Strategies and techniques of listening comprehension in migration-related multilingual children and adolescents.
Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
Final Report Abstract
Despite the importance of listening comprehension for academic learning and social participation, this area often receives less attention in research and teaching, particularly in the context of migration-related multilingualism. The project "Strategies and Techniques of Listening Comprehension among Migration-Related Multilingual Children and Adolescents" focuses on multilingual children and adolescents who acquire their languages (German and Russian) naturally through everyday contact from early childhood. It explores their listening comprehension and the regulating strategies and techniques they use. The project pursued three main goals: 1) Investigation of listening comprehension in both family and environmental language, 2) Assessment of listening comprehension as a complex process at the sound, word, sentence, and text levels, and 3) Analysis of the use of strategies and techniques during listening comprehension. The study particularly focused on the differences in the use of strategies and techniques during the listening comprehension process between multilinguals and monolingually socialized participants, differences in the use of these strategies between family and environmental languages, and the impact of strategy and technique use compared to linguistic knowledge on the success of listening comprehension. For empirical data collection, Russian-German speaking children and adolescents (n=99) and a monolingual German-speaking comparison group (n=30) were examined. The quantitative evaluation of the results shows that multilinguals generally use strategies slightly more often than monolinguals. Differences were identified in the use of specific strategies and techniques and their categorization between the two groups. It was found that multilinguals use strategies and techniques more frequently in Russian than in German, with their categorization differing between the two languages. Interactive strategies to prevent misunderstandings were important in Russian. In German, preparation for the listening situation was more prominent. Furthermore, it was shown that success in listening comprehension was influenced by results of the language proficiency test (cloze test). The influence of strategy use had a smaller effect and did not contribute equally to success at all levels of listening comprehension. The study lays the foundation for further research and the development of didactic measures to promote listening comprehension among multilingual children and adolescents. The findings show that the originally assumed classification of listening comprehension strategies from foreign language acquisition research as well as a differentiation between strategies and techniques is not applicable here and that strategy use in the context of migration-related multilingualism might be language- and group-specific. This underscores the need for individual and context-specific approaches in promoting listening comprehension.
