Abstract

• The main purpose of this study was to study the effect of communicative approach in developing the listening skill of high school students. The design adopted in this study was a quasi-experimental design, viz. non-equivalent control group design. The subjects were 61 Grade Ten students from No. (14) Basic Education High School and 104 Grade Ten students from No.(16) Basic Education High School, Chan Aye Tharsan Township, Mandalay. The instruments for this study were a pretest, teaching materials, lesson plans and a posttest. The subjects were pretested before the treatment. The experimental groups were taught through communicative approach whereas the control groups were not taught using this approach. After five weeks’ treatment, a posttest was administered to examine whether there was a positive effect of communicative approach on the students’ listening skill. In order to satisfy the research questions, the obtaining data were analyzed by using the independent samples t test and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to compare the listening achievement of the students between the experimental and control groups. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the scores on listening achievement test in HS 14 (p = .008) and HS 16 (p = .000) at the levels of p < .01 and p < .001 respectively. The result of this study, therefore, indicated that communicative approach has positive effect on developing the listening skill of high school students.