A Study On The Relationship Among Metacognitive Awareness Of Listening,Listening Anxiety And Listening Performance Of Senior High School Students

With the prevalence of learner-centered teaching,there is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of individual difference in learning process,for example,the affective and metacognitive factors.Metacognitive awareness and anxiety are two important factors in metacognitive and affective factors.Previous studies have revealed that metacognitive awareness of listening and listening anxiety are related to listening performance respectively.However,there is a relatively small body of literature that is concerned with the relationship among metacognitive awareness of listening,listening anxiety and listening performance.At home and abroad,research subjects are focused on college students and few studies have attempted to investigate high school students.The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship among metacognitive awareness of listening,listening anxiety and listening performance.Specifically,this thesis answers the question from three aspects: what is the relationship among senior high school students’ metacognitive awareness of listening,listening anxiety and their listening performance;what are the differences in students’ metacognitive awareness of listening between high proficiency group and low proficiency group;what are the differences in students’ listening anxiety between high proficiency group and low proficiency group.The 292 participants in this study are second grade students from three regular high schools in Handan,Hebei Province.Three research instruments are used: Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire of Vandergrift et al.(2006),Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale of Elkhafaifi(2005)and score of listening test.All data analysis is carried out using SPSS 19.0,Pearson correlation is used to analyze the first research question and Independent samples T-test is used to analyze the second and the third research questions.The research results are listed as follows:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between metacognitive awareness of listening(including its four factors: “problem-solving”;“planning and evaluation”;“person knowledge”;“directed attention”)and listening performance of senior high school students.However,a significant negative correlation is found between “mental translation” and listening performance.The overall listening anxiety and its three factors(“listening anxiety”;“self-belief”;“decoding skill)are significantly and negatively correlate with listening performance.The metacognitive awareness of listening shows a significant negative correlation with listening anxiety.(2)There is a significant difference between the high proficiency group and low proficiency group in metacognitive awareness of listening(including its four factors).No significant difference is found in “mental translation”.(3)There is a significant difference between high proficiency group and low proficiency group in listening anxiety(including its three factors).The results of this study demonstrate that metacognitive awareness of listening and listening anxiety both play an important role in listening performance.It is hoped that this study can provide some reference and suggestions for senior high school English teachers.In English listening teaching,teachers should cultivate students’ metacognitive awareness and guide students to focus on their listening process.In addition,teachers should arrange teaching contents well and reduce students’ listening anxiety as far as possible.