2. Literature Review

2.1 Questions Preview and Listening Comprehension

The heated dispute on whether questions preview (QP) can influence test-takers#8217; listening comprehension has brought up for a long time since the idea of allowing students to do so before a listening task is put forward. Some researchers (Buck, 1991; Chang, 2004a; Chang amp; Read, 2006; Cohen, 1984; Shohamy amp; Inbar 1991) suggest that questions preview is a beneficial way of providing related information about a task, which help draw test takers#8217; attention in the right direction. While, others (Ur, 1984; Weir, 1993) argue that questions preview may alter the nature of the listening procedure owing to their thoughts may be easily distracted by what they pre-read so that miss the entire meaning of the story.

So in order to verify the effect of questions preview on EFL learners#8217; performance, Buck (1991) compared three test-takers who saw the test questions in advance with another three who did not. He discovered that all three who had previewed the questions outperformed the others as they reported that it helped them understand better, suggesting that the questions revealed the content of the story and so made the test less difficult. Berne (1995) examined how varying pre-listening activities affected her Spanish learners at the tertiary level. Her students who had previewed the test questions scored higher than those who had not, but the difference was not that significant. While, when all the participants watched the videotape again and retook the test, the average score for each group after the second exposure was dramatically higher than the first one. Hence, she discovered that previewing question might not yield higher marks unless it was combined with other measures.

As mentioned above, they have a substantial divergence of the discoveries after experiments. Consequently, a further investigation of the influence of questions preview on listening performance is clearly warranted.

2.2 Language Proficiency and Listening Comprehension

Rubin (1994), in her review of second language listening comprehension research, puts forward that language proficiency is a vital and principal variable in almost all of the reviewed studies. Thus she suggests that the level of language proficiency should be considered in every study in the future listening research. According to Chang and Read#8217;s (2006) finding, it is quite clear to learn that the contribution of English language proficiency to English listening comprehension is conspicuous. This claim also lends support to the discovery of Sakai (2009), who has confirmed that there was a significant effect of language proficiency on listening performance.

So in order to verify the effect of language proficiency on students#8217; listening comprehension, Chang and Read (2006) compared 78 students with a higher level of proficiency with 82 students with a lower level of proficiency at a college in Taiwan, they discovered that the difference between the means of two groups was significant with a mean of 44.64 in the high-proficiency group and a mean of 35.06 in the lower one. In addition, Sakai (2009) compared 16 high-proficiency students with 20 low-proficiency students in a listening test. The data showed that the difference between the two groups was statistically significant. The high proficiency group (M = 39.94) outperformed the low proficiency group (M = 29.90).

As mentioned above, a great number of researchers have obtained a common ground of the effect of language proficiency on listening comprehension. Therefore, in order to provide further evidence on this issue, it is vital to verify again. Consequently, this study will take the language proficiency variable seriously as well when designing the procedure.

2.3 Interplay of Questions Preview and Language Proficiency on Listening Comprehension