An investigation into the effects of extensive listening on pre-intermediate learners’ English vocabulary learning at The Asian International School

Abstract

Nowadays, most learners, especially students at The Asian International School, have plenty of opportunities for learning English vocabulary from the earliest possible age. However, the students in general faced lots of difficulties in vocabulary learning. Thus, the study was conducted with the purpose to investigate to what extent extensive listening affected the students’ vocabulary learning and their listening habits. Eighty participants were chosen by using convenience sampling and divided into two groups: a control group and an experimental group. The two groups took a pretest to measure their vocabulary knowledge with Listening Vocabulary Levels Test. Then, besides studying the school’s formal English curriculum, the control group practiced intensive listening while the experimental group practiced extensive listening. All the participants were required to submit one listening journal each week to report what they have done as their listening habits. Finally, they took a posttest (Listening Vocabulary Levels Test) after 12 weeks practicing. The results showed that extensive listening could help to increase the participants’ receptive vocabulary knowledge significantly, including word meanings and word aural forms. Additionally, the more the participants practiced extensive listening, the higher improvement they somewhat had on receptive vocabulary knowledge. The participants tended to practice listening by using visual materials and self-selected materials in their listening habits. To sum up, extensive listening affected impressively the participants’ vocabulary learning that aspires for the study to propose suggestions for future studies so that administrators, teachers, and students could receive huge pedagogical implications of extensive listening.