Influence Of Listeners’ Cognitive Characteristics On L2Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is an important part in second language acquisition, the importance of which has attracted broad attention from numerous researchers both at home and abroad. However, the performance of L2listening comprehension of Chinese listeners remains far from satisfactory. Listening comprehension is a complicated mental process containing the perception, parsing and utilization of input information; it can be affected by various kinds of factors such as the characteristics of texts, interlocutors, tasks, processes and listeners, etc. But empirical studies carried out from the perspective of listeners’ cognitive characteristics are very limited. Therefore, three listeners’cognitive characteristics are chosen for the present empirical study, namely, working memory capacity, listening strategies and language proficiency, which are believed to be possible factors influencing the performance of L2listening comprehension. From an independent perspective, this paper will try to examine the possible relationship between working memory capacity, listening strategies, language proficiency and L2listening comprehension respectively. Then from an integrated perspective, this paper will try to compare the influences of the three listeners’cognitive characteristics on L2listening comprehension and analyze the predictive power of the three as an integrated whole on L2listening comprehension.The subjects participated in the present study are108freshmen coming from a university in Jiangsu Province and all of them have accomplished a series of tests including listening comprehension, working memory capacity, listening strategies and language proficiency. All the data collected are analyzed with the help of SPSS19.0(descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis), and demonstrated in following part are major findings of this study:First, working memory capacity is significantly and positively correlated with the performance of L2listening comprehension; which is in accordance with related theories of working memory capacity.Second, the general tendency of listening strategies employed by subjects is at a medium level, and three subcategory strategies rank as cognitive strategies, social/affective strategies, metacognitive strategies according to the frequency reported by subjects. Listening strategies are also positively and significantly correlated with L2listening comprehension, among which metacognitive strategies are of the highest correlation.Third, overall language proficiency is also positively and significantly correlated with the performance of L2listening comprehension, i.e. listeners with higher language proficiency can take better advantage of their language knowledge to contribute to corresponding performance in L2listening comprehension.Fourth, working memory capacity, listening strategies and language proficiency are proved to be effective predicators for performances in L2listening comprehension. They rank as language proficiency, working memory capacity, listening strategies according to their predictive power, and as an integrated whole they can predict the performance of L2listening comprehension in a proportion of74.6%.