A Study of English Listening Comprehension Improvement via Product- vs. Process-Oriented Tactics: The Case Study of Shiraz EFL Learners

As listening comprehension plays an indispensable role in language learning, the way in which language instructors cover teaching listening comprehension has been controversial; the recent study selected two approaches to associate listening comprehension tactics: product-oriented and process-oriented. A quasi-experimental design was adopted to get to the objectives. Using a random procedure, 120 male students ranging in age from 15 to 18 were selected and were randomly allocated to two experimental and control groups. Subsequently, a pre-test was given to both groups to approve that both groups began on equal traction, which was the case. The students were taught for 12 sessions, adopting a process-oriented approach for the experimental group and a product-oriented approach for the control group. The evaluation of the two groups in terms of their overall performance on listening comprehension indicated that the performance of the students receiving training in process-oriented approach to listening comprehension compensated the control group trained through product-oriented approach, which suggests a clear advantage of the former. The findings have implications for the ways in which listening comprehension, in general, are taught in language classes.