The effect of critical listening instruction on the critical listening skills and cognitive structures related to listening of fourth-grade primary school students

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of critical listening education implemented in the fourth-grade Turkish language course on students' critical listening skills and the changes in their cognitive structures related to the concept of listening. The study was conducted during the fall semester of the 2023-2024 academic year in two different fourth-grade classes of a public school located in the central district of Siirt, Turkey, with a total of 69 students, one class serving as the experimental group and the other as the control group. A mixed-methods research design, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods, was employed to thoroughly investigate students' critical listening skills and their cognitive structures related to listening. Data were collected using a Critical Listening Test, a Word Association Test, student and researcher diaries, a semi-structured interview form, and a personal information form. Prior to the implementation phase, the Critical Listening Test was administered to assess the baseline performance of both groups. The experimental group participated in critical listening skill development activities over a period of ten weeks, totaling 40 instructional hours. At the conclusion of the intervention, a t-test analysis was conducted to compare the pre-test and post-test mean achievement scores of the experimental and control groups on the Critical Listening Test. Additionally, a MANOVA test was used to analyze whether there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the experimental and control groups concerning the sub-dimensions of critical listening. Following the identification of a significant difference in post-test mean scores between the groups, an ANOVA test was conducted to determine the source of this difference across the sub-dimensions of comprehension, questioning, inference, and evaluation. For the Word Association Test, frequency tables were created to display the frequency of words generated by the experimental group in response to the key concept of "listening" in both pre-test and post-test phases. Based on these frequency tables, concept networks were developed using the cut-off point technique. To deepen the quantitative findings, qualitative data were collected through student and researcher diaries recorded at the end of each lesson and semi-structured interviews conducted with twelve volunteer students at the conclusion of the experimental process. The results of the independent samples t-test, conducted to compare the total mean scores for critical listening, indicated that the difference observed in post-test total mean scores was in favor of the experimental group. Furthermore, the ANOVA test results, which compared the post-test mean achievement scores of the experimental and control groups across the sub-dimensions of comprehension, questioning, inference, and evaluation, revealed significant differences in favor of the experimental group across all dimensions. Additionally, in the Word Association Test, the experimental group students generated words related to the concept of listening 176 times in the pre-test, while after the critical listening education, the same key concept elicited 247 word repetitions. In the interviews conducted with the experimental group following the intervention, students perceived critical listening within the framework of "listening with comprehension" and "listening with questioning" categories. Moreover, students expressed that critical listening education should be introduced in primary schools before the fourth grade.