The Impact of Using Specific Pre – Listening Activities on Iraqi EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Listening is considered to be the most important skill since it is the first skill that human beings acquired but unfortunately, it is regarded as an ignored skill in the process of teaching English in Iraqi schools and as a result Iraqi learners are not well prepared to understand the English spoken language. Besides, Iraqi learners do not use their background knowledge to comprehend what was said and they do not have opportunities to practice since there are many schools that do not have laboratories and sound devises in order to enable the learner to listen and practice. Therefore, teaching the listening skill is the most difficult task since learners face difficulties with this skill In order to enhance listening skill, teachers should use activities which provide the learner with enough opportunities to practice; these activities should be carefully chosen by the teacher in order to increase learners' interest to listen and encourage them to develop their skill of comprehending the spoken language. In addition, part of these activities should be aimed to prepare the learner for the listening process and activate their cognitive skill by stimulating them to think about the spoken text and predict incoming information. Moreover, these activities should help the learners to recognize the purpose of listening. In this case learners will be able to comprehend and understand when they are listening. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to teach listening to the fifth grade female students of the secondary schools hoping to enhance their listening comprehension,


Abstract
Listening is considered to be the most important skill since it is the first skill that human beings acquired but unfortunately, it is regarded as an ignored skill in the process of teaching English in Iraqi schools and as a result Iraqi learners are not well prepared to understand the English spoken language.Besides, Iraqi learners do not use their background knowledge to comprehend what was said and they do not have opportunities to practice since there are many schools that do not have laboratories and sound devises in order to enable the learner to listen and practice.Therefore, teaching the listening skill is the most difficult task since learners face difficulties with this skill In order to enhance listening skill, teachers should use activities which provide the learner with enough opportunities to practice; these activities should be carefully chosen by the teacher in order to increase learners' interest to listen and encourage them to develop their skill of comprehending the spoken language.In addition, part of these activities should be aimed to prepare the learner for the listening process and activate their cognitive skill by stimulating them to think about the spoken text and predict incoming information.Moreover, these activities should help the learners to recognize the purpose of listening.In this case learners will be able to comprehend and understand when they are listening.Therefore, the present study is an attempt to teach listening to the fifth grade female students of the secondary schools hoping to enhance their listening comprehension, The present study aims to investigate empirically the impact of using specific pre -listening activities on Iraqi EFL learners' listening comprehension.To achieve the aim of the study, a null hypothesis has been proposed: There is no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group who is taught listening comprehension by using specific pre -listening activities and that of the control group who is taught listening comprehension using the method recommended by the Teacher's Guide.The present study adopted the quasi

Chapter One Introduction 1.1 The Problem of the Study
Listening is the first skill that one can acquire.Although other skills like speaking, reading, and writing are important in developing the acquisition of foreign language, listening seem to play an importance role in learning the foreign language.According to Hamaguchi (6101100), listening can be defined as an active process which involves hearing and understanding the spoken text.Wolvin and Coakley (055910) state that listening can be seen as a process where the listener tries to receive the message from the speaker and reply to it.
Despite the importance of the listening skill, it is ignored especially in language acquisition, language assessment and language learning.However, in the field of language learning and in order to overcome difficulties that the learners face in learning the foreign language, some pre -listening activities which suggested by the experts of language teaching can be used as a support in the teaching process (Rajaei,6109: 99) The problem of the present study arises from the views that Iraqi learners faced many difficulties in listening.Although there are many studies which deal with the listening skill, there is a misunderstanding of teaching this skill and how to enable the learner to be an effective listener.This misunderstanding due to lack of knowledge of the strategies and activities that focus on this skill (Hameed,6109100) According to Al-Bermani (611219), Iraqi learners have inadequate level of listening comprehension as well as in Iraqi schools listening is neglected skill.Therefore, there is a need to use new techniques and activities which can enhance listening comprehension and activate the learner to develop this skill.Karim (0552: 2) holds that Iraqi learners have many difficulties with listening comprehension and an unable to understand the spoken text; for many reasons, such as the textbook does not provide the learners with enough texts which enable the learner to listen as well as time is very limited therefore the learner cannot practice and repeat listening.Besides, the requirements for listening class such as laboratory and sound devices are not available in the schools.
Hence, there is a need to experiment with new strategies for the sake of improving listening comprehension skills.One of these strategies is pre -listening activities.Pre-listening is the preparation stage for whilelistening.The most important thing in this stage is to provide enough contexts which can motivate the learner.This can be realized by enabling the learners to recognize the purpose of listening and comprehend listening input (Richards &Renandya, 6116: 649).

Aim
The aim of the study is to investigate empirically the impact of using specific pre listening activities on Iraqi EFL learners' listening comprehension.

Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that there is no statistically significant difference at the level of significance (1019) between the mean scores of the experimental group who is taught listening comprehension using specific pre -listening activities and that of the control group who is taught listening comprehension using the method recommended by the Teacher's Guide.

Limits
The population of the study is limited to the 9th grade female learners of the secondary schools at the Directorate of Education-Baghdad -Rusafa /9 for the academic year 6102-6102.The material is taken from the prescribed textbook, "English for Iraq", for fifth preparatory educational stage.

Value of the Study
This study can be useful in:  and  9. enabling Iraqi students to be good listeners by exposing them to different forms of pre -listening activities that suit their interest.

Procedures
The following procedures will be undertaken in order to attain the aim of the study: 0. selecting a representative sample from the population of the study and dividing it into experimental and control groups, 6. constructing and validating a test to be used as a tool of investigation (pre and post tests), 9. exposing the steps to be followed for applying pre -listening activities to be shown to the experts, 4. conducting an experiment to apply the suggested strategies, 9. administering the tests to both groups, 2. describing the statistical means used to analyze the data of the tests, and 2. Presenting the obtained results to come up with conclusions, recommendations, and suggestions for further studies.

Definition of Basic Terms 1.9.1 Pre-listening
Pre-listening stage is a preparatory stage where the learners are given a topic and prepared for the listening by activating their background knowledge in order to motivate them for the audio and encourage them to perform the task (Underwood, 0595: 9).

Activities
An activity refers to almost anything that the learners perform in the classroom.More specifically, in the classroom, activity refers to a practically combining set of learner behaviors in limited time, and followed by some guidelines and direction from the teacher, with a particular objective (Brown, 6112: 091).

Pre -listening Activities
Pre listening activities are a combination of activities used for the sake of improving learner ability to comprehend the spoken text.In order to enable the learner to be active listeners, learners should depend on their background knowledge in order to comprehend the spoken text before they began to listen as well as they should recognize their purpose of listening.Therefore, the teachers should provide the learners with chances which stimulate them to listen and become active in listening (Nunan, 0559: 69).1.9.2Listening Comprehension Vandergrift (0555: 029) defines LC as a process in which the listeners try to differentiate and distinguish between the sounds of the spoken text and be able to recognize the grammatical structure of the text.It also involves identifying the vocabulary as well as understanding the intonation and stress.

Listening Skill
Listening skill is the first language skill developed; it comes before speaking, reading, and writing.Listening means not only hearing or receiving the spoken language but rather it can imply responding to the spoken language more than creating it.Purdy and Borishoff (055219) defines listening skill as '' a dynamic and active process in which the listener has to be able to attend, perceive, interpret, remember, and respond to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal) needs, concerns, and information presented by the speaker''.
Listening comprehension can be seen as a process of understanding speech which depends on the learners' ability to identify the meaning and the purpose of the speakers' speech.The study of listening comprehension includes focusing on the role of individual linguistic units (e.g.phoneme, words, grammatical structures) in addition to the role of listeners' expectations, understanding situation and topic, and also learners' background knowledge (Richards and Schmidt, 6116: 909).However, the main purpose of listening is not to enable the listener to know each word in the spoken text but rather to comprehend the message presented in the text (Lund, 0551: 009).
In order to comprehend the text, it is important that the listener be able to receive sounds, assign meaning, and store the message for later use, as well as understanding the message that is presented in the text.Therefore, good listening requires the listener to remember what is said (Cohen,0551: 009).

The Importance of Listening Skills
Listening has an important role to play in language teaching in which it provides the learners with input for language acquisition (Rost,0554: 040).In a spoken language, a student must interact with others in order to understand.In this interaction, he or she must pay attention to the others Therefore, the understanding of the language spoken by other people provides the learners with input which enables them to acquire good speaking habits (Harmer,6110: 669).Furthermore, having listening skills enable the learners to think ahead while receiving the message in which it can facilitate the comprehension of the speech (Smaldino, 6119: 654).As a result, learners will be successful in the communication process.In other words, listening skills are important inputs for acquiring speaking skills.The pre -listening stage is the first stage that the learners face in the listening process before they listen to the speech, which prepars the learners and stimulate them to listen in order to enable them to comprehend the text (Richards and Schmidt, 6116:490).Rost (6102: 029) shows that pre -listening is a preparatory stage of instruction which is designed for the purpose of activating them for listening.This stage may consist of short activities which aim to encourage the learners to comprehend upcoming information, or it could be consisting of discourse frameworks which enable the learners to connect with the listening text.Wilson (6119: 21) mentions that pre -listening prepares listeners for what they are going to listen, as well as enables the listeners to get success in any task.Renandya and Widodo (6102: 002) have demonstrated that the use of pre -listening stage is more useful and important for beginner listeners.If the teachers can use it effectively and prepare the learners well for the listening text, the learners will get more benefits from the listening activities.

4.1.1.4
Aims of Pre -listening Stage The pre -listening stage aims to create motivation by asking learners to guess what information that they will hear (Richards and Renandya, 6116: 649).Juan and Flor (6112: 46) agree with Richards and Renandya, by saying that pre -listening stage encourages the learners to activate their background knowledge about a particular cultural topic which the content of text is going to cover.When the teacher encourages the learners to think about the passage, this will enable them to comprehend the activities or passage well and then to overcome listening difficulties they may face.In addition to that, pre-listening stage enables the learners to improve their abilities of realizing listening strategies and using these strategies to solve any problem that they face in listening process (ibid).Pre -Listening Activities Pre -listening activities are the most important one of any listening stage because the success of other aspects depends on how the teacher can activate the learner to retrieve previous knowledge, guide and direct the learner to get the purpose of listening (Chastain, 61121611).The main function of pre -listening activities is to provide the learner with framework for listening which helps him/her to comprehend the speech.Therefore, learners will be engaged in listening process without any difficulties (McDonough et al;6109:29 ).
Stojkovic' (61091900) argues that pre -listening activities are a short activity which should be done in limited time not more than four minutes, as well as the teacher should design the activities which provide the learner with their purpose of listening.In other words, when the learner understands the activity before it begins and has a quick look of activity, this will facilitie the comprehension of what the learner will listen to without any difficulties 4.1.1.2.

Principles of Using Pre -listening Activities
The following points show the main principles that pre -listening activities should have: 1. Language and content of pre -listening activities should be well-known to the learners, therefore, the learner will be engaged with these activities (Donaldson and Haggstrom, 6112122).

4.
Pre -listening activities should help the learner to improve and foster metacognitive skills which develop the learners' abilities to think during learning (ibid).

1.
Pre -listening activities should contain all elements of listening and allow learners to guess and predict what they will listen for (ibid).

2.
Although pre -listening activities are important, the teacher should not spend a lot of time with these activities because the teacher should also teach other skills.Therefore, the average time for using pre -listening activities should be three or five minutes long.

Types of Pre -Listening Activities 1. Brainstorming:
Brainstorming is the best way to encourage learners to produce a lot of ideas about the topic before they begin to listen.Learners are asked to discuss freely the context before they begin to listen in order to generate many ideas (Richards and Schmidt,6116: 99).Before the learners begin to listen, the teacher should provide the learners with the topic that they are going to listen and activate them to come up with many ideas as they can relate to the main topic (Richards,6109: 954).

Predicting
Predicting activity involves activating the learners to predict and think about what they will listen for.The learners' prediction can be seen as a short introduction about the topic, or incomplete statement.Therefore, predicting is a useful activity for pre -listening stage (Nation and Newton, 6119: 020).

Pre -Teaching Key Words
Pre -teaching key words or vocabulary is the process of presenting and teaching new and unfamiliar words that the learners are going to listen to (Harmer,6106: 622).Pre -teaching key words is used when the teacher thinks that there are important words that the learner should understand before they begin to listen in order to have more comprehension, it also provides the learners with confidence to listen in addition to that it provides them with information about the passage (Wilson, 6119: 22).

Picture Description
Picture description activity involves presenting the picture before learners listen to the spoken text and discuss the picture which is related to the passage (Richards, 6109: 954).

Questioning
Questioning activities involve encouraging the learners to think about the topic before they begin to listen and produce many questions as much as possible related to the topic on which they think that the teacher will ask them (ibid: 954).

Story Building
Story building activities involve encouraging the learner to build a story and predict the events which take place in the story by providing the learners with a list of eight to ten pictures and encourage the learners to put it in the correct order to form a story (ibid: 954).

While Listening Stage:
In the while listening stage, learners are engaged in the listening process; they listen in order to get specific information to listen for details.The teacher encourages the learners to work in groups or pairs in order to work together and check their answers, this will encourage them to discuss another points.It is important that the teacher should provide different types of activities which enable the learners to develop their listening skill (Wilson, 6119: 21).

Post Listening Stage:
It is the last stage of listening comprehension, which is also called evaluation stage.In this stage, the learners check up their answers and they discuss together the difficulties faced during listening such as unfamiliar words, and also respond to the message orally or sometimes in written form (ibid: 20).

Experimental Design
The experimental design can be defined as a set of procedures used by the researcher for the purpose of testing the hypothesis by achieving valid results which show the relationship between the independent and dependent variables, and the choice of research design depends on the aim of conducting the study (Best and Kahn,6112: 022).
The type of experimental design which is used in this study is nonequivalent pre -post test control group design which is used in order to attain the purpose of this study.The subjects of the study are divided into two groups experimental and control groups.The pre -test is designed and administered before the experimental has began and the post test was administered at the end of the experiment.If the experimental group's scores are higher than the control group, the difference will be a result of using the independent variable which is Pre -Listening Activities.In the current study, the experimental group was taught listening comprehension by exposing them to the Pre -Listening Activities, while the control group was taught listening comprehension by exposing them to the method which is recommended by Teacher's Guide of the given textbook.

Population and Sample
The population of this study is the fifth Year/ Scientific branch female students of the secondary school of Maryam Al -Adhraa for girls at the Directorate general of Education-Baghdad -Rusafah /9 for the academic year 6102-6102.
After visiting many schools, the researcher has randomly chosen the school of Maryam Al -Adhraa for girls.It has been found that there are four sections for the fifth grade for the scientific branch in the school; they are sections (A), (B), (C), and (D).Section A has randomly been selected to be the experimental group and section B has been chosen to be the control  99) students and section (B) includes (99) students.Two students from section A and one student from section B had been excluded from the experiment because they are repeaters in this year, but they were kept in their classes during the period of the experiment.As well as two students from A and three students from B were absent in the post test so that the researcher excluded them.As well as, two students eliminated from each group in order to equalize them since they are not equivalence.

Instructional Treatments 1.2.1 The Control Group
At the beginning, the researcher discussed with the teachers about their methods of teaching listening comprehension.Then the researcher used their traditional methods in order to teach the control group.The material which was used for teaching the control group was used according to Teacher's Guide of English for Iraq.
The learners in the control group were not given time and chance to prepare themselves and think about the passage before they listen or predict the theme of the passage; they directly listened to the passage without using their top -down processes.
Listening comprehension was taught according to the following steps: A. Pre -Listening Stage Learners are provided with general ideas about the passage before they began to listen.This step enables the learners to think about the passage and encourage them to listen.This step should be short and take five minutes.

B. During-Listening Stage
In this step the learners will listen to the passage by listening to the MP9 device or by listening to the teacher.If the MP9 is not available, teacher can read the passage in normal speed for two times and if there are new words or unfamiliar words, the teacher writes them on the board with their meaning.

C. Post -Listening Stage
Learners are encouraged to think deeply by asking them different forms of questions in order to check their comprehension.The teacher began to ask simple questions in order to confirm that the learners understood the main ideas presented to the learners and then ask the learners to summarize the main ideas of the listening text either orally or in writing 1.

Experimental Group
For the experimental group, the researcher followed specific activities which enabled the learners to use their background knowledge and think about the passage before they listen.Therefore, the learners will be able to comprehend the passage better because they will have previous knowledge about the passage.The following steps are followed for teaching the experimental group: A. Pre -Listening Activities The researcher will use six activities which can be used in prelistening stage.They are brainstorming, prediction, pictures description, pre -teaching key words, questioning, and story building.In this lesson the researcher will use brainstorming activities.
The researcher will: 1. write the topic on the blackboard, and tell the learners to say anything that comes to mind related to the topic and note down.Any first idea may be seen on the board triggers another idea and it is advisable to keep writing until nothing else comes to mind.This has a motivating effect, 4. encourage the learners to sort out all ideas and tries to evaluate them in order to delete any ideas which seem to be irrelevant to the topic and keep ideas that related to the topic, 1. tell the students to use the related ideas in order to draw a mind mapping which involves collecting all ideas about specific topic and arranging these ideas into patterns which indicate the connections between the ideas, and 2. write the topic inside a circle, after that from each main idea, an arrow can be drawn around the main circle afterward many smaller arrows can be drawn out from the main arrows that connect each idea.B. While -Listening Instruction (11 Minutes) : The researcher will: