Analysis of Listening Tasks in Middle School English 1 Activity Books

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the listening tasks in the middle school English 1 activity books are appropriate for enhancing students’ communicative competence. For the study, twenty activity books were selected, and all the listening tasks in the listening sections and the assessment parts were examined. For data analysis, three criteria were used: achievement standards for listening skills from the revised 7th national curriculum, six types of classroom listening performance by Brown (2007), and the classification of communicative activities by Littlewood (1981). The findings were as follows: first, listening tasks did not evenly cover all the achievement standards and various types of listening performances that the revised 7th national curriculum proposed. Achievement standards 2, 3, 4 and 7 were mainly realized in the listening tasks rather than all the standards being applied evenly. Second, extensive listening, selective listening, and reactive listening performances were mostly implemented in listening tasks. Third, the listening tasks were mainly focused on functional communicative activities. All in all, the results of the study suggest that a greater number of various and balanced communicative activities related to the standards should be developed in order to enhance students’ communicative ability.