ON THE CONCEPT OF "CONSCIOUSNESS" IN L2 ACQUISITION RESEARCH FOCUS ON TRANSFER OF TRAINING IN LC SKILL

This study reports the results of an empirical investigation carried out by the author on 200 Egyptian University students enrolled in the department of English, Faculty of education, Minufiya University. They were divided into two groups according to their academic status: 1) Beginners (N=100); and 2) Advanced learners (N=100). It attempts to answer three interrelated questions: 1) to what extent does the advanced studentsʹ performance in listening tasks differ from that of the beginning students before and after training?; 2) how can two types of training (intensive listening vs. improving learnersʹ linguistic skills) affect L2 learnersʹ listening comprehension skill?, and 3) what does studentsʹ performance, before and after the training, tell us about their abilities to transfer? The instruments used are (1) pre-test; (2) classroom instruction sessions; (3) post-test, and (4) interviews. The data analysis has a quantitative and a qualitative, interpretative part. Results are obtained and discussed, and pedagogical applications are suggested.In addition, the present study reviews the literature on three major issues, pertinent to the topic of this research: 1) listening comprehension; its importance and role in second language acquisition; its specific nature as a skill, and the relationship between language comprehension and short- term memory; 2) cognitive psychology domain. The focus is on mental processing; the information- processing system; attention phenomenon; its nature; its models; the functions of the attentional system; automatic and control processing, and habituation. Finally, 3) transfer of training issue will be reviewed. The focus is on its nature and value; how it can take place and under what conditions and, finally, its major categories (1. Content-to-content transfer; 2) skills-to-skills transfer; 3) content-to-skills transfer, and 4) skills-to-content transfer).