The Perceptions Of Efl Prep School Students On Their Listening Skills: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century the view of listening skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has tremendously changed. There has been a constant move from a purely linguistic listening perception towards one which includes many aspects and facets in relation to the cultural constructs, topic familiarity, discourse clues and pragmatic conventions (Hinkel, 2006). This quantitative study was an attempt to discover the perceptions of the EFL prep school students of their Listening skills in English courses and if they have any impact on their learning process and whether they can be predictive for their academic success regarding their Listening course scores. The study group of this study consisted of 95 EFL prep school students (62 females, 33 males) in academic year of 2015-2016 fall term at Hacettepe University in Ankara. All students were Turkish, of similar cultural and linguistic background. The students were composed of levels B1 and B2+. For the collection of the data a 5-point Likert type questionnaire with 41 items developed by Lotfi (2012) was administered and the students were asked to write their biographical information like their age, gender, type of high school graduation and Listening scores. The statistical descriptives, MANOVA and Regression tests were run in this study to find out the answers to the research questions. The findings and the results are discussed and presented in the full paper along with the recommendations and limitations of the study. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.