The top-down strategies in an EFL class of the vocational high school: an experimental study on enhancing students’ listening comprehension skills

Badrun Larandang; Nur Sehang Thamrin; Andi Naniwarsih; Fikriani Aminun Omolu; Nadrun Nadrun

doi:10.23971/jefl.v13i2.6269

The top-down strategies in an EFL class of the vocational high school: an experimental study on enhancing students’ listening comprehension skills

Badrun Larandang, Nur Sehang Thamrin, Andi Naniwarsih, Fikriani Aminun Omolu, Nadrun Nadrun

Abstract

Despite numerous studies emphasizing the benefits of using background knowledge and vocabulary in EFL listening courses, there is a lack of rationale for implementing top-down strategies that holistically integrate prior knowledge, vocabulary enhancement, and self-assessment. In order to address the issues, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the teacher's top-down strategies in improving students' listening skills. Therefore, we utilized pre-experimental research, particularly a one-group pretest-posttest design, to ascertain the strategies’ effectiveness. Twenty-one participants in this study were selected randomly. We used paired sample T-test with SPSS software to figure out if there was a statistically significant difference between the pretest and post-test scores after repeated intervention encounters. The statistical analysis showed that the average post-test score (M= 77.8571) was considerably higher than the average pretest score (M= 63.5714). The findings indicated that the students’ listening proficiency improved after being addressed with top-down strategies. This finding suggests that the teacher’s top-down approach helps students raise their listening comprehension skills. The study's results call for using top-down strategies to stimulate students' listening comprehension, to learn more effectively, and increase their listening consciousness.

Keywords

background knowledge; listening comprehension; pre-activity; self-assessment; top-down strategies

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v13i2.6269