Although dictogloss has been thought to be beneficial in many listening classrooms, the
benefits of dictogloss based on different genres have not yet been thoroughly investigated in
second language listening research. There is therefore a need for a study aimed at looking into
the effects of dictogloss in terms of different genres, and according to the learners’ proficiency
levels in listening skills and their attitudes toward dictogloss.
A total of 60 Korean middle school students were selected, and they were allocated
randomly into two homogeneous groups according to two differing genres: narrative and
descriptive. Each group was then subdivided according to their pre-listening test scores:
higher-level and lower-level groups. The study was conducted over an eight-week period,
excluding one week for training sessions that immediately preceded it. The results were
compiled and analyzed quantitatively in order to investigate the effects of dictogloss depending
on different genres. In addition, the participants' attitudes toward the dictogloss activity was
examined.
The findings obtained from the study are twofold. First, both of the groups - narrative and
descriptive - benefited from engaging in the dictogloss tasks. No statistically significant
differences, however, were found within groups; it can therefore be inferred that dictogloss
tasks might help to improve L2 learners' English listening skills regardless of the genre.
Varying results, however, were obtained depending on the learners' language proficiency level.
Lower-level learners in both groups showed improvements in their post-listening test; this
indicates statistically significant differences in listening skills. In addition, the results of the
effect of dictogloss activities depending on different genres showed a significant difference with
respect to the bottom-up processing. In the case of the narrative genre, there is a statistically significant differences on top-down processing and descriptive genre, only the lower-level
group showed differences in bottom-up and top-down processing.
Second, the results indicate that the participants' overall attitude toward the dictogloss
activities tended toward the positive side of the spectrum with respect to both genres, but there
were intergroup differences depending on the participants' proficiency levels. The proposed
reason for this is that learning cooperatively may have positively affected both the higher-level
group students and the lower-level group students as the higher-level group students took the
lead from the front and formed a competitive environment in good faith. Moreover, the
lower-level group students established more interest toward group activities, and this induced
them to lively engage in the activity as they were able to immediately solve problems by
getting feedback from discussion between groups. It is therefore suggested that teachers and
researchers should attempt to devise a wider variety of dictogloss activities that are appropriate
for learners of different proficiency levels in different contexts to systematically tackle and
confirm the validity of this activity.