Thinking Style, Listening Strategy And Listening Achievement

Traditionally, many psychologists and educators have believed that people's successes and failures are attributable mainly to individual differences in abilities.(Sternberg, 1997; Li-fang Zhang, 2002) People may be practically identical in their abilities and yet have very different styles. A style is a preferred way of thinking. It is not an ability, but rather how we use the abilities we have. Society does not always judge people with equal abilities as equal. Rather, people whose thinking styles match those expected in certain situations are judged as having higher levels of abilities, despite the fact that what is present in not ability, but fit between those people's thinking styles and the tasks they are confronting.Styles are of interest to educators because they predict academic performance in ways that go beyond abilities.(Oxford, 1994; Rossie-Le, 1995; Reid, 1995;秦晓晴,2006) They are also of interest because when teachers take styles into account, they help improve both instruction and assessment.Chapter 1 begins with thes literature review of thinking style, listening strategy and some achievement tests a, TEM4 (Test for English Majors, Grade Four) and final test of listening and speaking course.The development of cognitive style is restrospected first. The origin of the construct of style can be traced back as far as 1937 and the concept has evolved over time and has taken many different forms. Among these works, three major integrative models of styles stand out in the literature. The first is Curry's (1983) Three-layer "Onion" Model. The second is Riding and Cheema's (1991) Model of Two Style Dimensions. After examining over 30 style labels in the literature based on the descriptions, correlations, methods of assessment, and effects on behavior of these style labels, Riding and Cheema concluded that they could be grouped into two principal cognitive styles: wholist-analytic and verbal-imagery. The former concerns whether an individual tends to process information in wholes or in parts; while the latter pertains to whether an individual has a tendency to represent information while thinking verbally or one does so in mental pictures. The final and most recent endeavor in integrating works on styles is Sternberg's theory of mental self-government.The important division of thinking style is also examined. Grigorenko & Sternberg's(2005) model are the integration of different models and comprises cognition-centered style, personality-centered and activity-centered styles. Styles in the cognition-centered tradition most closely resemble abilities. Moreover, like abilities, styles in this tradition are measured by tests of maximal performance with "right" and "wrong" answers.Witkin's(1962) field-dependence-independencemodel and Kagan's (1976) reflectivity-impulsivity model are introduced. The personality-centered tradition considers styles as most closely resembling personality traits. Furthermore, like personality traits, styles in this tradition are measured by tests of typical performance. Major work in this tradition has been done by Myers and McCaulley (1988) based on Jung's (1923) theory of personality types. Holland's (1973, 1994) theory of vocational types and Gregorc's (1979) model of types of styles also fall into this tradition. The activity-centered tradition focuses on the notion of styles as mediators of various forms of activities that tend to arise from aspects of both cognition and personality. One major group of works in this tradition is represented by similar theories of deep- and surface-learning approaches proposed by Marton (1976), Biggs (1978). Sternberg's theory of mental self-governmentUsing the word''government''metaphorically, Sternberg contended that just as there are different ways of governing a society, there are different ways that people use their abilities. These preferred ways of using one's abilities are defined as''thinking styles.''According to Sternberg, there are 13 thinking styles which fall along 5 dimensions: 1) functions (including the legislative, executive, and judicial styles), 2) forms (monarchic, hierarchical, oligarchic, and anarchic styles), 3) levels (global and local styles), 4) scopes (internal and external styles), and 5) leanings (liberal and conservative styles). According to the theory of mental self-government, people vary in their relative preferences for these styles and may use more than one style as well as flexibly switch from one to another as they adapt to changing task requirements. The stylistic preferences are also viewed as being socialized and as functions of one's interactions within the sociocultural environment.Li-fang Zhang and Sternberg (2005) arrive at the three-dimensional model of thinking style.Type I thinking styles are the ones that tend to be more creativity-generating and that denote higher levels of cognitive complexity, including the legislative (being creative), judicial (evaluative of other people or products), hierarchical (prioritizing one's tasks), global (focusing on the wholistic picture), and liberal (taking a new approach to tasks) styles. Type II thinking styles are styles that suggest a norm-favoring tendency and that denote lower levels of cognitive complexity, including the executive (implementing tasks with given orders), local (focusing on details), monarchic (working on one task at a time), and conservative (using traditional approaches to tasks) styles. Type II thinking styles include anarchic, oligarchic, internal and external styles. They belong to neither Type I nor Type II styles, however, they may exhibit the characteristics of both of them in accordance with the situation.The theory of mental self-government has been operationalized through inventories, including the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI; Sternberg & Wagner, 1992), which have been shown to be reliable and valid for U.S. and Hong Kong samples. Furthermore, results from such research have shown some value of the theory and have generated a number of implications for teaching and learning in educational settings. In the United States, Sternberg and Grigorenko conducted a series of studies.A set of findings indicated significant relationships between students' learning styles and such demographic data as students' socioeconomic status(SES) and birth order (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1995). Specifically, participants of higher SES status tended to score higher on the legislative style. Likewise, participants who were later-borns in their family scored higher on the legislative style than participants who were earlier-borns. A third data set indicated that teachers inadvertently favored those students who had thinking styles similar to their own (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1995). In a more recent study, Grigorenko and Sternberg (1997) found that certain thinking styles contribute significantly to prediction of academic performance over and above prediction of scores on ability tests. Their study also indicated that students with particular thinking styles benefited better on some forms of evaluation than on others. Sternberg & Wagner's Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) (1992) is employed to test thinking styles. It is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 65 items. The inventory has 13 subscales, with 5 items on each subscale. For each item, respondents are asked to rate themselves on a 7-point scale anchored by 1 (does not characterize you at all) and 7 (characterizes you extremely well). These 13 subscales correspond to the 13 thinking styles described in Sternberg's theory of mental self-government.Oxford divided learning strategies into two main groups: direct strategies and indirect strategies. Direct strategies consist of subconscious strategies directly involving the target language while indirect strategies provide indirect support for language learning through more conscious strategies such as focusing, planning, evaluating. These two classes are subdivided into six subcategories: memory, cognitive, compensation, social, affective and metacognitive.Unlike Oxford, O'Malley and Chamot have differentiated strategies into three categories depending on the level or type of processing involved: metacoginitive, cognitive and social/affective. They grounded the study of learning strategies within the information-processing model of learning developed by Anderson. Metacognitive strategies involve consciously directing one's efforts into the learning task. These strategies are higher order executive skills that may entail planning learning, monitoring the process of learning, and evaluating the success of a particular strategy. They have an executive function. In O'Malley and Chamot framework of learning strategies, metacognitive strategies include advance organizers, directed attention, selective attention, self-management, advance preparation, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation. Learning strategies can also be divided in terms of four skills. Listening is an integral portion of learning strategy. Language Strategy Use Survey (2001) by Cohen, Oxford and Chi, is an upgraded version of Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (1990) . Listening Strategy Use Survey (2001) is one section of it and adopted in the present research. It checks candidates' level from the perspectives of phonetics, background knowledge, prediction, body language and the use of original audio-visual materials.Listening comprehemion is a cognitive process, in which listeners use both bottom-up and top-down processing to comprehend the aural text. Researches show listening trategy may predict achievements. Students of different language proficiency adopt different strategies.The objectives of the TEM4 tests are: to evaluate English language teaching and learning at the end of the foundation state in the light of the national teaching syllabus; and to bring about beneficial washback effects on teaching and learning. As TEM4 was originally regarded as a means to check the implementation of the national teaching syllabuses, test content reflect the requirements in the syllabuses. Test content included listening, reading and writing for TEM4. TEM4 papers incorporate subjective and objective components, to varying degrees. Reliability and validity are the two facotors that arouse attention. Listening section are the focus of the research. Specifications for the listening component in TEM4 are listed and they are assessed by statistical analysis of the testing paper. The requirements of the listening and speaking course are designed in accordance with the national ELT syllabuses for English language majors. Final achievement tests are those administered at the end of a course of study. Clearly the content of these tests must be related to the courses with which they are concerned. The contents of a final achievement test should be based directly on a detailed course syllabus. Test categories are examined and discussed including discrete point or integrative testing, the objective testing or subjective testing. Authenticity is also concerned. Test techniques are discussed in relation to particular abilities. Test format for both TEM4 and Listening Course final exam are identified.Chapter 2 presents the fruits of the researches on thinking style, listening strategy and listening achievement respectively and the correlation among them. The associations among them are partially confirmed. The findings have been inconsistent.College students of Shisu pariticipated in the research. Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI; Sternberg & Wagner, 1992) and Listening Strategy Use Survey are employed. Meanwhile, researchers' interest in identifying the contributions of thinking styles to students' academic performance has never ceased, mainly because of the fact that the emergence of theories of styles was deeply rooted in the need for explaining students' individual differences in academic performance that are beyond the explanation of their abilities. The earliest investigation into the contribution of thinking styles to academic achievement was conducted by Sternberg and Grigorenko (Grigorenko & Stemberg, 1997) among two groups of identified gifted children participating in the Yale Summer School Program. The authors found that whereas the judicial and legislative thinking styles contributed positively to a student's success in a variety of academic tasks, the executive thinking style tended to contribute negatively to success in these tasks. A more recent study of the predictive power of thinking styles for academic achievement was conducted by Zhang (2002), whose research participants were U.S. university students. Results from this study revealed that the conservative style positively predicted students' grade point averages, whereas the global and liberal styles negatively did so. In Hong Kong, three such studies (Zhang, 2001; Zhang & Stemberg, 1998) have been carried out. Whereas one of the three studies (Zhang, 2001) was conducted among school children, the remaining two had university student participants. Results from all three studies suggested the following relationships between thinking styles and academic achievement. That is, in general, thinking styles that require conformity (conservative), respect for authority (executive), and a sense of order (hierarchical) were positively related to academic achievement. Thinking styles that are creativity generating (legislative and liberal styles) tended to contribute negatively to academic achievement. Furthermore, a preference for working individually (internal style) was positively correlated with academic achievement, whereas a preference for working in groups (external style) was negatively associated with academic achievement. Finally, mixed findings were obtained for the judicial style, which demonstrated a positive effect on achievement among secondary school students and male university students but had a negative effect on achievement among female university students.Zhang Hou-can (1999) uses Sternberg's TSL to measure thinking styles of Chinese university students. He compares the individual difference with regards to gender, literary and science subjects, geographical regions and arrives at the characteristics of thinking styles of Chinese university student:. In general, Chinese students get high scores in legislative, hierarchic and liberal styles, but low in conservative and local styles. Students in science subjects score higher than those in literary subjects. Male students gain higher marks than female students, especially for students in science subjects. Male students tends to be more liberal and monarchic than female students. Many language learning strategies have been found to correlate with language proficiency and performance. Therefore, most educators now accept the assumption that the use of learning strategies has become guidepost for distinguishing high from low skilled learners. They have also begun to recognize the influence that learning strategy use may have on the acquisition of a second or foreign language. They also acknowledge that students can be taught to learn the language if they are also taught the strategies that facilitate language acquisition.Only a few researches shows the correlation among thinking style, learning strategy and achievement.Some research shows that learning styles have a significant influence on learners'learning strategy choices. There is evidence that the Judging scale correlates positively with seven sets of learning strategies. Thus it turns out to be the most influential learning style variable affecting learners'learning strategy choices. Compared with low achievers, high achievers are more capable of exercising strategies that are associated with their non-preferred styles. Based on the available research results, it is proposed that learning styles may influence learners'language learning outcomes through their relationship with learning strategies.(邓俊民, 2003;郝玫;付红霞, 2002;秦晓晴,2006)Chapter 3 addresses the research questions, mainly on the research method. Participants are the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students from college of English, Shisu .They use the same Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Style Inventory (1992), Language Strategy Use Survey (2001). Grade 1 students use the final exam paper of Listening and Speaking Course. Grade 2 students use the listening section of TEM4 paper.Chapter 4 shows the results. The analyses of the two paper are given. Structural Equation Model (SEM) made by Lisrel 8.70 and SPSS13.0 for Windows are selected to analyse the data. Descriptive analyses of thinking styles of the total 435 students are shown. The relationships among thinking styles, listening strategy and listening achievement are revealed.In terms of thinking styles, university students tend to be more legislative, executive, hierarchic, external and liberal rather than oligarchic and conservative. Respectively, students tend to be legislative most, judicial least; hierarchic most, oligarchic least. They are more global, external and liberal. The results echoes Zhang Hou-can's conclusion (1999) to the great extent.The characteristics of thinking styles in different grades are examined. The more capable students in Grade 1 tended to score significantly higher on the local thinking style. The less capable students in Grade 1 students tended to score significantly higher on the oligarchic thinking style. While the less capable students in Grade 2 students tended to score significantly higher on the anarchic thinking style.The characteristics of thinking styles of different genders are examined. Male students tended to score significantly higher on the legislative, global and conservative thinking styles. Male students are extremely significan higher on internal thinking styles(p<0.001).Effective listening strategies rank as L2--listen to talk shows on the radio, watch TV shows, or go see movies in the new language; L12--listen for those key words that seem to carry the bulk of the meaning; L18--pay attention to the context of what is being said. Rarely used listening strategies are L8- make an effort to remember unfamiliar sounds I hear, and ask a native speaker later; L3--In a restaurant or store where the staff speak the target language, I usually ask questions in it so I can pratice listening to native-speaker talk.The characteristics of listening strategy of different genders are examined. Male students tended to score significantly higher on the L14---pay attention to where pauses tend to come and how long they last. Female students tended to score significantly higher on the L1---regularly attend out-of-class events where the new language is spoken.Grade 2 students tended to score extremely significantly higher on the L4--encounter people in public having a conversation in the target language, listen to see if I can get the gist of what they are saying. L6--constantly look for associations between the sound of a word or phrase in the new language with the sound of a familiar word. L25--draw on my general background knowledge in an effort to get the main idea (p<0.001). Grade 2 students tended to score significantly higher on the 9--pay special attention to specific aspects of the language; for example, the way the speaker pronounces certain sounds. L15-- pay attention to the rise and fall of speech by native speakers—the"music"of it. L26-- watch speakers'gestures and general body language to help me figure out the meaning of what they are saying (p<0.01). Grade 2 students tended to score significantly higher on the L13-- Listen for word and sentence stress to see what native speakers emphasize when they speak (p<0.05).The associations between listening strategy and listening achievement are obtained. In Grade 1, high achievers tended to score significantly higher on the L8- make an effort to remember unfamiliar sounds I hear, and ask a native speaker later & L11-- sometimes prepare for a guest lecture or special talk I will hear in the target language by reading some background materials beforehand (p<0.05); high achievers tended to score extremely significantly higher on the L14 --pay attention to where pauses tend to come and how long they last(p< 0.001) . In Grade 2, High achievers tended to score significantly higher on the L4--encounter people in public having a conversation in the target language, listen to see if I can get the gist of what they are saying. & L17--make every effort to understand what I have heard without translating it word-for-word into my native language (p<0.05)。Next the correlations between thinking style, listening strategy and listening achievement are identified. No associations are justified between the former two and listening achievement, no Structural Equation Model (SEM) is built up. But SEM has been constructed between thinking style and listening strategy. Use SPSS13.0 to analyse the data. The conclusion is: In Grade 1, Correlation exists among thinking style, listening strategy and listening achievement. In Grade 2, thinking style correlates with listening strategy only.Chapter 5 proceeds to have a discussion on the phenomena obtained in Chapter 4. They are connected with the growth of the students. The cultivation of creative thinking grounded on the thinking style theory is raised. Different correlations between in Grade 1 and Grade 2 can be understood from the perspectives of testing format, authenticity and contextualization of the listening materials, ESL vs EF, etc..Chapter 6 turns to be the ending part. Some problems remains to be explored and solved including matching of thinking styles in teaching, learning and testing, creative thinking styles cultivation. Lastly, the limitations of the research are pointed out.This research focuses on the relationship between Thinking Styles and Listening Strategy, and their associations with Listening Achievement among English majors. The research has integrated psychological study, teaching methodology and testing method. Structural Equation Model (SEM) and SPSS13.0 are selected to analyse the data. The results show that Thinking Styles influence Listening Strategy, Thinking Styles & Listening Strategy may not forecast Listening Achievement. The result of the present study will make contributions to the development and improvement of classroom teaching and testing, the matching of learner's thinking style, learning style and instructor's teaching style. The research also sheds light on the cultivating students' creative abilities.