A Study On The Effect Of Learning Strategy Training On The Students’ English Listening Comprehension In High Schools

Listening is the most basic and fundamental language skill in language learning. Rivers andTemperly’s studies show that of the time spent in communication activities by adults,45percent is devotedto listening,30percent to speaking, only16percent to reading, and a mere9percent to writing. Aslistening comprehension is officially included as part of the National Matriculation Entrance Test,teachers pay more attention to how to improve students’ listening ability and listening proficiency.However, the teaching of listening in most high schools still remains the traditional way: playing the tapeand checking the answers. Teachers pay attention to the results rather than process and neglect theguidance of listening strategy for students. Though students have invested a massive amount of time andenergy in the practice of listening comprehension, the results are unsatisfactory. Therefore, more andmore attention is being drawn to researches on ways to improve the efficiency of listening teaching.Although implementing listening strategy training in listening teaching is one of the ways, its effectivenessis still under discussion.Since the1990s, the study of listening strategies has gained a wide concern. It is now commonlyacknowledged that strategy use can effectively enhance learners’ listening proficiency. However, when itcomes to the teachability of listening strategies and the ways to teach these strategies in the listening class,there are still different opinions. This thesis attempts to validate the effectiveness of listening strategytraining in high school classrooms through an empirical study.This thesis makes a generalization and summarization on literature review at the beginning. Theauthor puts forward a four-step training model on the basis of the strategy training models proposed bylinguistic experts at home and abroad:(1) Determine the learners’ needs in learning strategies;(2)Conduct strategy training;(3) Evaluate strategy training;(4) Expand strategy training.Within the framework of this training model, the author conducted a one-term listening strategytraining program with120students from two parallel classes of Huining No.3High School who arechosen as the subjects. The experimental class receives strategy training while the control class are taughtin the traditional way—play the tape and check the answers. In this study, the author uses Englishlistening comprehension tests and listening strategies questionnaires to understand students’ listeningcomprehension and its difficulties accurately.By analyzing the results, the author finds the major difficulties students encounter in listening activities are new words, anxiety, failure to understand sentences composed of familiar words andunfamiliar topics. At the same time, SPSS17.0for windows and percent descriptive statistics are employedto analyze the data. Studies on statistical data analysis show that:(1) Students can improve their listening comprehension after the listening strategy training.(2) Strategy training has positive effect on the frequency of strategy use.The study demonstrates the effectiveness of listening strategy training and provides beneficialenlightenment and guidance for listening teaching.