Listening for Details

people listen very closely, paying attention to all the words and trying formation.ings is based on words. Regarding the importance of vocabulary to devocabulary and comprehension to improve their oral language skills. Atance to vocabulary while they listened because they exclaimed that if they knew the words, they knew what the audio was about. This con-that any listening comprehension test should cover a wide range of topconsidered too.

Students’ Problems

the listening process. First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery. Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated. It is a serious problem because students cannot decide whether or not to replay a recording, and it is even harder for the teacher to know if students limited vocabulary. This makes students miss some parts of the speech.guage. For students, it is easier to follow a conversation when the topic is interesting.

were distractions and missing or misperceiving words’ sounds related to perception. Students were accustomed to translate every word to try to understand the main idea of the audio. Other researchers highlighted that in the bottom-up listening skills, such as listening for details.

Voice-Recording Equipment

instruction was the cassette tapes and students had to listen to the oral production and perform the activities in class. Fortunately, the digitalization of recording tools arrived. Technology has greatly improved teaching and learning procedures. It helps to enhance students’ competences. Technological resources are a trend in EFL teaching today. However, most institutions lack technological devices to be used in

Nowadays, modern tools, such as digital audio and student-produced recordings, are new ways to engage students and encourage them to learn the target language. Digital audio recording is a useful device in a foreign language to practice speaking, hear how they sound, through digital elements provides the opportunity to practice the skill practice listening skills anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, Dai could think that it is unnecessary to add more explanations, examples, and conclusions during the class. Although the textbook can be the most important resource in the classroom, it is necessary to add teachers use some recorded materials that do not have high quality. The quality of sound can impact the comprehension of learners’ lis-

The use of electronic tools provides students with more opportuof the students have a mobile phone and bring them everywhere. Those mobile devices have a voice recording tool which implies that they can be used as a cognitive and symbolic learning tool.

Due to the students’ low listening comprehension performance, some considerations and strategies taken from the literature review were applied to answer the following research questions:ing?

2. To what extent do short story recordings improve students’ listening for details?

Methodology Design

The innovation was carried out as action research. Action researchical in your teaching methods and techniques. Here, the teacher becomes an investigator of his or her personal teaching context while at

Consequently, action research gives itself well as the methodology option to this innovation process. This research adopts an interactive- scribing the process of the innovation. The action-taking phase refers to

EFL research series for teachers: Pedagogical Innovations facilitated by ICT in the classroom sults. In the evaluation, results are analyzed. Finally, the learning phase

Diagnosis

Low listening for details comprehension in seven graders.

ACTION-PLANNING

Answer 2 research questions based on literature rewiew. Qualitative and quantitative instrumens were applied.

Evaluation

Results of the quantitative and qualitative instruments.

ACTION-TALKING

The innovation plan

Learning

Students need to acquire more vocabulary. The use of technology is necessary for better results.

corded their voices. They were in seventh grade, ranging from ten to twelve years old. These students were selected as research participants because they were the higher grade at the school and had a good performance during two academic years. The main problem that these groups of students have faced was that they do not have enough background to develop listening correctly. This school incorwho could not get this level the need to implement new techniques to improve listening skills.

Classroom Procedures

The innovation aimed to develop techniques and practices toademic hours in class. Qualitative and quantitative instruments were used to gather information which helped to develop the innovation. The participants needed an electronic device with internet access to complete some activities at home. Students developed easy tasks with the researcher recognizing information in a recording, reviewing some vocabulary, and performing commands and songs using recorded audio during the classes. Participants also developed extra online activities from the Cambridge test on some web pages provided by the facilitator. At the end of the implementation, students created their ownulary introduced and recycled during the innovation activities process.

To present the performance task, they drew their own story into four pictures to use in class, and then their partners ordered them according to the story they told. The use of voice recordings let students tape their own stories as many times as they considered necessary to check their correct pronunciation and intonation. This activity raised students’ pronunciation ability.

Instruments project: pre and post focus group interviews, surveys, and pre and posttest. The instruments are organized according to the research questions.

RQ1: What are students’ complications when they listen to a recording?

Pre–Post Focus Group Interview

dividuals’ perceptions, information processing, and decision. The focus group interview was used to know students’ complications while they were listening. The group members answered four questions related to their problems during classes and what makes the learning process

Nine students were selected randomly: three students with high grades, three students with regular grades, and three students with low grades. By using focus group methodology before applying the innova- questions to deepen the causes of their complications during listening. In the post-interview, students had the opportunity to share through re- imately. The pre and post focus interviews were developed during the ninth and nineteenth classes, respectively. The interview was conducted face-to-face in Spanish because students did not understand the language very well, so for them, it was easier to participate and answer the questions in their mother tongue.

Survey used to describe, compare, or explain individual and societal knowledge, feelings, values, preferences, and behavior. This instrument helped determine students’ listening preferences and contributed to solving students’ complications based on activities that involved topics they liked. The survey was presented in a simple way with four close and simple questions. One question was structured to know students’ reading preferences and the other three questions were used to know if students had the necessary material and experience with the recordings, so students selected yes or no to answer. The survey was in English but also with the Spanish translation because of students’ low comprehension levels. The survey was answered by all students.

Data obtained from the survey were used to select the best kind of stories according to students’ preferences between fairy tales, personal stories, nursery rhymes, and picture storybooks. The survey also helped to know if students had any experience listening to a voice recording during their English classes or if they had ever recorded audio by using a recording device, a mobile phone, or other devices.

RQ2: To what extent do short story recordings improve students’ listening for details?

Pre and Post-tests

Before and after applying the innovation, students were assessed performance. The test was taken by all participants in two sessions. All participants in two sessions took the test. It was applied at the beginning of the innovation to measure students’ level of listening comprehension. At the same time, the post-test was taken at the end of the intervention to verify if students improved their ability and the score after developing

Data Analysis

Pre–Post Focus Group Interview

lected during the focus group sessions. Using a voice recording, students’ answers were audiotaped and then transcribed in English. The researcher took notes from the focus group results and determined if the innovation

Pre and Post-tests

The data from the pretest and post-test were analyzed using SPSSto determine if the innovation had achieved the expected results.

Survey

The survey was applied to determine what kind of stories students prefer listening to when they develop a listening activity. Descriptive statistics such as frequency were calculated to analyze data from the

Results

RQ1: What are students’ complications when they listen to a recording?

Pre–Focus group interviews analyzed the main problem when students listen. For one of the students, the problem when listening was: the noise, and I do not understand what the audio is about”. Most of the interviewees expressed that outside noise was what distracted them most of the time. Participants also mentioned that they distracted themselves when they were in a listening practice, so they could not follow the activity.

On the other hand, the post–focus interview showed that students -

Online practice was interesting, and I admired myself because I discovered that I could ”.

Nevertheless, they did not feel sure of being able to comprehend other listening activities very well. During the interview about what they en- seeing the stories listening to the stories listening to music.” Finally one ordering the pictures while we listened”. Lastly, data revealed that students preferred developing activities related to the test and practicing similar tasks according to the topics.

1 Survey results: Students’ access

ITEMS

Access to an electronic device

Experience with recordings chose nursery rhymes and picture storybooks. Due to the results, fairy tales and personal stories topics were added to the innovation activities - tronic device, had experience with recordings, and recorded their voice

RQ2: To what extent do short story recordings improve students’ listening for details?

Record voice with a device Instruments Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Cohen’s d Pretest Posttest and large in magnitude, respectively. According to the results, Cohen’s d

Discussioned that the main problem in carring out this research was that the lismakes students miss some parts of the speech because they do nottening activities.

RQ1: What are students’ complications when they listen to a recording?

During the pre-focus group interview, one of the interviewees exin class; I cannot listen because of my partners’ interruptions” the next class makes much noise, so I cannot listen very well”. These were some problems that students faced while they were developing listening tasks. These answers were conthat determined in their report that the most dominant problems were a distraction and missing or misperceiving words’ sounds related toterial on tape or radio lacks visual and aural environmental clues, which means that not seeing the speaker’s body language and facial expresmeaning and contributes to failure in this skill’s tasks.

On the other hand, as a result of the post-focus group interview,portance to vocabulary while they were listening. However, in the report, revisit new vocabulary because of the busy multi-task environment in the classroom.

RQ2: To what extent do short stories recordings improve students’ listening for details?dents to identify the purposes for listening, and using well-structured - portant to develop all skills, especially listening, where students need to understand words and comprehend complete ideas. study. The use of new techniques and methodologies encouraged them - tening teaching methods is the most crucial factor.

Electronic devices allowed most of the students to practice their short stories the times they wanted to improve their performance. Thesethey allowed them to practice listening skills anywhere, anytime.

Conclusion

After completing this study and getting the innovation results, it is results in the students’ listening performance. During class, vocabulary more words that they could use in the tests. It is a fact that students acquired more vocabulary knowledge. They could identify the meaning and the correct spelling of many new words. Subsequently, students improved their listening for details subskill by using techniques that allowed them to better understand the activities process.

The listening activities need to be developed in a closed classroom with reduced noise. As they mentioned in the focus group interview, they were not able to concentrate during listening activities because of the outside noise. This innovation met that requirement, so students were able to complete the activities successfully. Parents’ help during the learning process was important. They should consider technology at home as an educational complement under their supervision directing them to develop complementary educational activities. At school, it was impossible to use phones because schools did not allow the use of electronic devices. - manage more vocabulary, phrases, and expressions than before. This on the contrary, those parameters’ mean was regular. When students helpful because they could carry the audio before the presentation to correct pronunciation and make necessary changes, until the presentaincluding the oral presentation with the researcher. Participants realizednunciation and present a better one. This research presented some limitations during the process, such as the lack of technological tools in students’ homes, so they could not do the extra practice they had learned in class to get better results. This occurs because most of them come from low-income households. Most students had electronic devices, but they did not have internet access. Another condition presented during the study was the students’when English was included in their curricula. Although students sometimes did not attend classes or arrived

There is a lab with a projector in the school, but there was no internet, access so students could not see a clear example of how to use the cellphone and students took turns to see some videos to understand better.

Lastly, the number of students who participated during the innovation was a limitation. There were few students for the study, which did not allow us to obtain more information from the applied instruments or - dents from seventh grade or higher in a public school, it is important to replicate this study from fourth grade. Students should practice longer

Consequently, they would be prepared with better communicative skills to continue their studies according to the curricula.

During classes, it is necessary to involve more vocabulary activities, so they store more words and can use them in the future to help themselves to understand what they listen to. The present research should be developed with a larger sample of students because this group was small to generalize the results. It is important to teach students to take bullet – point notes to help students remember important information from the recording, so they can check their notes to complete the listening tasks.

Finally, during the focus group interview, it would be useful to ask for psychologist support. It was noticed that some participants had problems expressing their opinion easily during the interview because some of them were shy. The psychologist could intervene to use appropriate techniques and communication alternatives to get more information.

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