Narration and Partial Dictation Tasks: EFLLearners’ Listening Comprehension Ability

Although listening ability is one of the important skills in foreign language learning,there has been relatively little research in this specific area. The present study attemptedto investigate the effects of narration and partial dictation tasks on Iranian intermediateEFL learners’ listening comprehension. In order to have participant of relatively thesame level of language proficiency, an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used at thebeginning of the research and sixty participants were chosen from the 85 students whotook the test. The study consisted of three groups, two experimental groups and onecontrol group (twenty participants in each group) with a pre-test and post-testmeasurement within a seven-week period of time. All the groups were exposed to thesame listening test as the pre and post-test, however, only the experimental groupsreceived the special treatment regarding tasks, narration and partial dictation.Meanwhile, the control group listened to the audio materials and was given the listeningexercises in their textbook. ANOVA and paired-samples t-test were utilized to analyzethe listening performance of the participants. At the end of the study, the results revealedthat experimental groups outperformed the control group in post-test. And the differencebetween the pre-test and post-test scores for the experimental groups was found to bestatistically significant, although for the control group it was not so. Moreover, theresults didn’t show any significant difference between performance of narration andpartial dictation groups. The results of this study could help teachers, learners, andtextbook writers and for those who are interested in this field.

Keywords:

listening comprehension , narration , partial dictation tasks