| In China, teachers and students have traditionally been attaching great importance to language reading and writing in order to improve English learners', especially college students'English proficiency. However, the effect is far from satisfactory. The main problem lies in their disregard for on English listening and speaking, especially language learners'English listening level. This phenomenon has attracted more and more researchers'attention. And under such circumstances our newly issued document"The Requirements for College English Teaching (the pilot one)"emphasizes the cultivation of college students'listening comprehension abilities. Therefore, many studies have been made on listening comprehension, among which the number of studies made on listening strategies employed by non-English majors is relatively small, especially that of the studies involving the comparison of the use of listening strategies among different-year college students. It is very necessary to carry out this study. This thesis tries to explore the following questions: What are the characteristics of their use of listening strategies by different-year non-English majors? Do they have any preferences for listening strategies, and what is the frequency of listening strategies for different-year college students? Are there any differences among them?In order to answer these questions, a total of 170 first, second and third-year non-English majors from Shandong Institute of Business and Technology were taken as the subjects. A questionnaire based on O'Malley & Chamot's three-way division of learning strategies was administered to them and the SPSS10.0 was used to analyze the data. The analysis of the data shows that generally speaking, most subjects could manage their approach to listening with metacognitive strategies the most frequently, and cognitive strategies were employed sometimes to aid the listening comprehension. These results are in line with many of the research findings of western researchers for example, Vandergrift (1997). But this study also indicated that the overall frequency of using of learning strategies in listening comprehension by Chinese college non-English majors is not high, and only reaches a medium frequency level. Certain positive strategies were not used frequently or appropriately. Take the social/affective strategies for example. Most of the students could adjust their emotions, but could not cooperate actively with their classmates or ask the teacher for help. Hence, the study implies that teachers can help students to choose, manage and improve their strategies so as to improve their teaching quality; and college students can improve their listening efficiency and their English proficiency through the improving of their English learning strategies. Therefore, this study attempts to shed some light on both English teaching and learning in colleges and universities in the future.In this thesis the first chapter briefly introduces the study background, the significance and rationale of the present study, and its outline. Chapter Two presents a literature review concerning the study in this field. In this part, the writer firstly reviews the research background and the findings in this field at home and abroad, and then summarizes the definitions, classifications of language learning strategies, those of language listening strategies, and empirical studies related to the thesis. In chapter three, the writer describes the research design of the present in details, including the purpose of the study, the subjects, the instrument, the procedure of the construction and conduction of the questionnaire. The fourth chapter analyses and discusses the results of the present study. The fifth chapter follows the analysis and discussion of the above chapter to sum up the implications of this study for college English teaching, and for research theory and research methodology of foreign language learning strategies. Finally it comes to the conclusion and gives a suggestion for further research in this field.
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