Effect of strategy instruction for developing listening skills of learners of Turkish as a foreign language

Considering the current developments and learner needs within the framework of teaching Turkish as a foreign language, it was thought that it would be beneficial to support listening comprehension activities with listening strategies, and in order to improve the listening comprehension skills of the students, in the language teaching centre serving under the roof of a higher education institution in Ankara, Turkish was taught as a foreign language. Activities on teaching listening strategies were carried out for eight weeks with students in two separate groups, consisting of 26 students in total, learning Turkish as a foreign language and at the B1.2 level. Before teaching each lesson, a plan was designed for each activity, and this plan was followed during the instruction. In order to measure the listening comprehension skills of the students before and after the instruction, the Listening Achievement Test was developed by creating questions containing the achievements of A1, A2 and B1 levels. For the test, a piloting was made with 45 students and necessary arrangements were made in terms of the applicability of the test in line with the data of the instruction; then, the test in question was applied to the experimental and control groups consisting of 52 students in the form of pre-test and post-test when the students were at B1.2 level and when they completed B1.4. The test results were processed into the SPSS-25 package program. The item discrimination index, item difficulty index and KR-20 reliability statistics of the tests were analysed using the TAP (Test Analysis Program Version 14.7.4) package program. There was a significant difference because the Turkish listening comprehension skills calculated in the instruction at the end of the process regarding the questions containing the B1 achievements of the students in the experimental group, in which listening strategies were applied, were higher than the skills of the students in the control group. At the end of the instruction, students' opinions were taken through a semi-structured interview form in order to determine the opinions of the students in the experimental group about the process. These qualitative data obtained from students' opinions were evaluated by content analysis. As a result of the evaluation, it was determined that the students in the experimental group, who were found to have improved their listening skills with activities based on teaching listening strategies, also developed a positive opinion about the teaching process.