Business English Listening With Multimedia: An Autonomous Learning Strategy Perspective

English listening is taught as a compulsory course at UIBE. Learning listening autonomously is the result of the university's endeavor to implement reform of its underlying methods of language teaching. To enhance language learning efficiency, the university introduced powerful language learning software intended for freshmen and sophomores to improve their listening. The software is called DynEd, which reflects our belief that developing listening competence requires a systematic, developmental approach;opportunities for listening practice in varied contexts and for different purposes;multiple opportunities for self assessment and feedback and goal-setting. In order to identify effective autonomous learning strategies for teaching college undergraduate students business English listening in a multimedia environment, 63 subjects were chosen on an arbitrary sampling basis for this study. All of them were freshmen of different majors from the same university.To collect data on demographics and prior listening skills, students were administered a demographic survey at the beginning of the first semester of the 2005-2006 academic year. The students were asked to take two tests. The first was taken before autonomous listening learning at the beginning of the semester and the second after autonomous listening learning at the end of the semester. Two weeks before the final test, students were administered the questionnaire to assess the effectiveness of their autonomous listening learning strategies applied during the semester.The dependent variable in this research was the second test results. The independent variables were all five MSLQ subscales. The controlling variables were the first test results and gender. The statistical software SPSS 11.5 was used to analyze the variables. First of all, some descriptive data were collected to achieve concrete results. Then correlation analysis was made to check whether there was correlation between the dependent variable and the independent variables. Correlations measure how variables are related. Before calculating a correlation coefficient, the author screened the data for curve estimation, which was an evidence of a linear relationship. Pearson's correlation coefficient was measured to assesslinear association. Finally, linear regression was made to further prove and deepen the findings. It is a general statistical procedure used to analyze the relationship between a single dependent variable and a single independent variable (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998).The findings revealed that metacognitive and cognitive strategies, time and environment management and peer learning had a positive effect. And effort regulation and help seeking did not show any significant correlation with listening achievement.