European Journal of Education Studies ISSN: 2501 - 1111 ISSN-L: 2501 - 1111 Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1044531 Volume 3 │Issue 10 │2017 EFFECTS OF LISTENING STRATEGIES’ INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TO LISTENING Owolewa, O. Oluseguni, Olu. Oyewole Department of Arts Education, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Nigeria Abstract: The use of conventional instructional strategy has failed to address negative attitude to listening comprehension. This study, therefore, determined the effects of listening strategies’ instruction on senior secondary school students’ attitude to listening comprehension. This research adopted a pretest, treatment and posttest quasiexperimental factorial design. A total sample of one hundred and twenty participants were randomly selected and assigned to three treatment groups of listening strategies, discourse markers instructions and the control which was not exposed to instruction. The instruments used were: The Listening Attitude Questionnaire, Teachers’ Instructional Guide on listening strategies ’ instructions; Teachers Instructional Guide on Modified Conventional Strategy and Evaluation sheet for Assessing Teachers’ Performance on the use of the Strategies (ESAT). Data were analyzed using ANCOVA at 0.05 level of significance. There was a significant difference in the attitude to listening [F(1, 117) = 94.64, p < 0.05]. Those exposed to listening strategies instruction had a better attitude to listening and a better listening comprehension than those exposed to other instructions. Keywords: attitude to listening comprehension, discourse markers’ instruction, secondary schools Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. © 2015 – 2017 Open Access Publishing Group 750 Owolewa, O. Olusegun, Olu. Oyewole EFFECTS OF LISTENING STRATEGIES’ INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TO LISTENING 1. Introduction There are words for specific things, emotions, expressions and it appears as though we have words for everything when thinking about it. In each language; words are constructed in a certain way. When working with language, it is quite possible to determine whether a word belongs to one stem or another just by looking at it even if the person has no clue of the word’s meaning which is quite fascinating. Through time, society has gone through great changes which have influenced our languages. New vocabularies have been added to our languages and old-fashioned words have been replaced. Each language has its characteristics and reflects society to a great extent. Many studies have been carried out through the years. During the 97 ’s, vast sociolinguistic investigations were made and one focused mainly on syntactic, phonology and morphology variations. At first, gender was regarded as a sociolinguistic variable, just like social class, age, ethnicity and social status. It was not until the midst 7 ’s when Robin Lakoff’s essay Language and Woman’s Place was released, science about gender and language was established (Nordenstam, 2003). It is expected that the classroom interactions should bridge the gap between the observed reality and the curriculum. Contrary to expectation, listening comprehension instruction seems not to be was not expressly state as part of the objectives of Senior Secondary School English Language Curriculum. For instance, the terminal objectives stated in the Senior Secondary School English Language Curriculum include to: 1. provide students with a sound linguistic basis for further learning in tertiary and vocational institutions. 2. equip school leavers with a satisfactory level of proficiency in English language usage in their places of work. 3. stimulate love for reading as a pleasurable activity. 4. promote the art of spoken English as a medium of national and international communication. 5. enhance and develop further the various skills and competences already acquired at Junior the Junior secondary school level (NERDC.p.10) Attitude is viewed as the evaluative dimension of concept and is acquired through learning; it can be changed through persuasion using variety of techniques. Attitude can also be described as a state of readiness, a tendency on the part of individual to act in a certain way (Adesina and Akinbobola, 2005). Attitude as a factor could be viewed as the totality of an individual’s inclination towards object, institution or idea. Attitude could be learnt or formed and acquired from member of the family, teacher and peer group. The learner acquires from the teacher’s disposition to form attitude towards learning which could positively or negatively affect his performance. European Journal of Education Studies - Volume 3 │ Issue 10 │ 2017 751 Owolewa, O. Olusegun, Olu. Oyewole EFFECTS OF LISTENING STRATEGIES’ INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TO LISTENING Attitudes are expressed in three ways, through beliefs, emotions and actions. The belief component of attitude is what a person believes about the attitudinal object. The emotional component consists of feelings towards the attitudinal object. The action component refers to one’s actions towards various people, objects and institutions. Listening is the first in order of acquisition among the four fundamental language skills. Others are speaking, reading and writing. It is the medium through which children, young persons and adults receive a large portion of their education their information, their ideals, sense of values, appreciation of human affairs and their understanding of the world. The listener characteristics have been perceived wrongly by authors such as Pearson, Nelson, Titsworth and Harter (2003). They describe a listener as a passive processor of speech sounds. This must have been based on the thinking that the listener only perceives speech sounds without much effort. This cannot be the true characteristics of a listener. The listener activates his/her background knowledge as soon as the speech sounds are perceived. The attachment of relevant experiences with the speech sounds brings about understanding of the intended message of the speaker. In this wise, the listener cannot be said to be a passive processor of speech sounds. In addition to the physiological influences on listening, listeners may bring psychological variables to comprehension. The listener's attitudinal state may well be one of the most significant psychological influences on the listener’s behaviour. Attitudes have three components which are the cognitive which has to do with the ways which a listener thinks about himself or herself, the listening environment and the context of listening. The second component is the way the listener feels about himself or herself, the purpose of listening, the speaker, and the goal of listening and so on. The way the listener thinks or feels conditions the way he or she behaves. The behavioral attitude of the listener is one of the components that constitute the attitude to listening. For viewing / downloading the full article, please access the following link: https://oapub.org/edu/index.php/ejes/article/view/1176 European Journal of Education Studies - Volume 3 │ Issue 10 │ 2017 752