Developing strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers

Abstract

The article examines the theoretical foundations for developing strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers, clarifies its content and structure, and substantiates a system of components, criteria, indicators, and levels of development with due regard to the professional and methodological orientation of pre-service teacher education.

Purpose. To provide a theoretical rationale for the essence of strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers, to refine its structure, identify its components, criteria, and indicators of development, and characterize the levels of its development with due regard to the specific features of the professional training of future foreign language teachers.

Methods. To achieve the research purpose, a set of theoretical research methods was employed: analysis and synthesis of psychological, pedagogical, and methodological literature on foreign language listening, learning strategies, and strategic competence; comparison and systematization of scholarly approaches to the classification of listening strategies; clarification of the conceptual and categorical framework of the study; structural and component analysis to identify the constituent elements of strategic competence; and modelling of the relationships among its components, criteria, indicators, and levels of development.

Results. The concept of strategic competence was clarified with regard to the specific characteristics of listening as a receptive mode of foreign language communication. Listening strategies were defined as consciously selected methods and techniques for processing auditory information that facilitate prediction of message content, activation of prior knowledge, identification of the main idea and key information, inferencing, compensation for incomplete comprehension, and monitoring and regulation of the listening process. The importance of cognitive, compensatory, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies for the effective perception and comprehension of foreign language spoken discourse was substantiated. The structure of strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers was refined, and five interrelated components were identified. For each component, a corresponding criterion and a set of indicators were established, reflecting motivational readiness for listening activities, knowledge of strategies and awareness of the conditions for their application, the ability to flexibly select and combine strategic actions, compensate for comprehension difficulties, and plan, monitor, adjust, and self-assess the listening process. Particular emphasis was placed on the reflective-methodological component, which reflects the professional orientation of pre-service teacher education and entails the ability to transform personal experience of strategic listening into the capacity to analyse learners’ listening difficulties, select appropriate strategies for overcoming them, and design strategically oriented learning tasks. Based on the identified criteria and indicators, three levels of strategic competence development in listening were characterized.

Conclusions. Strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers is a multidimensional construct whose development should be assessed not only in terms of successful comprehension of foreign language audio input but also in terms of the degree of awareness, autonomy, flexibility, and reflectiveness demonstrated in strategic activity. The proposed component-and-criterion structure provides a theoretical foundation for developing diagnostic tools and a methodology for the purposeful development of strategic competence in listening among pre-service foreign language teachers.