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The Effectiveness of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Listening Strategies in EFL Classrooms
Nguyen Thi Khac Phung1, To Khanh Bang2, Nguyen Hong Lam3
Contacted author: (Điện thoại: 0836414094; Email: khacphung.cm@bdu.edu.vn).
ABSTRACT
Listening is seen as a challenging activity that involves both active and interactive actions, requiring listeners to have natural, passive, and internal procedures as well as mental processes. The improvement of learners' listening comprehension remains a critical and immediate concern in today’s foreign language teaching practices. Therefore, this study seeks to assess the effectiveness of using both bottom-up and top-down approaches to strengthen students' listening comprehension in English. The population of the research is 70 second years students who are non-English majored students at Binh Duong University - Ca Mau Campus. In this study, a two-group quantitative experimental research design was used. Thirty-five students in the experimental group received instruction using top-down and bottom-up strategies, whereas the control group of the same size was taught without implementing those strategies. This research applied pre- and post-testing methods to measure students’ development and make comparisons. Findings indicated a significant rise in students' post-test performance and a boost in their confidence when tackling listening tasks. The study also revealed a strong positive correlation between top-down and bottom-up listening strategies, highlighting the importance of using them in EFL classrooms to connect new information with prior knowledge and enhance contextual learning.
Keywords: bottom-up, listening strategies, listening comprehension, top-down
Biography
Nguyen Thi Khac Phung is an English teacher with 8 years of experience. Recently, she has been working at Binh Duong University – Ca Mau Campus and is in charge of teaching English for English major students. She completed a Master’s Degree in linguistics at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH). She is always willing to learn more new teaching methods to diversify the lessons in the classroom setting. Her research interests are English language skill, pedagogical practices and linguistics.
