The Impact of Teaching Note-Taking Strategies in Listening to Authentic TED Talks on Listening Comprehension of Perfectionist vs. Non-Perfectionist Iranian EFL Learners

The main purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of teaching note-taking strategies in listening to authentic TED talks on listening comprehension of a perfectionist and non-perfectionist Iranian EFL learners. The participants of this study came from male classes of upper-intermediate EFL learners. Their ages ranged from ۲۰ to ۲۵ years old. To choose the participants, convenient sampling was used. The participants were initially tested by Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) to be homogenized before conducting the study. One hundred out of ۱۲۰ students were chosen based on their homogeneity test scores to take part in the research. Out of these ۱۰۰ participants, ۲۰ participants were randomly chosen as the control group. Then the other ۸۰ participants were given the perfectionism questionnaire and based on the results of the questionnaire, the participants were divided into four experimental groups of ۲۰ participants: (a) perfectionists with note-taking strategies, (b) non-perfectionists with note-taking strategies, (c) perfectionists without note-taking strategies, and (d) non-perfectionists without note-taking strategies. The participants of all five groups were given the listening pretest before the treatment. During the treatment, the control group went through the conventional method of teaching without listening to TED talks. However, in all of the four experimental groups, the TED talks were used, with and without teaching listening strategies, as mentioned above. At the end of the semester, the listening posttest was given to all the participants. After ensuring the normality of the data through the One-sample Kolmogrove-Smirnow test, the independent samples t-test was used to analyze the collected data. The result of the study revealed that listening to TED talks improved the participants' listening comprehension, whether accompanied by teaching listening strategies or not. Moreover, the non-perfectionist students benefited from listening to TED talks more than perfectionist students.