A Study On College English Listening Strategies Instruction Among Non-english Majors In The Autonomous Learning Environment

The views of language learning in College English Curriculum Standard advocated that we shouldcultivate students to acquire the language by textbooks, teachers and multi-technology and master theeffective learning strategies gradually and further cultivate the learners’ autonomy, which achieve the goalof construct knowledge in language practice activities and develop the language ability. Listeningcomprehension has been playing an important role in daily communication and education as one of themost frequently used forms of language skills. It was not until1960s that the focus of research shifted from“how to teach” to “how to learn”, a great number of universities built up the autonomous learning center.For the first time, people began to show serious concern about listening comprehension strategies. With thedevelopment of modern cognitive psychology, it is widely recognized that listening is an active mentalprocess in which a listener tries to understand the listening materials with the help of listening strategiesand kinds of knowledge. Thus, the research of listening strategies is of great importance to the learning oflistening. The thesis mainly focuses on the influence of listening strategy on the listening achievement andlearners’ autonomy ability whether improved or not in an autonomous learning environment.Ninety freshmen who major in accounting of Northwest Normal University were selected as thesubjects for this study. The study is divided into controlled group and experimental group. The controlledclass carried out the traditional listening teaching method while the experimental group applied thelistening strategies instruction to the listening practice. The instruments of experiment are listeningstrategies questionnaire, listening tests of CET-4(December,2006and July,2007), listening plan, listeningactivity evaluation and interview.Then the main conclusions are drawn as follows:1. After listening strategies instruction, experimental class’s listening achievements have improved alot. It indicates that the listening strategies instruction has great influence on listening achievements. Afterlistening strategies instruction, experimental class’ strategies using frequency improved compared before.2. From the research, the participants’ meta-cognitive strategies and communicative strategies hasobvious improvement after listening strategies instruction. And it can find out the meta-cognitive strategiesand cognitive strategies are most effective and widely used strategies. The frequency of using listeningstrategy in experimental class before is like this: cognitive strategy, meta-cognitive strategy, affectivestrategy and communicative strategy. But after one semester’s listening strategy instruction and listening practice in autonomous learning environment, the whole frequency situation of using listening strategy islike this: meta-cognitive strategy, cognitive strategy, communicative strategy and affective strategy.3. After a term’s listening strategies instruction in autonomous learning center, we can draw theconclusion that the students autonomous learning ability have improved according to the listening activitiesevaluation tables and interview, which laid the solid foundation to listening learning in the future.