A Study Of Learning Strategies Used By High-score And Low-score Listeners Of College Students

This thesis employs listening strategy questionnaire, listening diaries and interviews to investigate high-score and low-score listeners'listening strategies use. The subjects, 30 high-score and 30 low-score ones, are selected from 140 non-English majors of 5 classes of Grade 2005 in Hunan University. This thesis tries to find out what listening strategies high-score and low-score listeners often employ respectively; whether there are quantitative and qualitative differences between high-score and low-score listeners in listening strategy use; and if there are, what are they? This investigation aims to bring some thoughts and constructive suggestions for English listening teaching and listening strategy training.The major findings are: 1) high-score listeners used meta-cognitive strategies the most which was in line with Vandergrift's (1996) result; they often used self-monitoring, self-management, planning, self-encouragement, self-evaluation and inferencing strategies; 2) low-score listeners used listening strategies at a relatively low degree and they used self-encouragement , selective attention and self-monitoring strategies the most; 3) in the comparison of metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategy use, the data from the questionnaires show the mean of strategy used by high-score listeners is significantly higher than that of low-score ones'(P<0.01); 4) high-score listeners did better in making feasible plans, evaluating their learning outcomes and managing their listening learning; they understood inferencing and translation strategies more accurately and used them more properly; in addition, they were better at adjusting their emotion to listening learning.This investigation of strategy use testified the positive effect of listening strategy use to listening comprehension and made some concrete and constructive suggestions for English listening teaching and listening strategy training.