Astudy On English Listening Teaching Of Non-English Majors In Higher Vocational Colleges

The ability of listening comprehension is always regarded as the most difficult skill to acquire in second language acquisition, and listening comprehension ability can actually reflect students'practical ability of language application. Thus, as an important part of English teaching, listening teaching is directly related to students'ability of mastering and using language knowledge. However, for years, English listening teaching in higher vocational colleges has followed the traditional teacher-centered mode. In listening class, teachers tend to complete their teaching schedule by playing the tape and checking answers over and over again. The fact is that they pay little attention to helping students get into a good habit of listening and develop the effective listening strategies. Therefore, as an English teacher in vocational college, the author of the present study is committed to exploring how to enable the students master proper learning strategies so as to develop their ability of autonomous learning and enhance their listening comprehension.As the most important branch of learning strategies, meta-cognitive strategies attracted the attention of many scholars. Meta-cognitive strategies involve thinking about the mental processes used in learning process, monitoring learning while it is taking place, and evaluating learning after it has occurred. Although many scholars have already realized that the use of meta-cognitive strategies makes learning more purposeful, there is still not enough research on combining meta-cognitive strategies with listening teaching to promote the learning. Based on the reality that students in higher vocational college lack the solid foundation in English learning, the author conducted a one-semester training of meta-cognitive strategies among sophomores of non-English majors. The study aims to explore how to help students properly understand and use meta-cognitive strategies in English listening so that their awareness and ability of autonomous learning can be improved and their proficiency of listening comprehension can be promoted accordingly.This research was carried out among 69 sophomores of non-English majors of Shandong Vocational College of Finance. 33 of them were in the experimental class and 36 were in the control class. Students of the experimental class received the training of meta-cognitive strategies, while students of the control class went on with the traditional way of learning. This program focused mainly on the following meta-cognitive strategies: target setting, planning, monitoring and evaluation. The data were collected from the listening comprehension test taken by the students of two groups in two times and the questionnaires about meta-cognitive strategies and learner autonomy. First, the questionnaires were conducted to investigate learners'meta-cognitive awareness in the listening, and then followed the same listening comprehension test at the same time. At the end of the one-semester program, the two groups received the re-test on their listening comprehension by the use of questionnaires, test and interview. The data were processed through SPSS 10.0. Independent-samples T-test and Paired-samples T-test were performed to assess how effective the training of meta-cognitive strategies was. The results of this study indicate that learners who received the training make a lot of progress in their listening comprehension, and the employment of meta-cognitive strategies can effectively improve their level of English listening. Meanwhile, the training enables students to develop a correct awareness of learning strategies and automatically apply it into their learning. Therefore, the study holds that English listening teaching mode based on meta-cognitive strategies has a positive effect on improving the listening comprehension of non-English majors in higher vocational colleges.