A Survey of the Level of Junior Secondary School Students′ Use of Listening Comprehension Strategies in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the level of the listening comprehension strategies that junior secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State use in learning English Language. From a population of six thousand five hundred and thirty four (6534) Junior Secondary 3 students in public schools, a total of six hundred and sixty two (662) students constituted the sample size drawn through the stratified sampling and simple random techniques from six (6) sampled schools. Two instruments titled Listening Comprehension Proficiency Test (LCPT), developed by TOEFL and Listening Comprehension Strategy Questionnaire (LCSQ) adopted from Oxford (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) were used to collect the data for the study. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation). Results indicated that among the six strategy categories, Metacognitive (M=2.16, SD= .46), had the highest mean, followed by the Cognitive (M=1.97, SD= .34), Compensation (M=1.97, SD=.46), Social (M=1.95, SD=.47) and Memory (M=1.89, SD=.41). Affective (M=1.84, SD=.43) had the lowest mean. On the average, all the variables put together the findings from research question 2 indicates that the subjects had a mean score of 1.96 which is lower than the theoretical mean of 2.0. This indicates that students′ use of listening strategies is low. As a result, the study proposed that learners should be exposed to listening strategy instruction.