A Study On Senior High Students’ Listening Self-Efficacy,Listening Strategies And Their Correlation

Self-efficacy,a significant non-intellectual element for learning,acts as a mental facilitator for learners’ motivation,autonomy and choices of strategies in learning.Self-efficacy also exerts its influences on EFL learners’ behaviors and strategies in listening which contributes to their listening achievements.Aiming at probing the relationship between listening self-efficacy and listening strategy among senior high students,this study concentrated on the investigation of385 senior high students’ listening self-efficacy and listening strategy with the assistance of questionnaires and interviews.The revised Listening Self-efficacy Questionnaire from Bian Yufang’s Self-efficacy Questionnaire examines listening self-efficacy and pays attention to learners’ perceived basic capability and perceived control and Vandergrift’s Listening Strategy Questionnaire attends to listening strategy with sub-categories of meta-cognitive strategy,cognitive strategy and socio-affective strategy.The relationship between listening self-efficacy and the use of listening strategies is explored and it is found that listening self-efficacy is positively correlated with the use of listening strategies.To analyze the differences in listening self-efficacy,the participants are divided into three groups according to their performance in a district unified examination,namely low-,intermediate-,and high-proficiency.The data collected from the questionnaires and interviews are analyzed with the help of Statistical Product and Service Solutions(SPSS).Interviews are conducted in the hope of explaining some unexpected findings.The research questions are as follow:(1)Is there any difference in listening self-efficacy among students with different levels of language proficiency ?(2)Is there any difference in the use of listening strategies among students with different levels of language proficiency?(3)Is there any difference in the correlation between LSE and the use of LS among senior high students with different levels of language proficiency?Research results indicated:(1)There are significant differences in listening self-efficacy among these three groups of different levels of language proficiency.Students of high-,intermediateand low-language proficiency reported significant decreases in their listening self-efficacy.It was found that participants had higher perceived control than perceived basic capability,(2)There were significant differences of listening strategy on the students’ proficiency.Students of high-language proficiency used meta-cognitive strategy the most frequently,cognitive strategy the least frequently.Students of intermediate proficiency used meta-cognitive strategy the most frequently than the other two strategies which were employed almost equally frequently.Students of low proficiency used meta-cognitive strategy and socio-affective strategy almost with the same frequency,and the cognitive strategy was used the least frequently.(3)It was found that students’ listening self-efficacy had a moderately positive correlation with the use of listening strategy.Meta-cognitive strategy and cognitive strategy were the major contributors to the prediction of students’ listening self-efficacy.There were salient differences in the correlations between listening self-efficacy and listening strategy among the three groups.For example,the proficient group had the highest correlation,and the lowly proficient group had the second highest correlation while the intermediate proficiency group was reported to have the lowest correlation.The subcategories of listening strategy were tested with multiple linear regression in which meta-cognitive strategy,cognitive strategy and socio-affective strategy showed varied contribution to the prediction of listening self-efficacy.At the end of the thesis,implications are provided for students and teachers to achieve better listening comprehension and higher effectiveness of the listening training.The limitation of the study and suggestions for future research were mentioned as well.