The effects of listening supports and levels of English ability on Thai first year university students’ listening performance and listening strategies

To 1) examine the effect of different listening supports on the students’ listening performance, 2) investigate the effect of different levels of English ability on the students’ listening performance, 3) investigate the interaction effect between listening supports and English ability and 4) examine the listening strategies used by the students in performing listening test. The population was first-year undergraduate students from three faculties at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi and the samples were 180 students. They were grouped and labeled as high ability students and low ability students based on the grades they obtained from their previous English Fundamental Course. The research instruments included an English listening proficiency test, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured retrospective interview. The English listening proficiency test was developed to examine the effect of listening supports on the listening performance. The questionnaire, along with the semi-structured retrospective interview, was designed to obtain in depth data about the listening strategies that high and low ability students used when taking the listening test. Quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics including mean, standard deviation statistics, and two-way ANOVA as well as effect size. Content analyses were employed to analyze qualitative data. The findings revealed that 1) listening supports significantly affected the listening performance of Thai first year students with the repeated input being the most effective listening support. However, the statistical analysis indicated that the effect size of the listening support was small. In other words, in this study listening performance may not be influenced by the selected listening supports, 2) the levels of English ability significantly affected the listening performance and its effect size was small, 3) the statistical analysis indicated that even though both main effects were significant, the interaction effect between English ability levels and listening supports was not significant, and 4) the students used a variety of listening strategies when taking a listening test with the three most frequently used strategies being directed attention, selective attention, and prediction, respectively and the least frequently used listening strategies being repetition, note-taking and positive talk, respectively. Moreover, it was found that high ability students and low ability students used listening strategies in the same pattern, but high ability students used them more frequently. The findings provided more insights into the effects on the listening performance of Thai first-year students. Moreover, they also gave more information to enable teachers to see the importance of listening strategies.