Research on the Learner Opinions about the Receptive Skills Effects on the Productive Skills

Abstract

There are different thoughts about the receptive skills effects on the productive skills, that they consider listening and reading affect speaking and writing. On the other hand, there are thoughts about it is a controversial topic. The present research aims to collect the opinions about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills. The hypothesis of this study is learner opinions will be positive about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills in general. An open-ended questionnaire is used to collect the opinions. It has 12 opinions, and a table to rate the opinions from positive to negative. In addition to these, there is a part for participants to write their personal opinions about the topic. There are 20 participants that are eager learners of English language, and many of them have tried different ways, for example face to face courses and self-learning etc., to learn English. The results show that the general thought about it is the receptive skills affect the productive skills positively. Furthermore, the materials such as educational videos help them to learn English according to them. On the contrary, they claim that music has no effect on their language skills.

Keywords: Receptive Skills; Productive Skills, Input, Output.

1.Introduction

In the 21st century modern world, English is essential for most businesses, even in everyday life. People try new ways to learn English for improving themselves. There are lots of ways to learn English, some of them are rumors, some of them are proven. One of them is receptive skills affect productive skills. To be clearer, receiving inputs as much as possible helps to improve output skills, known as speaking and writing. There are even video and audio items that claim to talk English just by listening. At this point, learner opinions about that learning style are considerable. Unfortunately, there are not enough studies about the learner opinions about the receptive skills effects on the productive skills.

Firstly, the definition of the term ‘receptive skills’ is these two skills: reading and listening, also known as passive skills. Generally, they are first skills to observe, read and collect language experience (Golkova & Hubackova, 2014, p.477). Reading and listening skills are both receptive skills, and they provide input sources for the language learners. Having inputs in TL, learners understand the language structure effectively.

Reading is a receptive skill, and provides learners understand the written structure of the TL. According to Sheth (2015), reading is a thought under the impression of the printed page, is viewed as a game of predicting psycho-linguistics. Examining the written structure of the TL allows learners to see how the TL is written in many forms. Reading as a receptive skill helps learners to comprehend the TL first. Listening is another receptive skill, and helps learners to comprehend the spoken form of the TL. Sheth (2015) defines listening as the ability of understanding and identifying what others say or speak. Listening skill provides learners to understand the spoken version of the TL. Audio or video contents are examples of listening skill materials. To understand the spoken structure of the TL, listening is beneficial.

The productive skills are another part of the skills. Productive skills are speaking and writing, defined as active skills. These skills are to ‘produce’ (Golkova & Hubackova, 2014, p.478). Another definition from Davies (1976) for productive skills is the ability to communicate in the foreign language actively, to speak it and write it. Writing skill is one of the productive skills, and Aupperlee, Geraghty, and Lien (2016) define it as a style of communication that enables learners to put their feelings and ideas in the written form, organize their knowledge and beliefs into arguments that convince them, and transfer meaning through well-constructed text. Speaking is a part of the productive skills category, also described as active skills (Golkova & Hubackova, 2014, p.478). Speaking skill is the spoken form of the language to communicate.

Teaching these skills has lots of technique, and there are opinions about teaching TL by skills. Lee and Muncie (2006) state that when learning a new language, it is best to be more receptive than productive. Receptive skills, reading and listening, provide learners an input. Learners are exposed to the target language (TL) firstly, so that they understand the general structure of the TL. For Lee and Muncie (2006), some level of receptive knowledge is essential logically for production to occur. Hinkel (2006) states that the teaching of pronunciation is integrated with both speaking and listening. Davies (1976) indicates that advanced receptive knowledge of grammatical structure and lexis helps learners acquire productive skills faster. Whitehurst and Vasta (1975) point out that imitating the language is essential while learning. According to Golkova and Hubackova (2014), productive skills do not exist utterly independently from receptive skills. They also claim that receptive skills are first skills to be understood and comprehended. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis (1985) states that the main factor to determine acquisition of proficiency in the L2 is exposure to large amounts of input material. On the other hand, Ivančić and Mandić (2014) state that there is a distinction between oral and written texts and their effects on the language, but listening helps to produce language. Generally, the opinions about the effect of receptive skills to productive skills are positive.

There are researches about the effect of receptive skills on the productive skills. Tsang’s research (1996) about reading and writing effects on writing performance is positive, learners’ results show that reading and writing affected their writing performance in a satisfactory way. Lovell and Dixon’s research (1967) about imitation effects on the language reveals that imitating the inputs affects production positively. However, Roquet and Vidal’s research (2015) about productive skills effects on learning and the results are negative, both experimental and control group results are similar. In addition to that, Anderson’s research (1981) about tape recording effect is negative, tape recording (one of the listening materials) did not affect any skills.

1.1. Purpose and Theoretical Rationale

The effect of receptive skills on productive skills is an interesting teaching subject, and there are researches and experiments about it. However, there is not enough study about learner opinions about the effect of receptive skills on productive skills. The present study aims to collect learner opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills. Considering learner opinions, more techniques about teaching productive skills may be produced. The hypothesis of the study is learner opinions will be positive about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills.

1.2. Research Question

RQ1. What are the opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills?

2.Method

The quantitative method is used to develop this research. The research is designed as descriptive type of the quantitative method. Descriptive research is used to address “what” questions, and to portray the characteristics of a population or phenomenon being contemplated (Shields & Rangarajan, 2013, p. 109). The use of this quantitative research type in this study is to specify the opinions about the topic numerically.

2.1. Participants

The participants of the research were 20 public office holders that were trying to learn English in different ways. 9(45.00%) of them were female, and 11(55.00%) were male. The type of their learning styles were school or program (50.00%), self-learning (30.00%), online (20.00%), and face to face courses (45.00%) (They were allowed to choose more than one.). They ranked their English language skills 1 to 4, and the average for reading was 2.40, writing was 2.25, listening was 2.10, and speaking was 1.90. Their average skill ranking was 2.16.

2.2. Research Context

The research was made with the public office holders in Edirne. The public officers, in this study and in general, try to learn English for their business life, for specific exams, or for improving themselves. For these reasons, the learners try new techniques or styles to learn English effectively. The participants of this study expressed their point of view about styles of learning skills in the open-ended questionnaire. They added that they have tried many different styles of learning. Generally, they complain about the styles of learning are not effective for them. In addition to that, some of the participants pointed out that face to face courses are not suitable for them. Considering these thoughts, finding the best learning techniques becomes significant.

2.3. Data Collection

The data is collected with an open-ended questionnaire that is adapted and edited from Ölmezer Öztürk (2018). Considering the participants’ native tongue, the open-ended questionnaire is also translated to Turkish. The open-ended questionnaire has two parts, demography information and a questionnaire about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills. At the end of the questionnaire, there is a section for them if they want to add more opinions. The Cronbach’s Alpha value for this open-ended questionnaire is .84.

2.4. Data Analysis

The research focuses on quantitative results, and the opinions are represented with the numbers. There are counter opinions in the questionnaire in order to ensure reliability of the responses. Open-ended questionnaire is chosen as data collection instrument, having the advantage of representing clear and comprehensible results. To preserve anonymity, the participant names and other personal data are not included to the open-ended questionnaire.

3.Results

The aim of the study is to collect opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills. The questionnaire is used to collect it. Tables below represents the opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills.

As seen in the Table 1, the mean for the scale is 2.97 (SD = .41) with a minimum of 2.08 and a maximum of 3.67. All of the opinions do not represent the same thoughts, there are positive and negative opinions in the questionnaire. The opinions’ means will be compared and explained according to the general mean.

On the Table 2, the opinions’ detailed means, minimum and maximum values are given. The means differ from opinion to opinion. The detailed opinion based mean table is below.

As seen in the Table 2, the mean changes according to the opinions, and some of the opinions with very different means are check opinions, which represent a negative opinion about effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills. The 5th opinion and the last two opinions were the check opinions, and their means are 1.60, 2.00 and 1.75 respectively. The general mean considered, these three opinions’ means are below the general mean, which shows the participants’ general point of view about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills is not negative. On the other hand, 7th opinion of the questionnaire was not a check opinion, but its mean is 2.90, below the general mean. This opinion was about listening music affects speaking English positively. The general perspective about music effects is negative according to the questionnaire. The other opinions represented the positive perspective about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills, and their means are higher than the general mean. To conclude, the participant opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills are positive generally.

One of the opinions representing a positive perspective about listening effects on speaking is explained on the Table 3.

Table 3 reveals the frequencies of an opinion representing positive perspective about listening effects on speaking. 10 participants out of 20 selected ‘Agree’ on this positive opinion. 4 out of 20 selected ‘Somewhat Agree’, and 4 out of 20 selected ‘Disagree’. Most of the participants selected ‘Agree’ on this opinion, and that means the participants agree on that listening skill affects speaking skill.

The opinion 5 is the opposite of the opinion in the Table 3. The 5th opinion represents that listening has no effect on speaking. The results are given below on the Table 4.

Table 4 shows the frequencies of an opinion that has negative perspective representing that listening does not have any effect on speaking. 14 out of 20 participants selected ‘Strongly Disagree’ on that opinion. 3 out of 20 selected ‘Disagree’. Considering the majority, the participants’ opinion about that listening has no effect on speaking is negative. The participants opine that listening has positive effects on speaking.

The 7th opinion has a different result considering the other positive perspective opinions. It was about music effects on speaking. Contrary to other positive opinions, its mean was lower than the general mean. Its detailed results are given on the Table 5.

The 7th opinion was about the positive effect of music on speaking. Contrary to expectations, 7 out of 20 participants selected ‘Disagree’, and 7 out of 20 selected ‘Agree’. There are no participants selected ‘Strongly Agree’ but there is one participant that selected ‘Strongly Disagree’. 5 out of 20 selected ‘Somewhat Agree’. Considering the frequencies of this opinion, the participants are not sure if music affects speaking.

The questionnaire was open-ended. There was a part that intentionally left blank for adding more opinions. The results are given on the Table 6.

On the last part, the participants were allowed to add more opinions about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills. The most written one was the effect of educational videos (5 out of 20). The participants pointed out that educational videos, for example Ted Talks and lecture videos, affect their speaking and listening skills positively. One of the participants, learned English by school/program and face to face course, pointed out that improper language teaching techniques affected his/her English skills negatively. One of the participants declared that extensive reading affected his/her reading and writing skills. One of the participants declared that educational listening, for example the audio parts that used in the exams, affected his/her listening and speaking skills, also his/her note taking ability. The most interesting opinion about that part is the 4 out of 20 participants pointed out that music does not affect their English skills. The 7th question was about the effect of music on the speaking skill, and their results are similar. The participants are generally not sure if music affects English skills or not. However, 4 out of 20 declared that music has no effect while learning English.

The results of the open-ended questionnaire show that the participant opinions about the effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills are generally positive. The hypothesis of this research is receiving reading and listening skills will positively affect the writing and speaking skills. The results and the hypothesis of this study are similar, showing that learners think that receptive skills positively affect productive skills.

4. Discussion & Conclusion

This research’s hypothesis is learner opinions will be positive about the effects of receptive skills on the productive skills. The result shows that learners think receptive skills affect productive skills positively, and the hypothesis of this study matches with the result. There are some explanations that support it, for instance, Lee and Muncie (2006) state that receptive skills come first while learning a language, and they also state that receptive skills are essential logically for production to occur. In addition to that, the result matches with the other teaching and learning ideas of Hinkel (2006), Davies (1976), Whitehurst and Vasta (1975), and Golkova and Hubackova (2014). Most importantly, Krashen’s Input Hypothesis (1985), having the idea of exposure to large amounts of input material to learn the TL, matches with the result. However, Ivančić and Mandić (2014) claim that there is a distinction between oral and written texts and their effects on the language, but listening helps to produce language. The result of this study shows that learners think the inputs, the receptive skills affect their outputs, productive skills.

Some of the previous researches about the effect of receptive skills on the productive skills have similar result as this research’s result. Tsang’s research (1996) and Lovell and Dixon’s research (1967) have the similar results, positive effects of the receptive skills on the productive skills. On the contrary, Roquet and Vidal’s research about the effects of productive skills on learning and the results are negative, both experimental and control group results are similar, and the result of this study does not match with this research. One of the interesting matching is Anderson’s research (1981) about the effects of tape recording, and the study’s result was negative. In this study, the results show that learners think music does not affect the language skills, similar result as the Anderson’s research.

To conclude, the learner opinions about the receptive skills effects on the productive skills are positive. The learners point out that the educational videos, and educational audios help them to produce the language. On the other hand, they also mentioned that music does not affect their language skills. In short, learners think the receptive skills affect the productive skills positively, and materials such as educational videos, extensive reading texts help the process.

Cansu Yağsız

References

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