The impact of student-centered activities on developing listening skills of young learners

Nowadays, the quick developments in technology have brought people closer, and this situation has created a need for adaptation to the requirements of the new world. For that reason, English is promoted as a common international language. Second, foreign language learning and teaching came into prominence in the last century. Researchers have put forward and organized several teaching methods, approaches, as well as techniques. In language teaching, traditional methods such as Grammar Translation Method (GTM), Direct Method (DM) and Audio-lingual Method (ALM), etc. are found. These conventional methods seem to give importance to the language structure and organize a more teacher-centered language teaching atmosphere in language classrooms. On the other hand, new approaches such as Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning (CLL), and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), etc. attach importance to communicative and purposeful language usage by language learners who become active in their learning endeavors. These learning periods are organized related to the requirements, concerns, and capabilities of learners. In a learner-centered environment, students can learn a language in an easy way within a communicative and authentic environment by processing meaning in small groups or pairs. Thus, this study is aimed at figuring out whether young learners' listening achievements might be improved with the help of student-centered activities, providing these move them from a position of inactive to active language learners. To this end, 60 5th grade students at a secondary school in Diyarbakır were included, and a mixed methods research design was adopted for the impact on the secondary school students' listening comprehension performance. This study was implemented as a pre-test and post-test experimental design during the 2020-2021 spring term. Participants were assigned randomly to the experimental group as 5/A (N=30) and the control group as 5/B (N=30) according to convenience sampling. In order to collect quantitative data, pre-tests and post-tests were organized. Experimental and control groups had pre-tests containing listening achievement tests in the first weeks of the period. With students in the experimental group, for both parts of the study starting from the second week, listening lessons were provided with student-centered activities as completing tools for the subjects they studied from their course books in one lesson, approximately 7 weeks. On the other hand, the control group continued to have their lessons with their usual techniques. After the implementation, post-tests with a listening achievement test were distributed. Quantitative data was analyzed by using the Independent Samples T-test and Paired Samples T-test on SPSS 25.0 statistical package programme. Additionally, qualitative data was gathered through a semi-structured interview. This was carried out at the end of student-centered listening sessions to get ideas from participants about the experiment, which might support the quantitative findings and associate their thoughts with quantitative results. A semi-structured interview was conducted one week after the post-test administration. Regarding young learners' listening abilities, it was discovered that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups. Based on these findings, it was concluded that classes supplemented with student-centered activities were successful in improving students' listening skills. The qualitative data revealed that student-centered listening activities had a favorable impact on their perceptions of English.