A Study On Differences In Using Listening Strategy Between Skilled And Unskilled English Majors

This thesis employs listening strategy questionnaire, listening diaries andinterviews to investigate skilled English majors and unskilled Englishmajors’ listening strategies use. There are60subjects altogether, involving30high-score and30low-score ones. The subjects are selected from158English majors of5classes ranging from Grade2010to Grade2012inBaotou Medical College. This thesis tries to find out what listeningstrategies skilled English majors and unskilled English majors often employrespectively; whether there are quantitative and qualitative differencesbetween skilled English majors and unskilled English majors in listeningstrategy use; and if there are, what are they? This investigation aims to bringsome thoughts and constructive suggestions for English listening teachingand listening strategy training.The major findings are:1) skilled English majors used meta-cognitivestrategies the most. The most often used strategies are: self-monitoring,self-management, planning, self-encouragement, self-evaluation andinference strategies;2) unskilled English majors used listening strategies at arelatively low level and they used self-encouragement, selective attentionand self-monitoring strategies the most;3) in the comparison ofmetacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategy use, the data from thequestionnaires show the mean of strategy used by skilled English majors issignificantly higher than that of unskilled English majors (P<0.01);4)skilled English majors did better in making feasible plans, evaluating theirlearning outcomes and managing their listening learning; they understoodinference and auditory representation more accurately and used them more properly; in addition, they were better at adjusting their emotion to listeninglearning.This investigation of strategy use testified the positive effect of listeningstrategy use to listening comprehension and made some concrete andconstructive suggestions for English listening teaching and listening strategytraining.