The Correlation between Auditory perception and Syntactic Awareness in Undergraduate Learners of Arabic at the University of Kashan

Abstract

This study was conducted to better understand the extent of the relationship between auditory comprehension and second language syntactic ability. To operationalize the variables under study, a researcher-made grammaticality judgment test (focusing on definite/indefinite articles) was used to measure syntactic knowledge and a speech-to-text researcher-made conversion task to assess auditory comprehension. The sample, selected through purposeful sampling, consisted of 36 fourth-year students studying Arabic at the University of Kashan in 2018. To much the purposes of the research, a descriptive quantitative design was selected. Descriptive and inferential statistics (linear regression analysis) were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that there was that there was a weak positive association between the main variable (syntactic awareness) and the outcome (auditory perception). The weak correlation observed between the two variables suggests that auditory perception may be predictable by all the competencies in the communicative model. As second language listening is also influenced by factors such as lexical knowledge, familiarity with content, individual factors, attention, auditory memory, temporal and spatial limitations, the finding suggests that, in line with the communicative model, listening instruction should be targeted at the development of pragmatic, intercultural and strategic competencies through more strategy-based teaching techniques.