Research On The Difficulties In English Listening Comprehension Based On The Anderson’s Three-phase Model

Of the five skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating, listening, as aninput, is a main means to gain information. With listening comprehension brought intoEnglish examinations at both high school and university levels, listening comprehensiondifficulties are increasingly attracted attention by parents, students, teachers and researchers.This thesis researches on listening comprehension difficulties confronting students fromdifferent levels, based on Anderson’s cognitive three-phase model. Questionnaires areadopted to research on 102 respondents, including 34 students from Chang’an Senior HighSchool in Tai Yuan, 35 college students and 33 postgraduate students in North University ofChina. In order to find out what difficulties they are faced with while listening to English, theobjectives of this study are: 1) in which phase(s), students from different levels are facedwith listening comprehension difficulties, perception, parsing or utilization; 2) whatdifferences there exists for students from different levels in the same listening process; 3)whether the gender plays a role in difficulties confronting students.By quantitative analysis based on the Anderson’s three-phase model, it shows that 1) allthe students have difficulties in all three phases—perception, parsing and utilization in theprocess of listening to English. The proportions of difficulties in the phase of perception,parsing and utilization are 52.94%, 59.44% and46.32% respectively. And high frequencies ofdifficulties come up in the phases of perception and parsing. 2) Students from different levelsshow few differences in listening comprehension during the three cognitive processes. Inperception, the proportions of difficulties confronting senior high school students, collegeones and postgraduate ones are 45.42%, 59.68% and 53.54% respectively. In parsing, theproportions of senior high school students, college ones and postgraduate ones arerespectively 49.63%, 64.29% and 64.39%. In utilization, the proportions of senior highschool students, college ones and postgraduate ones are respectively 44.85%, 48.57% and45.45%. The difficulties of students are not changed with their learning levels. 3) There is adifference between males and females in listening comprehension difficulties. In perception,the proportions of difficulties confronting males and females are 48.86% and 57.91%. Inparsing, the proportions of difficulties confronting males and females are 52.75% and65.87%. In utilization, the proportions of difficulties confronting males and females are45.50% and 47.12%. The females’difficulties are slightly higher than those of males,especially in perception and parsing. In order to help students directly overcome theirdifficulties in listening comprehension the following suggestions are proposed: 1) cultivatinglisteners’awareness of“understanding”in listening comprehension; 2) cultivating listeners’awareness of“remembering”in listening comprehension; 3) cultivating listeners’awarenessof comprehensive consideration of listening difficulties.