Investigation of Turkish Teacher Candidates Listening Skills

As a basic skill of language, listening is an essential process at interpretation surroundings. Today listening is necessary in many cases such as school life, interfamilial communication etc. Thanks to listening, people acquire comprehension skills and expressing themselves in all areas.2005 and 2015 Turkish Course Syllabus include special objectives and outcomes to listening. This research aims to specify behaviors and attitudes of students who are studying Turkish Language Teaching. Survey sample is composed of 148 Turkish Language Prospective Teachers. Research data is obtained by applying “Listening Skill Scale “[1]. In conclusion, 148 prospective teachers have 59,122 average points from this scale.


Listening
Communication skills comprise receptive skills and productive skills. Listening and reading are receptive skills while speaking and writing are productive skills. Receptive skills are these in which students receive and process the information but do not need to produce a language to do this, while productive skills require the production, for instance, a speech [2] Language is a communication tool with its own rules. People express themselves via language. Language is the most important means of being a nation and transferring the national culture. All material and spiritual achievements of mankind can be carried forward to the future with the possibilities offered by the language [3]. The process of understanding and telling of people is shaped by four skills. These are reading, listening / monitoring (understanding); speaking and writing (narration). If these skills are subjected to an order of importance, it is expected that the order will be realized as listening, speaking, reading and writing. At first learning starts with listening. The listening activity which started in the mother's womb increasingly continues after the birth [4]. The most important tool of effective communication among people has been the language all the time. Listening is also the most used skill among language skills.
Listening is hearing, perception and understanding of voice via the sense organs. Different definitions of listening have been made. Listening is the ability to fully understand the message which the other person wants to give and what they want to say* [5]. Listening is not an act of monitoring the other side in a passive way, but an effort of receiving and interpreting the message of the other side [6]. Listening is the activity to be able to fully understand the message that the speaker wants to give and to react to the message [7]. In the Turkish Language Society dictionary; listening is defined as paying attention to hear. Remarkable common points in the definitions of listening can be ordered as forwarding the message, hearing the message, making the message meaningful. The important matter is that the listener must be in an effort of understanding to realize listening. lf there is not such an effort, the action will be hearing, not listening [8]. At this point it is necessary to talk about the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physical condition. A person does not make any special effort to hear as long as it is healthy. Listening is a mental process involving hearing. More than one sound comes to the ears at the same time. However, the listener pays the attention to what he or she listens. It shows that listening is a conscious activity different from hearing [9] We listen to a wide variety of things, for example; what someone says during a conversation, face to face or on the telephone; announcements giving information, for example, at an airport or railway station; the weather forecast on the radio; a play on the radio; music; someone else's conversation (eavesdropping); a lecture; professional advice, for example, at the doctor's, in the bank; instructions, for example, on how to use a photocopier or other machinery; directions; a taped dialogue in class [10]

The Importance of Listening
Today, listening skill is used in many areas such as school life, family relations, friends' meetings, radio. Listening is a language skill used in any learning process. Listening is a language skill that is used with or without awareness in situations that people face in social life and in any learning process. People who do not see listening as an important social skill have not fully understood the importance of listening being an effective and powerful language skill [3].
A person will acquire a skill to understand and express himself in all areas of life via listening skill. Listening skill is a skill which people have since they were born and it is a source of other learnings. The weakness of the speaking ability of people who do not have the ability to listen reveals the influence and importance of listening skill in learning [8].
Since the purpose of listening is to understand what is being heard correctly, the development of this skill will directly affect the child's success in his life, especially in school success. An advanced child with a good listening ability will be able to understand the topics described better and will be successful in all lessons, especially in Turkish language.
Likewise, healthy relationships will occur in his daily life as he will not encounter problems due to lack of listening or comprehension. In other words, a student with a good listening ability will be more successful in all areas of life [9].
Listening is a psychological phenomenon, which takes place on a cognitive level inside people's heads, and a social phenomenon, which develops interactively between people and the environment surrounding them. It considers listening as a complex process, which needs to be understood in order to teach it, and subsequently, evaluate it before integrating it with phonological aspects and with the skill of speaking [11].
Listening comprehension needs more concentration and a quick understanding is also required. When listening, a lot of factors should be specifically paid attention. They are context, facial expressions, and body gestures that are very important for the listeners to facilitate the understanding of what is conveyed by speakers [12].
According to [13], listening has an important role in everyday life and when people are engaged in communication nine percent is spent to writing, 16 percent to reading, 30 percent to speaking, and 45 percent to listening which shows the significance of listening in the communication process.

Types of Listening
Participative Listening: it is a type of active listening that the listener makes feel he/she listened, listener is active.
Unattended Listening: The listener listens quietly without verbal response.
Creative listening: The listener interprets what the speaker says and creates new ideas.
Selective listening: The listener chooses specific parts of speech that respond to the listener's interest and need.

Listening in Turkish Teaching Programs
Until the 2005 Turkish teaching program, listening skill was included in the program step by step, but sufficient explanation and application recommendation was not included in the program for development. Until the 2005 program, there is no Turkish teaching program that takes the listening skill alone and explains it in detail in either primary or secondary school level. "It can be said that the current Turkish Teaching Curriculum and Guide (6th, 7th and 8th grades), which is in force now, is separated from the others in terms of listening ability. These are important developments in terms of program for this skill: Consideration of listening skill as a special learning area, emphasizing that listening is a different process than hearing, proposal of types and methods of listening and activities that will guide Turkish teacher in Turkish lessons - [15,16] Listening skill is defined as one of the ways of getting information and it is said that listening includes skills of comprehension, interpretation and evaluation in the program. With the development of this skill, it is expected that higher skills such as sorting, classifying, interrogating, correlating, criticizing and finding inferences related to them are expected to be realized. [17]. In the Listening / Monitoring section of program, the purposes and numbers of achievement related to listening skills are given in the following table. Purpose

Understanding and analyzing 25
Evaluating what they are listening / monitoring 3

Enrichment of the vocabulary 6
Gaining effective listening / monitoring habits 4 With the 2015 Turkish Language Teaching Program, it is aimed to educate individuals understanding what they listen to and read in printed and electronic media, who express themselves in writing and orally; who think critically, in reflective and creative way, and who are sensitive to national, spiritual and universal values. Program is prepared with an approach that takes into account the accumulation, skill and development of the student and centered on the student. All achievements are designed in a structure that shows continuous improvement and progress. The learning areas in the program are considered as a whole from grade 1 to grade 8. The program is designed to help students develop their language skills by experiencing their language richness. The program is focused on improving the students' understanding, interpretation, evaluation and synthesis skills by studying texts from different genres with the achievements in the areas of "oral communication", "reading" and "writing".
The learning areas in the program are organized under three main titles as "Oral Communication", "Reading" and "Writing". While listening and speaking were considered as a separate program dimension in the 2005 program, listening and speaking were included in the learning field of Oral Communication in the 2015 program. Regarding listening in the program, "It is the most important stages of the listening process that students understand what they listen to and structure it in their minds. These steps should be given importance and various studies should be done. For this purpose, students can have activities such as visualizing what they listen to, determining topic and main idea, establishing relationship, making inferences, guessing results, classifying what they listen to, questioning, summarizing, evaluating and sharing with friends." with this mentions, attention was drawn to important issues related to listening [18].

Why don't We Listen?
Listening is multi-dimensional behaviour in terms of formation, exhibition and influence. There are various factors affecting listening. Family and society structure, transition from oral culture to written culture, neglect of listening skill in our educational tradition, mass culture and technological life are influential on listening. While the individual acquires the cultural identity of the society he is in, he must learn the basic skills of mother tongue such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. Listening is the most used skill among these language skills. The events and behaviors taken into social memory in oral culture give lesson in many perspectives and show the correct form of communication. Decreasing the importance and application of such oral cultural elements leads to the deterioration of communication behaviors in the society, the decrease of the importance of oral communication and the frequent problems of listening. The prospect of listening has been understood recently in our tradition of education. If traditional teacher-centered, knowledge-based and memorizing educational process is experienced in our country, it is very often used for listening ability. Nevertheless, being ignored of listening is drawn attention. While the opportunities offered by technology liberate people in many ways, they also narrow the living space in some ways. Such a living space provides a disconnected world from society. Behaviors such as haste, impatience, and giving more importance to quantity than quality to the life of a mass culture are also reflected in communication skills [19] Emin Özdemir states that adequate importance to listening is not given in the teaching programs by emphasizing the importance of four basic skills in language teaching. At this point he expressed his views as follows.
"You will listen so that you will open your mind, interpret it, reveal it on the subject you listen to. You will check their faces so that you can understand if what you say is understandable, and establish a communicative connection with them. Listening is really our dominant lack. There are "Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking" areas in the curriculum for schools; But there is no listening training. They think that the teacher tells them, the kids are looking at themselves as if they are fascinated. They do not know that if listening is not based on the questioning is frozen; What's going on with that boy's head looking at him as if he's fascinated? Who knows where you wander and where you are. But listening is also an intellectual activity; That is, in the listening process, student will search for answers and listen for a purpose [20] (Özdemir, 2010: 187, Transmitted, Atılgan, 2011: 99)

The Purpose of the Research
The purpose of this study is to determine the behaviors and tendencies of the Turkish prospective teachers during the listening process. For this purpose, the main problem sentence of researching is determined as "What are the behaviors related to listening skills of students studying in Turkish language teaching programs?"

Method
The research was descriptive and the survey model was used in the research. The sample of the research consists of 148 students studying in Turkish language teaching program. The data of the study were gathered with the Listening Skill Scale, which was developed by Kuzgun and Cihangir (2000) and was finalized by Cihangir-Çankaya (2012). The scale consists of 15 items consisting of 8 positive and 7 negative items. The scoring in the measure is "1-never 2-rarely 3-sometimes 4-often 5-always". The lowest score that can be taken in terms of listening skill scores is 15 and the highest score is 75. As the score increases, the level of listening skill increases. The Cronbach Alpha reliability of the scale is calculated. According to the results of the application made for a total of 371 people, 0.82 for the first factor, 0.77 for the second factor, and 0.84 for the general population. Scale items were examined for their effect on the reliability of the scale. It has been seen that there is no item that significantly improves the reliability of your scale when it is removed from the scale. The calculated internal consistency coefficients indicate that the reliability of the scale is high [1]. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.80 for the scale of 148 people according to the application results. The data of the study were analyzed by SPSS 19 data analysis program.
The sample of the research is composed of 148 teacher candidates studying in Turkish Language Teaching undergraduate program. 148 students participated in the research. The level of "listening ability" of the participants was found to be 59,122 ± 8,434.  Table 2 shows the distributions of the answers given to the interviewers regarding their listening skills.

Findings Related to Listening Skills
Here are the responses given by participants who took part in research about listening skills were analyzed; The participants views are as below 25,0 percent ( n=37) never , 31,1 percent (n=46) rarely, 30,4 percent (n=45) sometimes , 5,4 percent ( n=8) usually , 8,1 percent (n=12 ) always. It has been understood that participants who agreed on the statement that "I get bored while listening to people who don't think like me "is a low level (2,405 ± 1,160). From there responses it is taught that the participants have a lack of concern related with respecting to different thoughts.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I ask question to interviewer to understand him/ her better" are as bellow. 2,0 percent (n=3) never, 4,7 percent (n=7) rarely, 14,2 percent (n=21) sometimes, 50,0 percent ( n=74 ) usually, 29,1 percent (n=43) always .It has been determined that the participants who agreed on the statement that " I ask question while listening to others " are high levels ( 3,993 ± 0,900 ). The participants use the method of asking question effectively while listening.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I don't like listening to others for a long time" are as below. 16,2 percent (n=24) never, 32,4 percent (n=48) rarely, 36,5 percent (n=54) sometimes , 8,1 percent ( n=12) usually, 6,8 percent (n= 10) always . It has been determined that the participant who agreed on the statement that "I don't like listening to others for a long time" is low level (2.568 ± 1.070). According to this research it can be said that the participants can do the listening activities for a long time.
The responses of participants to the statement of "While listening to others, l lose my attention "are as below. 16,2 percent (n=24) never, 41,2 percent (n=61) rarely, 37,2 percent (n=55) sometimes,4,1 percent (n=6) usually, 1,4 percent (n=2) always. It has been seen that the participants who agreed on the statement that "While listening to others, l lose my attention "are low levels. From this determination, it can be said that the participants have the skill of focusing and listening carefully the other people during the listening period. The responses of participants to the statement of "I try to make him/her feel that l want to understand better." are as below. 2,7 percent (n=4 ) never, 2,7 percent (n=4 ) rarely, 8,1 percent (n=12 ) sometimes, 43,9 percent (n=65) usually, 42,6 percent (n=63) always. It has been seen that the participants who agreed on the statement that "I try to make him/her feel that I want to understand better" are fairly high (4.209 ± 0.905). From this determination it can be commented that the participants can apply the affective listening.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I don't have to listen to others for a long time" are as below. 16,9 percent (n=27) never, 35,1 percent (n=52) rarely 32,4 (n= 48 ) sometimes, 8,8 percent (n=13 ) usually, 6,8 (n=10) always. It has been determined that the participants who agreed on the statements of that "I don't have to listen to others for a long time" are low levels (2.534 ± 1.084). From this determination, it can be said that the participants have no lack of time while listening.
The responses of participants to the statement of "Although I look at one's face while I am speaking with someone, I do not listen to your words" are as below. 25,0 percent (n=37) never, 39,9 percent (n=59) rarely, 27,7 percent (n=41) sometimes, 5,4 percent (n=8 ) usually, 2,0 percent (n=3 ) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "Although I look at one's face while I am speaking with someone, I do not listen to his words" are low levels (2,196 ± 0,945). From this determination, it can be said that they listen effectively to the participants.
The responses of participants to the statement of "While listening to other person, by understanding his/her emotions and thoughts, l can transmit there to him /her both verbally and unverbally" are as below. 0,7 percent ( n=1) never, 3,4 percent ( n= 5 ) rarely, 12,8 percent ( n=19 ) sometimes, 43,2 percent ( n=64 ) usually, 39,9 percent ( n=59) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "while listening to other person, by understanding emotions and thoughts, l can transmit those to him/her both verbally and unverbally" are high levels (4.182 ±083). From there responses it can be said that the participants have the effective listening skill.
The responses of participants to the statements of "When there is a conflict, l try to listen patiently to understand one's emotions and thoughts" are as below. 2,7 percent (n=4) never , 4,7 percent (n=7) rarely ,11,5 (n=17) sometimes ,42,6 percent (n=63) usually , 38,5 (n=57) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "When there is a conflict, l try to listen patiently to understand one's emotions and thoughts." are high levels (4.095 ± 0964). From there responses we can reach to result that the participants have the skill of empathy.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I behave as if I listen to him /her" are on below. 27 percent (n=40) never, 44.6 percent (n=66) 18.2 percent (n=27) sometimes, 7,4 percent (n=11) usually , 2,7 percent (n=4) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "I behave as if I listen to him /her" are low levels. (2,142 ± 0,990). From this determination, we can reach to result that the participants behave carefully while listening others.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I try to make empathy while listening" are as below. 1.4 percent (n=2) never, 7,4 percent (n=11) rarely, 19,6 percent (n=29) sometimes, 42,6 percent (n=63) usually, 29,1 percent (n=43) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "I try to make empathy while listening" are high levels (3,905 ± 0,950). From this result, we can say that participants have the high level of empathy".
The responses of participants to the statement of "I have eye contact problem while listening" are as below. 39.9 percent of (n=59) never, 32,4 percent (n=48) rarely, 13,5 percent (n=20) sometimes, 11,5 percent (n=17) usually percent 2,7 (n=4) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that I have eye contact problem while listening" are low levels (2,047 ± 1,115). From this determination we can reach the result that the participants don't have the lack of eye contact which is the basic elements of effective listening.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I pay attention my body positions to be towards to listening" is below .2 percent (n=3) never, 2 percent (n=3) rarely, 4.1 percent (n=6) sometimes, percent 38, 5 (n=57) usually, 53, 4 percent (n=79) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "I pay attention my body positions to be towards to listening" are fairly high (4,392 ± 0,830). From this statement, we can reach to result that the participants give importance face to face communication.
The responses of participants to the statement of "While I am listening to the other person, I pay attention to his both verbal and non-verbal messages" are as below. 1,4 percent (n=1) never, 0,7 (n=1) rarely, 12,2 percent (n=18) sometimes , 38,5 percent (n=37) usually, 48,0 percent (n=71) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "While I am listening to the other person, I pay attention to his both verbal and non-verbal messages" are fairly high (4, 243 ± 0,788). From the answers given to this item, we can say that they pay attention to the verbal expressions on the participants as well as the non-verbal messages which is another effective dimension of communication.
The responses of participants to the statement of "I try to understand his feelings while listening to the other person" are as below. 0,7 percent ( n= 1 ) never , 0,7 percent ( n= 1) rarely , 12,2 percent ( n= 18 ) sometimes , 38,5 percent (n=57) usually , 48,0 percent (n=71) always. The participants who agreed on the statement that "I try to understand his feeling while listening to the other person" are fairly high (4,324 ±0,767). By this way we can come to the conclusion that the participants are trying to understand their emotions through empathy during listening.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Listening is hearing, perceiving and understanding of voice through the sense organs. Hearing is not human will Universal Journal of Educational Research 5(5): 750-756, 2017 755 and is called all kinds of sound elements going to the brain through ears of the person are not with the human being. Listening is also a mental process that deals with hearing. For listening skill, the person must be in the effort of understanding. For your listening to be fully realized, it is necessary to be able to correctly perceive the message the other person wants to give. In order to be able to perceive, it is important to understand and interpret the message thoroughly.
Listening is the language skill that leads to other skills in human. The fact that people without listening skills do not have the ability to speak is the best examples. Listening skills are effective in many areas of our lives. Being a good listener both in individual's learning life and daily life brings a success. A student with a good listening ability will be able to better understand the topics described and the course success will rise. In daily life, the individual will have healthy social relationships, since they will not have problems caused by lack of listening and comprehension.
It is imperative that people acquire the necessary knowledge, competence and consciousness in order to overcome the shortcomings that cause misuse of listening skills in the family, education, work and other environments. For this reason, all educational programs, media, communication, art and science activities should include applications for information, principles and habits related to the use of rest and recreation in social and private life [19].
In the study of [21] emphasizes the connections between listening and the language arts. It lists advantages of students who are good listeners, such as students can learn more when listening well, and students learn to be polite by listening. In addition, the paper lists the following conditions which improve student listening: teaching and learning situations which emphasize individual learning styles; a school environment which stresses a caring set of interactions between learners and teachers; and parental involvement with mutually accepted listening goals. It outlines how students can be taught to be good listeners, and suggests that students who are good listeners should be observed and imitated. Additional suggestions include the following: special class sessions devoted to guiding students to become better listeners; keep the learning environment free of unnecessary noises; and teachers modeling examples of good listeners. The paper provides a list of possible evaluations of students' listening improvements. Examples of such evaluations are: self-evaluation by students; observing students in various situations, such as in class discussions and lunchroom and recess conversations; and student portfolios.
According to [22], listening comprehension skill can be improved by teachers' assistance and the use of appropriate learning materials and activities.
According to [23], learners may find listening comprehension skill difficult to learn and this requires teachers to change their listening exercises into more effective ones. The development of listening comprehension skill helps learners to succeed in language learning and increase their comprehensible input.
According to [24], suitable teaching in listening comprehension can decrease listening apprehension and provide a good basis for becoming independent learners who can effectively use the listening process for learning. Finally, it can be concluded that guiding learners in the process of listening provides them with the knowledge by which they can successfully complete a listening activity and puts them in control of their learning. [25], proposes three reasons for why listening was poorly taught. First of all, listening was not accepted as a separate skill to be taught explicitly for a long time. Supporters of the idea argued that language learners would improve their listening skill on their own while they are listening to the teacher during the day. Secondly, teachers felt insecure about teaching listening. And finally, the traditional materials for language teaching were not efficient enough to teach listening.
According to [26], when teachers and researchers understand the significance of the listening skill in language learning and its role in communication, they start to pay more attention to teaching this skill in language classrooms. The more teachers are aware of the stages of the listening lesson, the more beneficial they would be to their students in terms of helping them related to their listening comprehension concerns and needs [27] [28] The results of the research conducted on the Turkish teacher candidates are of importance in terms of putting out the qualities of listening skills. When the results of the research were examined, it was determined that they were more willing to listen to the topics that attracted the students and they were not willing to listen to topics that do not attract attention This is also important to show that listening is a mental activity towards purpose. In addition, when the research results are examined, it is seen that the ability of body language and empathy is used by the participants in listening ability.
In the context of research results; Importance should be attached to the listening dimension of language education in higher education and pre-higher education programs. Research on teacher candidates' listening problems should be increased and studies should be conducted on the missing topics. Importance should be given to practical activities in listening training. Studies on listening problems can be made in primary and secondary school levels by preserving the same characteristics of the research. Students' listening obstacles should be identified and work on this area should be done.