, "Chicago's the worst, maybe New York."

An FAA study listed eleven major problems and proposed eleven solutions.  All problems are within the small world of air traffic control.  The various regions don't talk to each other enough.  Each region operates differently and the number of planes in so-called regional traffic is exploding.

In the first of eleven proposed solutions, an FAA national centre will seize control from the regions during heavy traffic or bad weather.  Jane Garvey of the FAA says, "The purpose of the command centre is to really make those decisions that affect the system in total."

Also, the FAA pledges again to upgrade its computers.  The booming economy has clogged the skies. Michael Barr is a safety expert at the University of Southern California: "We've got fares that are reduced. We've got more people that want to fly and we are actually saturating the air of the United States with air traffic."

An example of this is San Francisco International Airport, which is growing fast as a world-wide gateway and a as hub to a hugely expanded regional service.

Ron Wilson of the San Francisco International Airport says, "If we've got 16, 17, 18 aircraft, which is common, [all] departing at 8am in the morning the guy that is [on the] 18th [plane] is going, probably, to be 40 minutes late."

Jane Garvey says, "It's important to note that aviation is growing.  It's becoming a form of mass transportation for a number of people.  Our volume numbers are up and that's having an effect on the delay numbers as well."

Still weather causes about 70-percent of delays. T hen the FAA moves planes farther apart from the usual five miles to as much as 20 [miles].  The new rule may reduce that to 10 [miles]. But if the sky is already crowded, where do those planes go?

[A traveller says:] "Naturally, I think the more space between planes there is, the greater the safety factor that most people would assume exist".

The FAA calls it a fix mitigation, not a cure. Critics say the core problems remain: too many planes, too few controllers and too little modernization.

Following that, a questionnaire was distributed to the students. The questionnaire contained three items in order to test listening comprehension, namely recognition skill, reorganisation skill and inference skill.  One hundred students were tested, both boys and girls.  The data was analysed in a statistical manner comparing it gender-wise, and discovering the reasons for the errors committed, and then giving remedial measures.

---

Data Analysis

Recognition

Recognition concerns identifying words with their grammatical, syntactical and semantic features in the context in which they appear.  For a good understanding of a passage, the listener should know the meaning and the grammatical features of the particular words that occur in that passage.  In order to test the recognition skill, the following test item is used:

                                        Recognizing the main and specific information in the text.

                                        Listen to the following questions and circle the correct answers:

                                        1. What is the story about?

                                                      a) A weather problem

                                                      b) A traveller's problem

                                                      c) An airport problem

                                                     d) An aeroplane problem

                                        Expected response: Airport problem    

 

                                        2.  ___________ causes about 70% of airport delays.

                                                    a) Technology

                                                   b) Mass transportation

                                                   c) Aviation

                                                  d) The weather

                                        Expected response: Weather    

 

                                      3.  All the people that want to fly are _________ the air of the United States with air traffic.

                                                a) filling

                                                b) clogging

                                               c) saturating

                                        Expected response: saturating

 

                                    4.  A weak economy has caused more planes to be flying. True / False

                                        Expected answer: False        

  

                                    5.  How many aircrafts depart at 8 am?

                                            a) 40

                                            b) 16

                                            c) 17

                                            d) 18

                                       Expected response: 18

 

By analyzing the errors of both genders, the average percentage of comparative calculation is given below.  The overall error percentage of female students is 49.2%, and 50.8% for male students.  It should be noted that among the female students, no one answered question number four incorrectly.

It is suggested that teachers conduct recognition tests by using audio-visual listening materials to identify the main and specific information in the listening materials. This would be helpful in improving students’ listening comprehension skills.

 

Re-organization

Re-organizing the concepts and words found in a listening text is also considered to be one of the most important skills involved in the comprehension process.  Only when one could listen and comprehend the text fully might he get the intended meaning of the text.  One has to organize the facts to get the meaning in a rational way.           

                                        Arranging the facts in a sequence

                                       Task: Write the numbers of the sentences in order of sequence.

                                                1.     Airports are clogged with planes causing delays.

                                               2.     The FAA found reasons for delays and some solutions.

                                              3.     More and more people are using airplanes to travel.

                                             4.     The solutions are not a cure, but they should make the situation better.

                                            5.     The FAA did a study on air delays.

                                        Expected response: 2 4 1 5 3               

 

The number of errors in the students' responses to this exercise is considerably lower than in the other exercises.  The error percentage of the female students is 8.6% and 15% for the male students.  It should be noted that the female students performed well in this test, but it is clear that some of the students - both female and male - are still struggling to arrange the facts in a sequential order.  Another important thing is that the students do not correlate events which are given in the questionnaire and they put irrelevant numbers as answers. Teachers should pay special attention to enriching students’ listening comprehension skills.

 

Inference

Inference is the skill of associating related information that is not found in the text.  It stimulates you to think on your own about the given text.  In comprehension, the activity of inference plays an important role.  It is a higher order skill that demands linguistic knowledge and world experience.  To test the inferential ability of the students, the following exercise was adopted:

                                        Listen to the following questions and circle the correct answer. 

                                       1. Why do airport delays cost billions in lost productivity?

                                                a) People who have to wait for their flight will quit buying tickets.

                                               b) People who have to wait at the airport are losing time at work.

                                               c) When the FAA seizes control of airports, people will lose their jobs.

                                              d) The delay forces airport employees to earn overtime pay.

                                        Expected answer: (B)

 

                                    2. Why will the FAA take control away from regional airports?

                                             a) to punish the airports  for being late.

                                            b) to prevent weather delays.

                                            c) to make decisions on things that affect the whole country.

                                           d) to make regions accountable to one another more.

                                        Expected answer: (C)

 

                                    3. Why have airplanes become a form of mass transportation?

                                          a) People form all parts of the country use airplanes to get around.

                                         b) Most people can afford airline tickets.

                                        c) Both of the above.

                                       d) None of the above.

                                     Expected answer: (C)

 

                                4. Why do airports in different regions operate differently?

                                    a) They have set up their own rules over the years.

                                   b) They speak different languages.

                                  c) They fly planes differently .

                                 d) They don’t take orders from the FAA.

                                Expected answer: (A)

 

                            5. Why does a strong economy cause more planes fly?

                               a) They choose not to use cars.

                               b) The buses and trains are full.

                               c) It costs less money to fly.

                               d) Business people need to travel more and further when business is good.

                            Expected answer: (D)

 

On evaluating the responses of both the male and female students, it is clear that they have an inadequate knowledge of the topic.  The error percentage of the female students is 65.6% and 71.2% for the male students.  These test results show that the students have not taken much care in thinking and inferring the listened items in order to get the correct meaning in the right way.  Even after listening to the same news story three times, the students could not infer the correct meaning of the text.   Teachers should give the students some background knowledge before testing the listening comprehension skill.  This would be very helpful to the students when inferring the text.

---

Conclusion and Recommendations

To sum up, this comparative study reveals that the recognition, re-organisation and inference skills of the male students are poor, whereas the performance of the female students is comparatively good.  The male students need very good training and regular practice to achieve a high level of performance in listening comprehension skills.  Both the male and female students had a very good performance in the re-organisation, test but a low performance in the inference test.  In order to cope with all the barriers of listening comprehension, both the students and the teacher should follow some remedial measures. For example:

1. Exercises related to listening comprehension should be included in the curriculum.

2. Sound patterns should be taught.

3. Audio-visual exercises should be given.

4. Students who engage in the listening activities should be prepared to question the speaker. This will help the teachers to verify their ability in understanding.