A Study on the Application of Learning Community in Listening Teaching for English Majors

Liping Wang

doi:10.6918/IJOSSER.202501_8(1).0020

Authors

Liping Wang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6918/IJOSSER.202501_8(1).0020

Keywords:

Learning community; listening comprehension; metacognitive knowledge; listening strategies; high education; listening teaching.

Abstract

Learning Identifying evidence-based teaching and learning strategies to ease teaching challenges and improve students’ performance becomes increasingly important. This research investigated English majors’ performance (metacognitive knowledge about listening and listening comprehension) and perception of the Learning Community (LC) in a university in the southwest of China. Based on the results of the listening test in the College English Test (CET-4), a sample of 80 students was involved in the empirical teaching. They were randomly assigned to an experimental class (EC) and a control class (CC) on average. Afterward, both groups completed a questionnaire to gauge their metacognitive knowledge about listening and a pretest to assess their listening comprehension. Then, two groups were taught using different teaching modes. The students in EC were given learning tasks in the LC environment where they were provided with interaction opportunities and evaluated by a multi-assessment system. In contrast, those in CC received traditional teaching mode, with typical instructor-based teaching and assessment. After 18 weeks of teaching, both groups were given the post-test for listening comprehension. And 12 students from EC were randomly selected and interviewed. According to the detailed analysis, students’ listening comprehension developed considerably in the LC environment after a semester’s instruction. But, the improvement in this aspect in EC was not significantly different from that in CC. The reason contributing to this result may be that the students in both groups were relatively weak in this aspect before the study, especially when the students in EC were weaker than those in CC. In this situation, the metacognitive knowledge about listening might not play its full role in the development of this ability within a short period of teaching. However, even so, the students’ feedback for the application of LC in EC was overwhelmingly positive. They were able to develop interest, motivation, and listening comprehension, as well as metacognitive knowledge about listening while experiencing less anxiety thanks to the LC, multi-assessment and reflection. Finally, the conclusions, limitations and suggestions for further studies were provided.

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