The Study Of The Relationship Between Listening Learning Strategies And College English Listening Comprehension

There is indubitability that besides the three basic language skills, that is,speaking, reading, and writing, listening takes up the most significant position, andlistening is an intricate and active procedure of interpretation where listeners connectwhat they hear with what they have already known. However, the current situation iseven though most Chinese College English students have already made great effortsto improve their listening ability, they have only acquired a little effect.Numerous overseas second language acquisition researchers like O’Malley andChatom, Krashen and Terrell, and Gary have already illustrated a similar idea onwhether learners could master and develop learning strategies such as meta-cognitivestrategy, cognitive strategy and affective strategy in a proper and flexible way. And aseries of studies with experiments overseas indicate that after organized listeningstrategies having been performed, listening learners could strengthen their listeningability on specific tasks. Some scholars and researchers on listening strategies at homehave been inspired from overseas studies and experiments and have done someinvestigations and surveys to explore a better way of solution to improve listeningcomprehension of college students in China. In recent years, under the requirement ofteaching in China and after the test reform, the part of listening comprehension inCET4and CET6has been increased up to a proportion of35%of the total score,namely, to enhance listening comprehension will improve both the score of CET4andCET6and college students’ practical listening ability.Although some relative studies have been done by domestic scholars, it isunsatisfactory that English listening comprehension of college students has not beenmuch improved. Therefore, it is necessary, urgent and feasible to explore effectivelistening learning strategies. This research aims to provide statistical information or experimental support to understand the students’ listening process, the importance oflistening strategies in strengthening listening ability, and give out some tentativesuggestions for listening teaching.Based on the background of learning strategies’ theory and practice, theempirical study is to investigate the effectiveness of learning strategies under theguidance of learning strategies for non-English major students who learn English as aforeign language. In the empirical study,66non-English major freshmen from twoclasses with similar English proficiency from Changchun Normal College are selectedas the participants for15consecutive weeks’ learning under guidance of instructor. Asfar as instruments are concerned, on the basis of O’Malley and Chamot, thequestionnaire for this survey mainly covers three learning strategies, in whichmetacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies areplanned, and the English listening pre-test and post-test which could reveal requiredinformation which may underlies the results concerned like what leaning strategiesand how they are employed by participants in the study, and what’s more, SPSS19.0is adopted to analyze the acquired data including frequency, means, standarddeviations and T-test in descriptive statistics.Moreover, the research primarily aims to serve for responses to the followingquestions:(1). What learning strategies in listening used basically by non-English majorstudents at present can be known?(2). On students’ listening comprehension, what kind of effect can the learningstrategies experimented with have after having been applied in listening process?(3). In what ways can the learning strategies be applied by students in collegeEnglish listening comprehension?(4). What kind of learning strategies may be gotten to improve probably listeningcomprehension of college students more effectively?This research thesis consists of five parts:The first part introduces background and purpose of the research, and frameworkof the thesis. The second part is literature review which consists roughly of definition and keycharacteristics of listening comprehension, studies on listening comprehension,importance, situation and problems of listening comprehension in language learningand teaching in China, basic theories and studies of language learning strategies athome and abroad, relationship between learning strategies and listeningcomprehension, and relationship between meta-cognitive strategies, cognitivestrategies and social/affective strategies, and listening comprehension, and so forth,whose aim is to lay a firm theoretical foundation for a later empirical study.The third part contains methodology of the empirical research with researchquestions, participants, instruments and its purpose, such as SPSS, questionnairebefore test, pretest and posttest, formation of concrete strategies, listeningcomprehension samples analysis, and data purpose and collection, experimental andanalytical procedures.The fourth part elaborates analyses of the research results and summarizingwhich are based on the collected experimental data from questionnaires and listeningpretest and posttest through SPSS.The fifth part is composed of findings, implications and limitations of theempirical research with a concise conclusion and practical and feasible suggestionsfor the improvement of learners’ learning strategies in listening comprehension.The major findings of the statistics are shown in the following: Firstly, it is themost difficult problem for students when confronting vocabulary and idiom. Secondly,in general, students make use of listening strategies to support themselves to improvelistening ability, but the degree is not very high, general at a medium level or lower.Cognitive strategies, metacognitve strategies and social/affective strategies aresometimes used in rank order of total frequency. As for the subcategories, thefrequently employed strategies are inference, elaboration and reducing anxiety, whilecooperation and advance organization are generally not used. Thirdly, it is reallydifferent between experimental and control class when listening strategies are used.Before the empirical stage, great difference doesn’t exist between the two groupswhen metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies are used. After the empirical stage，it is statistically different between the two groupswhen both metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies are used as well associal/affective strategies. Experimental group uses self-management, self-monitoring,selective attention, elaboration and note-taking more frequently, while control groupmostly applies translation frequently. Finally, it can be concluded that experimentalstudents could employ “self-management, inference, elaboration and note-taking” tobuild better emotion for listening.Based on the major findings, some implications have been proposed to suggestfor college English listening teaching and learning. It is urgent for college Englishteachers to develop the students’ awareness of using listening strategies, to createenough opportunities to practice positive strategies effectively. In the regular listeningclass English teachers should conduct clearly what the strategy is, how the strategycan be used in listening, when the strategy should be used and why the strategy shouldbe used to enhance their efforts in listening. In addition to the regular listening class,teachers should also deliver lectures on language learning strategies for students andlet them make discussions after lectures, which could make students share theirlearning strategies and experiences from others.Actually, although some implications have been shown for college Englishlistening and teaching, the present study is still affected by some limitations, such asthe number and the range of the subjects not big enough, the experimental time still alittle shorter and also some subjective factors contained. Thus larger and widersamples, longer experimental time, more relevant instruments are suggested for thefuture researches. It is sincerely hoped that this research will attract more attention tothe study of learning strategies to improve the English listening teaching and learningin college.