The Comparative Effect of Using Listening Strategies on Reflective and Impulsive Visually Impaired Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the effect of listening strategies, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies, on impulsive and reflective visually impaired EFL learners' (VILs) listening comprehension. The participants of the study were 58 male and female VILs at pre-intermediate level within the age range of 12-18 in the west of Iran, Khorram Abad. These participants were selected non-randomly from among 10 different classes available to the researcher. To select the participants, the researcher talked to learners of these 10 classes and sought the consent of 58 learners to take part in the study. The Preliminary English Test (PET) pre-piloted on 30 students with almost similar characteristics to the target sample was administered to 72 students for selecting a homogenized group of participants. Then, 58 students were selected. Afterwards, the researcher administered the Personality Questionnaire developed by Eysenck (1975) to categorize them into two experimental groups of impulsive and reflective. Furthermore, the researcher made sure that the two groups were homogeneous regarding their listening comprehension prior to the start of the treatment. In this study, both experimental groups practiced listening comprehension through listening strategies, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies. The listening section of the PET test was administered as the posttest at the end of the treatment to both groups and their mean scores on the tests were compared through Independent Samples t-test. The results of statistical analyses led to the rejection of null hypothesis with the conclusion that the reflective learners significantly outperformed the impulsive students on the posttest of listening comprehension.