INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF LISTENING STRATEGIES INSTRUCTION ON REDUCING FOREIGN LANGUAGE LISTENING ANXIETY IN ANXIETY IRANIAN EFL CONTEXT

Foreign language listening is usually considered as the one of most challenging skills to be mastered when acquiring a second or foreign language. More recently, discussions about listening instruction have emphasized the role of strategy training in facilitating comprehension and various efforts have been made in this regard. The present study attempted to investigate the efficiency of listening strategy instruction on reducing foreign language listening anxiety and improving L2 listening comprehension of Iranian high school students. Sixty two Iranian high school students were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. The instruments utilized in this study were listening comprehension test and FLLAS Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scales which were used in the pre-and post-tests. During the twelve instructional sessions, the experimental group received listening strategy instruction embedded into a participants’ text book, following the strategies proposed by Oxford (1990), while the control group received no instruction. At the end of the instruction, a post-test was administered, and the findings indicated that although there was a little increase in the mean scores of participants’ FLLA and Listening Comprehension, there was not a statistically significant difference between the participants’ FLLA and LC scores. The study showed that FLLA, distinguished as a distinct phenomenon from general language anxiety, had a moderate negative impact on listening comprehension skill especially for less proficient EFL learners. The findings of the study will be crucial references for both teachers and learners to evaluate their teaching and learning listening experiences in the classroom as well as the application in daily communication. In general, the study should encourage educators to continue to experiment with similar approaches and to combine these types of strategies with other strategies.