An Empirical Study Of Optimizing Listening Styles Based On Listening Strategy Training

Listening, as a receptive skill, plays a significant role in second language acquisition and foreign language teaching/learning. Previous studies on listening comprehension indicate that listening comprehension is a complicated cognitive and psychological process under the influence of various internal and external factors. Among them, listening style is a vital factor to influence listening comprehension proficiency. However, currently it remains unknown what styles English majors adopt and what merits and defects different styles carry in different types of listening tasks. Theoretical analysis reveals that the development of listening styles is very likely to be influenced by listening strategies. However, there are no empirical studies on the relationship between the two constructs. Therefore, present research aims to investigate listening styles and the effect of listening strategy training on the optimization of listening styles.The present study poses the following research questions: 1) what types of listening styles do English majors adopt in listening? 2) Are there statistically significant differences between students of different listening styles when they perform different types of listening tasks? 3) Is listening strategy training effective for optimizing listening styles and improving listening proficiency?The present study takes 109 English major sophomores from 4 classes in School of Foreign Languages, University of South China, as the subjects. Randomly 56 students from 2 classes form experimental group while 53 students from the other 2 classes are the control group. Experimental group is given one-semester listening strategy training integrated into listening tasks, while control group is instructed in traditional model. Before and after the implementation of listening strategy training, all the subjects are administered pre-test and post test of listening proficiency and pre-test and post-test of listening styles in the form of self-reports. The analysis of pre-tests would unveil the proportions of different styles among the students and also reveal the influence of listening styles on listening comprehension proficiency. Through comparing the results of post-tests between experimental group and control group, what turns out to be clear is the effect of listening strategy training on optimizing listening styles and improving listening comprehension.It is indicated that analytic style is the most prevalent style, while global the second and synthetic the fewest. Synthetic listeners have a statistically significant higher level of listening proficiency than the other two. Analytic listeners and global listeners each have their own strengths and weaknesses, for the former is superior to the latter when performing the objective sections in the form of multiple choices, but when performing the subjective section in the form of passage dictation, vice versa. Listening strategy training is remarkably effective to optimize listening styles, for it can be seen that in the experimental group analytic listeners and global listeners are inclined to achieve the transformation into synthetic style. The optimization of listening styles further enables students to improve their listening skills, which is reflected in the fact that experimental group performs considerably better than control group in post-test of listening proficiency. Therefore, in the teaching of listening course, teachers should orient students to identify their own listening styles and let them be aware of the defects of global style and analytic style. Meanwhile teachers are recommended to implement listening strategy training among students, and help them optimize listening styles and cultivate an ideal style, i.e. synthetic style.