2006届优秀毕业论文选登

The Influence of Learning Strategies on Listening Proficiency

Major: English Education     Author: Zhang Meiyan          Supervisor: Lecturer LinHong

（Foreign Language Department of Huizhou University, Huizhou, GuangDong, 516007）

Abstract：This paper aims at finding out the strategies employed in listening to a Mini-lecture in TEM8, and making comparison and contrast of strategies used by good listeners and poor listeners. The subjects are 40 English majors in Huizhou University. The instrument is a strategy questionnaire. The findings are:

1) In the Mini-lecture listening, the most frequently used strategies are cognitive strategies and the least frequently employed strategies are social/affective strategies, with metacognitive strategies in the middle.

2) There is correlation between listening strategies and listening proficiency. Good listeners tend to manipulate the strategies “self-management”, “categorization” and “note-taking” more frequently, while poor listeners tend to use “directed attention” and “key word”. There is no significant difference in the use of some strategies, such as “pre-preparation”, “inferencing”, “association”, “selective attention” and social/affective strategies.

The implication of the study is that students should receive listening strategy instruction, especially social/affective strategy instruction. Moreover, practicing the new language should be emphasized if the students want to improve listening proficiency.

Key words：Learning strategies  Mini-lecture  Listening proficiency

1 Introduction

Listening comprehension is always considered to be one of the most difficult parts of foreign language acquisition by most Chinese students. How to improve the ability of listening comprehension? Many strategy training studies have been conducted and most of them have been proved successful by O’Malley and Chamot.

The research on listening strategies started from the west in the 1980s. Certain famous researchers had made great contributions to the field of learning strategies. Until the 1990s, some empirical studies on listening strategies with Chinese students appeared in our country (Jiang ^[1]; Wen ^[2]). Although many strategies have been conducted helpful in listening comprehension, they are general, it seems necessary to research on a specific part which hasn’t been researched so much before, that’s Mini-lecture/Note-taking &Gap-filling in TEM8 (Test for English Majors Band 8). Majority of the English major students consider Mini-lecture to be the most difficult section in listening. According to the statistic report about the result of Mini-lecture in the last two years, English major students from Huizhou University didn’t do well in this part: only 3.85(total score 10) in 2005 and 5.13(total score 10) in 2004, compared to the national average level 5.09(total score 10) in 2005 and 6.27(total score 10) in 2004. Most of the students who couldn’t pass TEM8 got low score in this part. Therefore, when listening to a Mini-lecture, there is a need to study on how to improve students’ listening proficiency with the help of learning strategies. Some scholars have found the correlation between learning strategies and listening proficiency, but they maybe haven’t concentrated on this specific listening task.

      In this paper, the author has made an empirical research on the learning strategies that English majors employed in listening to a Mini-lecture. According to the result of the research, the correlation between learning strategies and listening proficiency would be found out and certain implications would also be made to help improve students’ listening proficiency in Huizhou University.

2.1 Definition and Classification of Learning Strategies

The study of learning strategies has been an “explosion of activity” in the recent years. A certain research on learning strategies is the comprehensive research program surveyed by O’Malley and Chomat. Their definition of learning strategies is “the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn or retain new information”. In O’Malley and Chamot’s framework, three major types of language learning strategies are distinguished. Cognitive strategies refer to ‘the steps or operations used in problem-solving that require direct analysis, transformation or synthesis of learning materials’. They have an operative or cognitive-processing function. Examples of cognitive strategies are: elaboration, note-taking, inferencing, key word, contextualization, analyzing and repetition. Cognitive strategies such as these appear to be directly linked to the performance of particular learning tasks. Metacognitive strategies make use of knowledge about cognitive processes and constitute an attempt to regulate language learning by means of planning, monitoring and evaluating. They have executive function. Examples of metacognitive strategies are: directed attention, selected attention, self-management and self-monitoring. Social/affective strategies concern the ways in which learners elect to interact with other learners and native speakers. Chamot gives as examples “cooperation” and “question for clarification”, and “self-encouragement” is also included in this paper ^[3].

Another definition of learning strategies was presented by Oxford in 1989. He said: “Language learning strategies are behaviors on actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable.” In Oxford’s ^[4] new taxonomy, he divided learning strategies into direct and indirect strategies. The former consist of ‘strategies that directly involve the target language’ in the sense that they ‘require mental processing of the language’, while the latter ‘provide indirect support for language learning through focusing, planning, evaluation and empathy and other means’. The subcategories of direct and indirect strategies are shown in Figure A.

1. Memory strategies

Direct strategies     2.Cognitive strategies

 Learning                        3.Compensation strategies

strategies                        1.Metacognitive strategies

Indirect strategies     2.Affective strategies

                             3. Social strategies

                    (Figure A)

2.2 Some Findings of Former Researches in Listening Strategies

Research on listening strategy is inseparable from the language learning strategies. Therefore many researchers regard listening strategy as one of language learning strategies ^[5]. Listening strategies, according to Weinstein and Mayer, are behaviors and thoughts that a listener engages in during listening that are intended to influence the listener’s encoding processing ^[6]. In the west, Vandergrift ^[7] considered differences in strategy use at different levels. He worked with fourteen students of French in their first, second, and fifth years of language study (defined as novice) and seven students in their eighth year of study (defined as intermediate). The findings were 1) novice listeners depend mainly on elaboration, inferencing and transfer to construct meaning and use what they know to compensate for their limited knowledge and 2) intermediate-level listeners use more metacognitive strategies than novice listeners, but they still make a dominating use of cognitive strategies---elaboration and inferencing in particular---to build up meaning.

In China, attention has also been paid to the research on listening strategies. Jiang ^[1] considered the relation of learning strategies to listening comprehension. He found that language functional practice and reading practice have a significant predictive power on non-foreign language university learners’ overall listening comprehension ability and listening sub-skills ability. Wen ^[2] made comparison of the learning strategies used by a successful language learner and an unsuccessful learner and found out the use of different strategies would influence learning outcomes. There were differences in the skills of learning and managing between successful learner and unsuccessful learner. Wang ^[8] carried out a study of the listening strategies used by Chinese non-English majors. The study found that major strategies used by the subjects are meaning-focused, social/affective, mother-tongue-reliance, form-focused and metacognitive strategies. Also, difference in strategy use exists between effective and ineffective listeners. Yu ^[9] also carried out a study of the listening strategies in non-English major students in Tianjin Medical University, and found that learning strategies demonstrated significant correlation with listening proficiency; the metacognitive strategies were the strongest positive predictor of listening proficiency. Huang ^[10] also carried out a study in non-English majors in Shandong Agricultural University, and found out meaning strategies are preferred to metacognitive, formal and social/affective strategies; high achievers employ strategies more frequently, skillfully, whereas low achievers utilize new word and translation strategies more.

2.3  Features of Mini-lecture in TEM-8

TEM-8 is a level test for English major students in Chinese universities. It exists in China only and has its own features. Mini-lecture (about 900 words) is a section of listening in TEM-8. Students are required to listen to the Mini-lecture once only. While listening, they should take down notes on a blank sheet, and then spend 10 minutes finishing a gap-filling task which contains 10 gaps with the help of the notes.

The contents of the Mini-lecture are various. It can be concerned with society problems, history, culture, technology, education, technology, education, politics, economy, agriculture, architecture, medicine, tourism and so on. Though various, the contents are not so difficult to comprehend.

Most of the students who have taken TEM-8 regard Mini-lecture as the most difficult section of listening, because they listen to it once only and have no relevant material to consult beforehand.

3 Methodology

3.1  Research Questions

In order to find out the strategies used by English majors as well as the difference in strategies used by students in different proficiency, two questions were designed to help find out the influence of learning strategy on listening proficiency:

1)      What strategies are used by English major students when listening to a Mini-lecture?

2)      Is there any difference in the choice of listening strategies between good and poor listeners? What are the differences?

3.2  Subjects

The subjects under study were 40 English major students in the Foreign Language Department of Huizhou University. They were Fourth-year students from 3 different classes, and they had taken TEM-8 a week before. Besides, raw test scores of the listening section of Test for English Majors Band 4 (2003) were used to divide the subjects into two groups: good listeners=Group A (male: female=4:16) and poor listeners=Group B (male: female=10:10). (See Table 1)

                            Table 1

3.3  Instrument

The instrument used in this study is a strategy questionnaire. The questionnaire contains two sections. Section 1 is a brief account of participants, including name and gender. Section 2 is on language learning strategy use, which contains a list of 20 listening strategy items adopted from O’Malley and Chamot’s taxonomy of learning strategies. Combine with the features of Mini-lecture, the author self-designed the questionnaire. The 20 items are classified into different listening strategies: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies (See Table 2). Each item has 5 choices ranging from “I never or almost never use this method” to “I always or almost always use this method”.

Table 2: Items of Different Strategies

3.4 Data Analysis

Data are counted and analyzed by EXCEL. In the 5 choices of each item, there is a different value for each choice. 1 is the lowest value while 5 is the highest. When the mean value is high, it indicates that the strategy is used in high frequency, vice versa. Value Descriptive analysis is employed to count the mean value of 1) the students’ manipulation of listening strategies, and 2) the differences between listening strategies manipulated by good listeners and poor listeners.

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Results

4.1.1 Major Listening Strategies Employed by the Subjects

Table 3: Mean of strategy (in general)

The means of listening strategies use by all the subjects are displayed in Table 3. The subjects, in spite of whether good listeners or not, choose different strategies in different frequencies. In Table 3, we can see that cognitive strategies (Mean=3.579), are the most frequently used strategies, followed by metacognitive strategies (Mean=3.281) and social/affective strategies (Mean=2.695).

4.1.2 Frequency of Each Strategy Use

Table 4: Mean of each strategy employed by the subjects

In metacognitive strategies (in Table 4), “selective attention” (Item 2, Mean=4.00) and “Self-monitoring” (Item 10, Mean=3.925) are used in high frequency. “Directed attention” (Item 1, Mean=2.55) and “preparation” are proved to be two strategies used in low frequency. “Extensive reading” (Item13, Mean =2.925) is also picked up in low frequency. In the five branches of cognitive strategies, “key word” (Item 3, Mean =4.125) is the most frequently used strategy. “Note-taking” (Items 4, 5, Mean =4.025) is frequently used by the subjects as well. Comparatively speaking, “Categorization” (Item 12, Mean=2.525) is least used in cognitive strategies. Subjects are proved to use social/affective strategies in less frequency, especially “cooperation”. 

From the table, we can see that subjects manipulated the strategies “key word”, “note-taking”, “selective attention” and “self-monitoring” in higher frequency, but “directive attention”, “categorization”, “cooperation” and “self-encouragement” in lower frequency.

4.1.3 The Differences in Strategy Use between Good Listeners and Poor Listeners

Table 5: Comparison between Strategies used by Good listeners (Group A) and Poor Listeners (Group B)