The Study Of High School Students' English Learning Strategies And The Relationship To Listening Comprehension

The study of language learning strategies has been a hot spot in the field of applied linguistics since the 1970s, and researchers have done many studies to explore the relationship between learning strategy and language learning. But most of such studies have been conducted in the western cultural setting with English as a second language (F2). Very few have been concerned with Chinese high school students.In order to know more about Chinese high school students' learning English by using learning strategies, with special attention to listening comprehension, this research provides a survey which was carried out among 135 second-year high school students in Yueqing, Wenzhou. The survey instruments consist of a strategy questionnaire and two English listening tests. The SPPS employed to analyze the collected data.The results show that (1) most second-year students in high school were able to describe their use of a wide range of learning strategies. The most frequently used strategies in the study were compensation strategies, while the most infrequently used strategies were memory strategies; (2) learning strategies demonstrated significant correlation with listening comprehension; (3) metacognitive strategies were the strongest positive predictor of listening comprehension. Association/elaboration, contextualizing, practicing, reasoning & analyzing, guessing/inferencing, seeking practice opportunities, paying attention, taking risks/tolerance for ambiguity, taking emotional temperature and developing cultural understanding were ways to achieve high listening proficiency in terms of good grades in listening tests in this study.The study implies that teachers can help their students become more effective listeners by encouraging and training them to apply a variety of learning strategies to listening tasks.