شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

Listening is considered to be the most important skill since it is the first skill that human beings acquired but unfortunately, it is regarded as an ignored skill in the process of teaching English in Iraqi schools and as a result Iraqi learners are not well prepared to understand the English spoken language. Besides, Iraqi learners do not use their background knowledge to comprehend what was said and they do not have opportunities to practice since there are many schools that do not have laboratories and sound devises in order to enable the learner to listen and practice. Therefore, teaching the listening skill is the most difficult task since learners face difficulties with this skill In order to enhance listening skill, teachers should use activities which provide the learner with enough opportunities to practice; these activities should be carefully chosen by the teacher in order to increase learners' interest to listen and encourage them to develop their skill of comprehending the spoken language. In addition, part of these activities should be aimed to prepare the learner for the listening process and activate their cognitive skill by stimulating them to think about the spoken text and predict incoming information. Moreover, these activities should help the learners to recognize the purpose of listening. In this case learners will be able to comprehend and understand when they are listening. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to teach listening to the fifth grade female students of the secondary schools hoping to enhance their listening comprehension, The present study aims to investigate empirically the impact of using specific pre-listening activities on Iraqi EFL learners’ listening comprehension. To achieve the aim of the study, a null hypothesis has been proposed: There is no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group who is taught listening comprehension by using specific pre-listening activities and that of the control group who is taught listening comprehension using the method recommended by the Teacher's Guide. The present study adopted the quasi experimental design: Pre Post-Tests control groups. The sample of the study consists of 59 students of fifth grade female students of the s Maryam Al-Adra a Secondary School at the academic year 2016-2017. The experiment started on the 26thof February and ended on 25thApril, 2017 i.e., it lasted eight weeks. The validity of the test and lesson plans for the experimental and control groups has been obtained by exposing them to a group of experts in the field of ELT and linguistics. Then, after piloting the test, the reliability of the test is achieved by using Alpha Cronbach formula. The two groups of students are taught by the researcher herself. Only the experimental group is taught by using pre-listening activities, while the control group is taught according to the method recommended by the Teacher's Guide. The results reveal that there is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group who is taught listening comprehension using specific pre-listening activities and that of the control group who is taught listening comprehension using the method recommended by the Teacher's Guidein the favour of experimental group. Finally, some recommendations and suggestions for the future studies are put forward. (Published Abstract)