Perceived Strategy Use During Performance On Three Authentic Listening Comprehension Tasks

Abstract

In order for learners to acquire a foreign language they must be motivated and use strategies effectively to understand “authentic” aural input. This study offers some insight into the strategies students perceive they use while performing an authentic listening comprehension task and the relationship between their strategy use and listening ability. Eighty‐three university students registered for first‐, second‐, third‐, and fourth‐semester Spanish participated in two data gathering sessions. In the first session, they took the Listening Comprehension section of the Spanish Advanced Placement Exam (1984). In the second session, they executed recall tasks on three authentic video programs and then completed a strategy questionnaire. The first‐semester students perceived themselves to be the most strategic listeners and outperformed the second‐semester students on all three recall tasks; they were followed by the combined third‐ and‐fourth‐semester students and then by the second‐semester students, who perceived themselves to be the least strategic listeners and consistently produced the lowest scores on the recall tasks.