INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT SKILLS AS LISTENING STRATEGIES

Abstract

Listening has played an important role in the learning process, especially in the ESL setting as it can help the learners to understand comprehensively and to respond accordingly. However, there are some strategies can be used to overcome the obstacles. This study aimed to explore ESL learners’ perceptions on direct skill and indirect skill used as listening strategies. This study also sought to investigate the relationship between direct skill and indirect skill used as listening strategies. The data was collected through the administration of a 5 Likert-scale quantitative survey rooted from Tunyen et al. 's (2020). 122 post-secondary ESL learners from a public university responded to this survey. Findings revealed that for direct skills, majority of participants are willing to inform the speakers when having difficulties in understanding the discussed topic, pay attention to speaker’s voice and try their best to identify speaker’s main points. Meanwhile, for indirect skills, a majority of participants agree that they would guess speakers’ intention, pay attention on speaker’s intonation and look for the meaning of difficult words as they listen. It is also revealed a strong positive relationship between direct and indirect skills. Therefore, educators should expose their learners to different listening strategies to facilitate any listening exercises.