A Study Of Listening Strategies Used By Non-english Majors In The Autonomous Learning Environment

With the development of cognitive psychology, the focus of research on second language acquisition has shifted from "how to teach" to "how to learn". Recent years, many researchers try to study the use of learning strategies in second language acquisition. Listening, as one of the four basic language skills, has attracted many researchers' special attention. In fact, many researchers at home and abroad have investigated and studied listeners' use of listening strategies from different aspects. However, most of these studies were conducted in the traditional teaching environment; there is little research on the' listening strategy use made in the autonomous learning environment. Therefore, more researches and investigations are needed to examine listening strategy use in this new learning environment.Based on the researches of learning and listening strategies at home and abroad, this study was conducted in two classes in Taishan University, consisting of 76 non-English majors. It aims to explore in the autonomous learning environment:1) the overall employment of listening strategies by non-English majors; 2) the differences in the use of listening strategies between good listeners and poor ones; 3) the effect of gender on listening strategy use; and 4) the correlation between listening strategy use and listening proficiency.The study mainly employs the quantitative method. The instruments used in the present study are a questionnaire and English proficiency tests, including end-term examination and CET-4 (College English Test-Band Four). With the help of SPSS 10.0, the descriptive data was collected and independent sample T-test was employed to analyze the collected data and the correlation analysis was made to find the relationship between listening strategy use and listening proficiency. Several findings on students'listening strategy use in the autonomous learning environment are revealed in the study. First, in general, Chinese non-English majors do use some listening strategies, but they are medium listening strategy users. They use cognitive strategies more frequently, but the frequencies of meta-cognitive strategy use and social-affective strategy use are comparatively low. Second, good listeners use strategies significantly more than poor listeners; the former are better than the latter in focusing their attention, making inference and using resources. Third, female listeners use social-affective strategies more frequently; they made greater use of monitoring, lowering anxiety and cooperating than male listeners; and last the correlation between listening strategy use and listening proficiency is positive. The more frequent the listening strategies are used, the more proficient the listeners will be.According to the above findings, the study drew the following pedagogical implications:firstly, English teachers should cultivate students' awareness of using listening strategies and help them realize the importance of employing suitable listening strategies. Secondly, English teachers should integrate strategy training into college English courses, especially meta-cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies. Thirdly, English teachers should also take the factors of gender into consideration in the course of strategy training, especially cultivating male students' use of the social/affective strategies. Finally, the limitations were also pointed out in this study, such as the small sample size, limited use of research instruments. To overcome these limitations, at the end of the thesis, the study offers some suggestions for the future research in this field.