A Study Of Listening Strategies Used By College Non-English Majors

Listening comprehension plays an important role both in daily communication and in second language acquisition and learning. More and more people have realized that learners play a-decisive role in the success or failure of the complicated process of listening. So the focus of modern listening research has gradually shifted from how to teach to how to learn. As such, the research on language learning strategies for listening comprehension has become the great concern of many second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. The critical role of listening comprehension and listening comprehension strategies, the inadequacy of the present research and the low efficiency of present listening teaching make up sound reasons for this study to be done.In order to deepen our understanding of the second/foreign language learning process and learners, Stern (1999) has called for further research in different social contexts, under different language learning conditions, at different age and maturity levels, and at different levels of proficiency. Therefore, based on the previous research findings, this study aims to answer the following questions: (1) What are the important factors affecting listening comprehension? (2) What learning strategies do Chinese college non-English majors frequently use in English listening comprehension? (3) How English proficiency would be related to the use of listening strategies? (4) How gender difference would be related to the use of listening strategies? (5) What are the relationships between listening strategy use and listening achievements?Totally 136 second-year non-English majors from Linyi Normal University were selected as the participants, including 69 males and 67 females. Three instruments were used to collect the data, one listening strategy questionnaire, final examination paper (listening comprehension part) and a compound dictation. The data were keyed into the computer and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) Version 12.0 was used to conduct statistic analysis. Descriptive analysis, independent-samples t-tests were conducted to find out learning strategies for listening activities used by students. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationships between listening strategy use and listening achievements.The results of this study show that vocabulary was the most important factor affecting students' listening efficiency. Most of the students could manage their approaches to listening with cognitive strategies, and employ metacognitive strategies to aid the listening comprehension. These are in line with many of the research findings by western scholars. This study also indicates that some positive strategies were not used frequently and appropriately. Most of the students could adjust their emotions, but could not cooperate actively with their peers or ask the teacher for help. Moreover, apparent differences in strategy use were found between good and poor listeners on the use of metacognitive strategies as well as cognitive strategies, but not social/affective strategies. Female students used metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies more often than male ones. But the differences of the use of the major strategies were all not statistically significant. In correlation analysis, the metacognitive strategies and some cognitive strategies were found positively correlated with listening achievements.Based on discussion of the results, several suggestions are put forward for college English teachers. They are advised to make efforts to analyze the reasons leading to comprehension breakdown and take Countermeasures to help students solve the problems. For them it is also important to cultivate students' awareness of using learning strategies, encourage students to use metacognitive strategies and build students' confidence in listening to English. The limitations of the investigation and the areas for further research on listening strategies are finally proposed.