A SBI-based Empirical Study Of English-Listening Comprehension: A Case Of Non-English Majors From Northwest University For Nationalities

Listening comprehension, as one of the important language skills,has been paid more and more attention to by English learners, teachers, and researchers who regard English as a foreign language (EFL) both at home and abroad. How to improve listening comprehension? Listening strategy is one of necessary perspectives. Hence, to train learners to master the use of some useful listening strategies is supposed to be of help to their listening achievement. Up to now, several modes of strategy-training have been raised: Strategies-Based Instruction (SBI) put up by Cohen has been adopted in this study. SBI is a kind of training mode which integrates the strategy -training into classroom teaching materials; thus, it can also be treated as a teaching method. Through this method, students gain confidence and independence of learning English. Therefore, based on three theories, i.e., information- processing theory in Cognitive Psychology, Schema Theory and Affective filter hypothesis, the present study is to investigate the effects of SBI in listening comprehension of non-English majors from Northwest University for Nationalities (NWUN).Through four main research methods, i.e., questionnaire of listening strategy usage, classroom experiment, pre-test, post-test and post-training interview, this study has adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods to get more explicit and comprehensive data to draw more convincing conclusions. Two sophomore English classes, 73 students (38 ethnic minority students and 35 Han students), were chosen as the subjects. Class B21 was the controlled group (CG) and Class B22 was the experimental group (EG). The training program has lasted for 9 weeks (from Sep.16th 2009 to Nov.18th 2009), and they were taught by the author herself in NWUN, so the EG's training was conducted by the researcher during listening and speaking class and the textbook of College English (new) listening and speaking Course book 1 published by Shanghai foreign language education press was set as the listening material.From the results of the study, three conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the result of listening strategy usage questionnaire shows that Han students use Social/Affective strategies more frequently than ethnic minority students do, because the latter are lack of confidence due to their education background. This conclusion has answered the research question raised before training. Secondly, the results of pre-test and post-test of CG and EG indicate that SBI had positive effect on students listening comprehension overall. However, students of mid and lower-level has got more benefit from SBI than students of higher-level drawn from the interview after training. Thirdly, the interview also shows that social/affective strategies can enhance students'confidence in English listening. The latter two are the testifications of the two research hypotheses respectively. Last of all, several pedagogical implications for listening education for college students, especially those of national university come out from the study and suggestions for further research in this field are put forward, in the hope of being of some help to listening education for college students.