A Survey On The Relationship Between English Majors' Listening Motivation And Strategies

By using quantitative approach,this study has investigated the relationship between English majors' listening motivation and strategies.The purpose of this study is to exploit wider researching space in listening domain,and to provide beneficially elaborate data support for inspiring learners' motivation and cultivating their ability of strategy use,and therefore to put forward some suggestions for listening education.The subjects involved in this study are 90 second-year English majors from Hebei Normal University.The instruments are English listening motivation questionnaire,English listening strategy questionnaire,and SPSS 11.5,which are applied to conduct reliability analysis,descriptive statistics,correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.The current study yields the following findings:Firstly,the global tendency of English majors' listening motivation is relatively high (3.6137),and the sequential order by the participants is valence(4.5497),career(4.5037), eager to communicate(4.2866),competition(3.9774),interest(3.9445),examination (3.7471),cultural identity,self-efficacy,go abroad and learning circumstance,among which the first six can be categorized in the high rank of use frequency.It indicates that English majors are not only inspired by intrinsic motivation but also by the extrinsic ones.Secondly,overall strategy is moderately employed(3.1782).Affective strategies are most frequently used(3.4605),followed by cognitive(3.3425) and metacognitive(3.1403) strategies,social strategies(2.7697) rank the last.Among altogether 21 subcategory strategies, self-monitoring,self-management,elaboration,predicting,and interest cultivation belong to the high level of implementation.Moreover,specific items are also taken into consideration that two items of detailed planning and plannedly review(plan) get the lowest means below 2.5,which can be regarded as seldom used.Thirdly,the relationships between total listening motivation and four listening strategies are all extremely and positively significant in correlation statistics.1) In the relation between motivation and metacognitive strategies:The intrinsic motives of interest,self-efficacy,and learning circumstance are significantly correlated with total metacognitive strategy.Self-management and self-monitoring are approximately equally impulsed,including extrinsic competition.However,selective attention is negatively determined by extrinsic motive of exam;2) Between motivation and cognitive strategies:all the motivations except exam and going abroad bear significant correlation with total cognitive strategy.Four strategies involving resourcing,inferencing,recognizing and memorizing formulas and patterns,and authentic practice are found to be most extensively influenced by a series of motive variables than the other strategies;3) Between motivation and social strategies:Learning circumstance is significantly correlated with total social strategy as well as two subcategory of question for clarification and cooperation.Besides,question for clarification is also affected by the motivations of self-efficacy and competition,while cooperation is significantly related with career and cultural identity;4) Between motivations and affective strategies:The motivation of competition exerts influence on both overall affective strategy and every subscale.Interest,communication and cultural identity only exert their influence on interest cultivation.Lowering anxiety and encouraging oneself are homogeneous originated,sharing quite similar correlation.Finally,listening motivation and strategy are entered into regression formula.As a result, ten dimensions of motivation altogether can predict 37.5%of overall listening strategy use by English majors,which indicate listening motivation does a good job in explaining the variation in strategy application.The findings suggest that it is important for teacher to arouse listeners' motivation and to systematically conduct strategy training,hoping the tentative suggestions could be helpful for English major's teaching and learning.