INTENSIVE ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE FOR JAPANESE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ENGLISH SOUNDS AND RHYTHMS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English Mie University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Education by Kumi Nagaoka March, 13, 2017 Approved by ________________________________________ Thesis Advisor INTENSIVE ENGLISH i Table of Contents Abstract ⅳ Acknowledgements ⅴ Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 Background 1.1 Successful listening 7 1.1.1 Process of listening 7 1.1.2 Two types of listening strategies 8 1.1.3 Knowledge required for L2 listening 9 1.2 L2 listening problems 11 1.2.1 Lack of phonological knowledge 13 1.2.1.1 Consonants and vowels 13 1.2.1.2 Variations in connected speech 13 1.2.1.3 English rhythm 15 1.2.2 The influence of L1 phonological knowledge on L2 listening 16 1.2.2.1 The influence of L1 phonemes on L2 listening 16 1.2.2.2 The influence of L1 rhythm on L2 listening 17 1.2.2.3 Interlangugae 19 1.2.3 Automaticity and speech rates 20 1.2.3.1 Automaticity and knowledge 21 1.2.3.2 Working memory 23 1.2.3.3 Speech rates 25 1.3 Teaching listening 28 1.3.1 Top-down and bottom-up approaches 28 INTENSIVE ENGLISH ii 1.3.2 The examples of activities in the bottom-up approach 30 CHAPTER 2 The present study 2.1 Research questions and hypotheses 32 2.2 Pilot test 34 2.2.1 Subjects and procedure 34 2.2.2 Results 35 2.3 Main study 35 2.3.1 Subjects 35 2.3.2 Materials 36 2.3.3 Procedure 36 2.3.4 The way of evaluating the experimental data 36 2.4 Hypothesis 1 37 2.4.1 Materials 37 2.4.2 Procedure 39 2.4.3 Results and discussion 40 2.5 Hypothesis 2 46 2.5.1 Materials 46 2.5.2 Procedure 48 2.5.3 Results and discussion 49 2.6 Hypothesis 3 56 2.6.1 Materials 56 2.6.2 Procedure 57 2.6.3 Results and discussion 59 2.7 General discussion and conclusion 62 INTENSIVE ENGLISH iii Conclusion and suggestion 67 References 73 Appendix 1 Worksheet in Hypothesis 1 81 Appendix 2 Worksheet in Hypothesis 2 82 Appendix 3 Answer Sheet of Pre-test in Hypothesis 3 83 Appendix 4 Worksheet in Hypothesis 3 84 Appendix 5 Answer Sheet of Post-test in Hypothesis 3 85 INTENSIVE ENGLISH iv Abstract The purposes of this paper are to identify what English listening problems that Japanese high school students of English at the beginner level have and to explore the effective ways of teaching English listening in class. According to the survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2015), listening skills that Japanese high school students obtain have not achieved their goal. Therefore, English language teachers are required to foster their students’ listening skills. In Chapter 1, previous research into English listening problems are discussed. In bottom-up processes, lack of phonological knowledge and skills to decode speech quickly is considered to cause problems inherent to listening. In addition, it is assumed that learners’ first language influences their second language listening comprehension. Furthermore, instructions in teaching listening proposed by previous research are also discussed. In Chapter 2, three hypotheses are examined in high school English classes. The findings give us several suggestions. Firstly, slow speech rates did not promote the subjects’ perceptions of target sentences when they did not have sufficient knowledge of the sentences that they heard. An exception was observed in listening to a long sentence. Secondly, comparing listening to two kinds of English sentences with the mora in Japanese and English rhythm, there was no difference in the subjects’ performance between the two cases. These findings imply that lack of linguistic knowledge and its automatic use causes listening problems for beginners under the influence of their working memory capacity. Finally, the proposed intensive listening practice of English sounds and rhythms improved the subjects’ performance significantly between pre-and post-tests. However, the effectiveness of the listening practice for a long term is not clear. In addition, it is not obvious either how students come to perceive English sounds and rhythms through listening practice. Further study is required to solve these problems. INTENSIVE ENGLISH v Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the following people: To my supervisor, Professor Mitsuaki Hayase, who always encouraged me and gave me a lot of valuable advice for my studies. To Professor Nobuhiro Miyachi, Professor Hideo Nishimura, and Professor Hiroko Arao, for their precious advice. To Mr. Masatoshi Ishida, an English teacher at Kuwananishi High School, who gave me supportive comments and helped me in evaluating the data for my studies. To Ashley, M. G., an ALT in Mie Prefectural Board of Education, who helped me in making the material for my studies. INTENSIVE ENGLISH 1 Introduction Listening is one of the important skills in second language (L2) acquisition. In the field of L2 acquisition, since Krashen (1987) proposed the importance of comprehensible input (pp. 20-30), listening has been regarded as an even more important means for input. It is also true of learning English as a foreign language in Japan. In fact, an English listening test was introduced in the national center test for university admission in 2006. Moreover, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (2008, 2009) revised the course of study in high schools, which is the standard for curricula through the school system in Japan, has brought the more exposure of English language in high schools since 2012 (MEXT, 2012, 2013). This trend has led English teachers in Japanese high schools to understand the significance of developing listening skills. However, according to a survey of a random sample of 500 high schools conducted by MEXT (2015), the results of English listening tests taken by final-year students show that more than half of the scores remain at “Basic User A 1” level in CEFR criteria (the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). This level has not achieved the goal that the MEXT established in 2013. The survey also shows that the more time is spent for reading than listening in class. In fact, due to the limited amount of class time, it seems that reading has a higher priority in class than listening. Moreover, in practical teaching, it seems that only repeated listening is a common strategy for teachers of English and the way of teaching listening has been discussed less than that of teaching reading. Although listening skills in acquiring English proficiency are regarded as important, it seems that teaching English listening should be paid more attention to by teachers in Japanese high schools. In teaching L2 listening, Field (2008b) points out as follows: INTENSIVE ENGLISH 2 At the moment, instructors tend to seriously underestimate the importance of listening practice. When they find themselves short of time, it is quite often the listening session that gets cut. . . . Spoken language is less tangible and more difficult to handle than written. There is also the dead hand of the methodology we use, which seems ineffectual in its present form. (p. 334) It is considered that Field’s (2008b) argument can be also applied to teaching English in Japan. In my experience of teaching English at Japanese high schools, I observed that my students found difficulty in listening comprehension in class. They did not comprehend the text in listening as well as they did in reading. They knew words and sentence structures in the text, but they seemed to have problems in listening comprehension. It is obvious that the amount of time the students spent in listening to English sounds was less than the counterpart in reading. Therefore, in the circumstance of the limited amount of class time, I think that it is necessary to explore the effective way of teaching listening in class. In particular, my experience led me to understand the importance of acquiring listening skills by Japanese high school students of English at the beginner level since the skills are the basis of English. I think that solving listening problems is related with students’ proficiency in English as a whole. In order to find the effective instructions in listening to English, it is necessary to recognize what listening problems Japanese high school students have. A considerable number of studies on this subject have reported that L2 listening problems are caused by various factors. Some of the factors are considered to be lack of several types of required knowledge for listening comprehension. For example, Rost (2011) suggests five types of required knowledge for listening skills: “Phonological [K]knowledge”, “Syntactic [K]knowledge”, “Semantic [K]knowledge”, “Pragmatic [K]knowledge” and “General INTENSIVE ENGLISH 3 [K]knowledge” (pp. 210-212). In particular, it is suggested that lack of phonological knowledge influences the problems inherent in listening comprehension (Rost, 2011; Takefuta, 1989). According to Rost (2011), “Phonological [K]knowledge consists of knowledge of phonemes, allophonic variation, prosody, intonation, and stress. It also includes the application of this knowledge to recognize words in the stream of speech” (pp. 213). Although L2 learners need to obtain phonological knowledge of their target language, their first language (L1) interferes with the acquisition of phonological knowledge (Yumitani, 2011). Fukazawa (2000) mentions that Japanese learners unconsciously try to listen to and speak English on the basis of their L1 sound system (pp. 11-12). Minakuchi, Yuzawa, and Sixian (2013) found that monolingual Japanese students segmented English word sounds by employing the mora in Japanese. Thus, it is not easy for Japanese learners of English to acquire phonological knowledge. In addition to the difficulty of obtaining the L2 sound system, Takefuta (1989) points out that L2 learners have difficulty in keeping pace with speakers. From the viewpoint of speech rates, Griffiths’s (1990, 1992) studies show that slow speech rates at a certain level support lower-intermediate L2 listeners’ comprehension. However, very slow speech rates do not always facilitate L2 listening comprehension because information from each lexical chunk in speech must be processed within a certain amount of time (Kohno, 2001). In this respect, Yuzawa and Yuzawa (2014) mention that retaining information from speech and processing it are required in listening comprehension and employing the two skills is related to the role of human memory (pp. 104-106). As shown above, there are many studies on required knowledge and speech rates as to English listening problems. However, it seems that some studies tend to focus on each factor in listening problems. In this respect, Fujinaga (2002) points out that making a comparison between English and Japanese can allow us to predict listening problems that Japanese INTENSIVE ENGLISH 4 learners of English face but the prediction has not been verified in a concrete way. Fujinaga’s (2002) experimental study investigated Japanese college students’ errors in listening to English and the results showed that the common factors found in the students’ errors were phonemes, sound changes, and reduced sounds in unstressed words or syllables in English. Furthermore, the results also showed that when the students misheard English words, the ratios of phonemes, sound changes, and reduced sounds in unstressed words or syllables were 45.7%, 21.7% and 21.0% respectively. However, Fujinaga’s (2002) investigation only focused on the aspect of phonological knowledge in listening problems. Therefore, it is still not clear how required knowledge for listening and speech rates affected each other and caused listening problems. Moreover, although Griffiths’s (1990, 1992) studies, as mentioned above, showed the effectiveness of slow speech rates for lower-intermediate L2 listeners, can we attain the same result as this in the case of beginner-level learners? My students, who are at the beginner level, often commented that what they heard in class was too fast for them to comprehend. Do slow speech rates help Japanese students of English at the beginner level to improve their listening skills? Furthermore, in previous research it is suggested that acquiring phonological knowledge such as English sounds and rhythms is difficult for Japanese learners due to their L1 interference. To be sure, my students seemed to understand English utterances with katakana pronunciation easily. Then, is it easier for them to listen to English pronounced with Japanese rhythm? The answers to this question are seen in previous research, but most of them are descriptive and are not proved in experiments. As mentioned above, Field (2008b) states that the ways of teaching L2 listening should be improved. Previous studies have proposed various types of listening instruction in light of top-down and bottom- up approaches. However, Berne (2004) points out that the