جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « listening comprehension » در نشریات گروه « ادبیات و زبان ها »

One of the challenges of second language learners is listening comprehension. In this context, Field (2008: 4) says that if we ask many language learners to determine the relative difficulty of the four language skills, many of them consider listening to be the area in which they feel most insecure. Various reasons have been mentioned as to why listening skill, or in other words, the process of listening in a second language, is considered difficult and challenging (e.g., see Brown and Yule, 1983; Field, 2008). Considering these challenges, one solutions to facilitate the listening process for language learners is to change their listening status from a passive listener to an active listener.Goh (2014: 73) defines an active listener as someone who uses a range of skills and strategies to direct and manage their listening processes according to their communication goals. Regarding "listening skills", Rost (1990; cited in Lynch and Mendelson, 2010: 185) mentions two categories: enabling skills and enacting skills. He considers the first category to be the skills that are used to perceive what the speaker is saying and interpret the intended meaning (such as recognizing the prominences within utterances and inferring implicit information), and the second category to be the skills that play a role in responding appropriately to the message or text. The second component that exists in the definition of an active listener is Strategy. In a general definition, strategy can be seen as a method of facing a problem. In the context of the present research, strategy can be a method or a tactic used by language learners for encountering listening texts, either in one-way (non-participatory) or two-way (interactive or participatory) listening contexts.Strategies are generally divided into three categories: cognitive, metacognitive, and social/emotional. Metacognitive strategies are those strategies that direct attention to the input and coordinate various cognitive processes (Goh, 2014: 73). According to Anderson (2005: 758), attention has been paid to the role of strategies in second language learning since the mid-1970s. This attention to strategies in language teaching can be understood from the emergence of two approaches in the context of teaching methodology that have given a central role to strategies: Styles and Strategies-Based Instruction (SSBI) and Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). Regarding these, it is naturally expected that the more language learners use strategies for listening and understanding, and in fact, the more they focus their listening on strategies, the more comprehending and interpreting of the listening messages and speech interactions or one-way listening will be achieved. Therefore, it is necessary to get information about the language learners’ level of awareness of different strategies and their application.

Listening is one of the four main skills of language learning and yet it is a skill less investigated than other skills. In this research, an attempt was made to provide language teachers with some strategies for facilitating listening comprehension: as for the strategies, we can touch on the use of some activities before listening, whose effectiveness have been acknowledged in many studies. The present study investigated the effect of pre-listening activities on foreign learners of Persian language. The objective of the research was to evaluate the effectiveness of three pre-listening activities and order of their effectiveness— previewing questions, providing background knowledge about the topic, and vocabulary instruction. In this research, eight intermediate Persian learners who were studying in the Persian language teaching center for non-Persian speakers of Allamah Tabatabai University, participated. The age of the learners ranged from 20 to 25 and they were Russian and Turkish. This research was conducted in three sessions, that each dealt with one of the pre-listening activities. The learners were asked to answer the text-related questions after listening. Using statistical indicators including mean and standard deviation, the data of the three tests were compared, indicating that the difference between the mean scores of the language learners was significant. Besides, the result was obtained tha the order of the effectiveness of the three types of pre-listening activities on the Persian learners’ listening comprehension is “vocabulary instruction”, “providing background knowledge about the topic”, and “previewing questions”.

Listening is of significant importance in daily communication and educational process. Having a good command of second language (L2) listening is required for successful communication in L2. In spite of its importance, it has received little attention in second language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment. This study aims at comparing bilinguals and monolinguals across gender in terms of listening comprehension and listening strategy use. The correlation between listening strategies and listening comprehension was also explored. To this end, 112 monolinguals (67 males and 45 females) and 120 bilinguals (61 males and 59 females) were selected to participate in the study. They filled out a listening strategies use questionnaire (LSUQ) and then took a listening comprehension test (LCT). The results of data analysis using a series of ANOVAs as well as Pearson correlational analysis revealed that there was a significant difference between monolinguals and bilinguals, in favor of the latter group, in terms of listening comprehension and the use of listening strategies. Moreover, the effect of gender on listening comprehension and listening-strategy use was not significant. Finally, a significantly positive correlation was found between listening comprehension and listening strategy use. This research carries essential implications for syllabus designers and material developers.

The main question of the present study is that of psycholinguistic reality of Relative Tense in Persian; How Persian tenses are processed? Cross modal lexical decision tasks applied by dmdx software program have been used here to examine relative tense processing during sentence processing. Theoretical framework used here is that of Comrie (1985) linguistically and Shapiro (1990) psycholinguistically. Independent variable is the type of tense used in the verb form and the dependent variable is subjectsˈ reaction times to visual stimuli. 25 university students aged 18-30 participated in experiments who were divided into two groups; male and female participants. The results of the first experiment showed that sentences containing non-finite relative tense verbs, are processed later than the other tenses (present perfect, past perfect, and subjunctives). The explanation is to be found in the un-markedness of non-finites (lacking mood, tense, number). The results of the second experiment also showed that converting simple sentences to the complex ones will erase the meaningful differences in the participantsˈ reaction times.  This shows that the independent variable of sentence type is much more effective on cognitive load than tense type. In these two experiments the gender of the participants is not effective. The findings can be used in curriculum design for non-natives of Persians as it shows the cognitive load of relative tenses across memory.

This study investigates the processing of Persian interrogatives. The questions is the cognitive load during the processing of types of interrogatives. Which type of interrogatives is processed faster than the others and why? The theoretical framework is structuralism and cross modal view point. The corpus contained 120 interrogative sentences besides 120 Persian words and non-words. Cross-modal lexical decision has been used by the use of special software estimating reaction time of subjects. Independent variable is the type of interrogative and the dependent variable is subjectsˈ reaction times to the lexical decision task. 25 students of universities aged 18-30 participated in this study classified into two groups of male and female. The first experiment show that one single moved wh-questions in complex sentences manifested in sentences like “chi-yā ro fek mikoni/?u fardā biyāre?” (What do you think he will bring?) is processed sooner than dissociated coordinated interrogatives contained in complex sentences and also optional interrogatives manifested in complex sentences . This shows that topicalization of the wh- word will lead to the ease of processing. The independent variable of participants̓ gender showed to be effective in the first experiment for the results showed that women are faster in reaction times than men. The second experiment results showed that the independent variable of syntactic structure (either simple or complex) is to be ineffective both across men and women. The findings of current investigation can be used to manage better lesson plans and curriculum design based on objective psycholinguistic findings.

Different linguists have proposed different definitions for tense. This study investigates processing of sentences containing different tenses of Persian by the cross-modal lexical decision method.  This psycholinguistic method has been used classically by Shapiro and Levine (1990) to estimate the cognitive load across the mind. The main question of this inquiry is the psycholinguistic reality of tense complexity hierarchy arranged from absolute to relative. The theoretical framework is mainly based on episodic processing in which mental representations of linguistic items are not as abstract as it seems, but it is subject to the sensory input by which the representation is formed. Also, the classification of Comrie (1985) on tenses has been applied here. He divided tenses into two broad categories of past/non-past. Absolute and relative types of the Persian tense have been elaborated and analyzed in detail.  2.

The method used in this research is the cross modal lexical decision method, which will be detailed due to its importance.  Theoretical framework applied here is that of Comrie (1985) in linguistics and Shapiro (1990) in psycholinguistics. Independent variable is the type of tense used in the verb form and the dependent variable is subjects' reaction times. 25 students of universities aged 18-30 participated in this study. The results of two experiments show that the psychological reality of the complexity of representation of grammatical tenses according to Persian data is confirmed and there is a significant difference between the processing time of sentences containing different types of grammatical tenses.

It was found out that Persian has two absolute tenses: Past and present; as well as four relative tenses: the perfective, the pluperfect, the subjunctive, and the relative past.  The main question of the present study is that of the psycholinguistic reality of Tense in Persian. Cross modal lexical decision has been used here to examine tense during sentence processing. The results of the first experiment showed that sentences containing factual scientific present tense verbs, future tense verbs, and performatives are processed sooner than the other tenses. The justification and explanation of this can be attributed to the fact that scientific facts have been recorded in the life experience of human beings and have a high frequency. The results of the second experiment also showed that converting simple sentences to complex ones will omit the meaningful differences in the participantsˈ reaction times. The findings can be used in curriculum design for non-natives of Persians. The subject of the present article is the study of how auditory perception of sentence structures with verbs containing different types of grammatical tenses in Persian is affected by representational complexity of their inner tenses. The Persian language has a variety of absolute and relative tenses, each of which is used as needed, and Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari (Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari 2002) has written in detail about the nature and function of each, and since this work is a comprehensive description of the topic of time in Persian, it provides the basis for data collection of the present study. The two main research questions are: a) Which types of tense is processed faster than the others and why? B) According to data from the Persian language, what is the mental representation of grammatical tense in Persian?The two hypotheses corresponding to the questions of this research are that there is a significant difference between the processing time of sentences containing different types of tenses and also the complexity of these representations has a psychological reality. In order to answer the questions, two experiments have been developed.

(1) The principles and generalizations inferred from the results; The choice of mean reaction time as a dependent variable in widely used cognitive experiments is due to convenience. In this study, reaction time to the auditory stimulus is the basis for measuring cognitive load. Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental energy needed to perform a task. This mental energy can be nourished by memory, storage and retrieval.  (2) Any exceptions to, or problems with these principles and generalizations; Here, there has been found no exceptions or problems with the cognitive load principles and generalizations. (3) Theoretical and/or practical implications of the work; If we consider cognitive burden as the basis of learning, this research can have implications for teaching Persian language. The high reputation of using reaction time in psychological research, especially in the field of cognition and language processing, is something beyond theoretical interest. The concept of cognitive burden can be used in teaching Persian language and the research results can be considered in compiling educational materials and materials.