Pedagogical utility of pre-listening activities for improving Iranian elementary EFL learners' listening comprehension

Abstract

This study examined the effects of two types of pre-listening activities: bottom-up and top-down on Iranian elementary EFL learners' listening comprehension performance. By TOFEL (PBT) test, 90 learners were selected as elementary ones for this study. They were randomly assigned to two experimental and one control groups each consisting of 30 learners. After giving the pretest, vocabulary preparation and content related support were given as the treatment to two experimental groups. The learners in control group received filler activities. At the end of the experiment, the posttest was performed to all learners to measure the possible effects of the treatment. The results revealed the significant differences between the learners' pre-test and post test scores. The analyses of the data confirmed the great impact of pre-listening support on listening comprehension performance of Iranian elementary EFL learners.