Abstract
Since the beginning of Communicative Language Teaching we have taken for granted that teaching listening comprehension should be an integral part of every general English course and that a listening session in the classroom should consist of three stages: 1. pre-listening, 2. while-listening and 3. post-listening. However, how often do we teach listening specifically? Do we know what exactly happens in each stage? Is the pre-listening stage useful for all proficiency levels? Should we use the same pre-listening techniques for higher and lower proficiency levels? We decided to ask the students in our face-to-face courses in the Department of Language Studies about their experiences, opinions and attitudes to teaching/learning listening comprehension at A1-B1 levels (CEFR), with a focus on the pre-listening stage.
The research dealt with the specific teaching/learning context of the Czech Republic, where English is taught as a foreign language. In 2012, an online questionnaire survey was carried out by the online survey mode of data collection (thanks to a large number of collected accessible email addresses) where was asked 1016 students at the Department of Foreign Languages AS CR.
The population's characteristics were identified, e.g. dispersion of CEFR levels, age, self-evaluation of the participants, their needs analysis, and difficulties concerning listening in and out of the classroom. A statistical analysis helped us reveal any correlations between the variables, e.g. age/level differences.
Based on a further qualitative analysis of the data, practical implications for the teaching of listening comprehension to the target population were drawn. An optimal pre-listening technique from the students perspective was identified according to the proficiency level.