The effect of goal setting on listening comprehension

This study aims to examine the effect of goal setting strategy as an advance organizer on listening comprehension. The study adopted quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design. The participants of the study were 66 preschool children enrolled in a preschool. All participants were in 5 year olds. Data were collected via fictional and informative (nonfictional) texts determined in accordance with expert opinion and open-ended questions related to these texts. The activities done with these texts carried out with different groups. Accordingly, the study includes a control and an experimental group studied on the informative text and a different control and experimental group studied on the fictional text. Because the participants are 5-year-old children, pre-test and pos-test measurements carried out twice with different texts and questions to produce evidence. After reading texts used in pretest, the questions related to the text were posed in a face to face interview. After pretest measurement, it was determined that both groups are equal and then the study proceeded with practice phase. The experimental groups studied listening comprehension by being given a goal at the beginning and the middle of the text at practices took 5 weeks in total and made in ten lessons. The same practice was designed without any goal setting for control groups. After practices, the post-tests were conducted with similar texts used in pre-test and equivalent questions prepared with regard to these texts. The equivalence of the texts and the questions was determined according to expert opinions. The answers of the participants were analyzed by two raters. The percentage of agreement between raters is exact. The answers obtained as a result of analysis transferred to statistical program. Man Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test were carried out with the data. Analysis results reveal that the goal setting strategy has positive effect on comprehension of informative and fictional texts through listening. This effect is at statistically meaningful level.