An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Thinking Styles,English Listening Strategies And Listening Proficiency Of Students In Grade One Of Senior High School

For senior high school students,English listening is an important part of their English learning.Relevant studies have suggested that thinking style may be one of the factors influencing listening proficiency,and the selection and application of listening strategies are related to listening proficiency.However,previous scholars have mainly studied the thinking styles,listening strategies and listening proficiency respectively.There are few studies on the relationship between them,especially those taking senior high school students as research subjects.Therefore,based on Sternberg’s theory of Mental Selfgovernment and Vandergrift’s theory of Listening Comprehension Strategies,this study takes 159 students in Grade One of a senior high school in Quanzhou as research subjects,aiming to examine the relationship between thinking styles,English listening strategies and listening proficiency.This thesis centers on finding the answer of the following three issues:1)Are there any differences in thinking styles and English listening strategies between high-proficiency group students and low-proficiency group students in Grade One of senior high school?2)What’re the correlations between thinking styles,English listening strategies and listening proficiency of students in Grade One of senior high school?3)Can thinking styles and English listening strategies predict listening proficiency of students in Grade One of senior high school?The author collects the corresponding data through questionnaire and semi-structured interview and English listening text.The results of the present study show that:(1)The students in the high-proficiency group are significantly higher than the students in the lowproficiency group in the tendencies of executive style,hierarchic style,external style and conservative style.In addition,the frequency of metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies used by high-proficiency students is significantly higher than that of lowproficiency students.(2)Executive style,hierarchic style,external style and conservative style are significantly and positively correlated with listening proficiency.Metacognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and socioaffective strategies are also significantly and positively correlated with listening proficiency.Besides,thinking styles and listening strategies are significantly and positively correlated.(3)Thinking styles and listening strategies can positively predict the listening proficiency of students in Grade One of senior high school.However,the predictive ability of thinking styles on listening proficiency is lower than that of listening strategies.In addition,thinking styles can indirectly affect the listening proficiency through listening strategies.This study can further enrich the research on thinking styles and listening strategies and can provide new ideas for senior high school listening teaching.That is,teachers should guide students to choose suitable listening strategies in accordance with their own thinking styles,which can contribute to students’ listening proficiency.