Details

The aim of the research is to develop a system of exercises for improving English listening skills of non-linguistic students using digital resources. The research set the following objectives: to analyse the psychological and linguistic characteristics of developing listening skills in non-linguistic students, focusing on the role of bottom-up processing; to clarify the core components of bottom-up listening skills (phonemic awareness and lexical segmentation) and their impact on overall comprehension; to conduct a review of existing digital resources to determine their effectiveness, particularly for micro-listening and decoding tasks; to develop a structured set of digital-based exercises targeting the perceptual gap in non-linguistic students; to implement the developed methodology in a blended learning setting and measure its impact through pre- and post-testing of students’ decoding abilities; to analyse the quantitative results and provide practical recommendations for English instructors in non-linguistic universities. The data for the research were obtained via the implementation of the experimental online teaching process, where the effectiveness of the developed lesson set was assessed in a group of first-year students majoring in Trade. Data were collected via pre- and post-testing, as well as through continuous online assessment. The study resulted in improvements in bottom-up listening skills of the students in the experimental group. Analysis of the results revealed that systematic targeted practice in decoding noticeably improves sound discrimination skills of students, especially those who struggle with foreign language listening.