Approach to Listening Skills Formation in Students of Non-Linguistic Schools

Abstract

The paper presents the description of experimental research aimed at revealing the stages of listening comprehension skills development in students with low foreign language proficiency. The experimental group was formed as the result of a multi-component monitoring test. During the studies, special attention was paid to the facilitation of listening skills and a subsequent response to an oral message. The experiment was divided into three stages. The first one was dedicated to the formation of social language competence (the creation of neuron connections between a phoneme, a grapheme, and the acquisition of intonation of an English sentence). The second stage included listening comprehension training with both supporting texts and their gradual elimination. Such consistent transition made it possible to combine listening comprehension tasks with training active vocabulary and grammar, to accompany listening with visuals to include the cultural component in teaching the foreign language for specific purposes, to form skills to define the general idea of an oral message, etc. The third stage of our experiment proved to be challenging for students with low language proficiency. It was concluded that it would be more effective to proceed with the listening activities of the second stage but with the gradual introduction of oral responses to the listening activities.