A Study Of Cultivation Of Listening Strategies In College English

Listening is playing a fundamental role in foreign language learning. At present, listening learning, especially listening strategies learning is always ignored by both middle school students and college students, which results in lower listening ability in English learning. Recently, the listening comprehension part in various English proficiency tests is highlighted, so the cultivation of listening ability gets concerned by more and more English teachers and learners.Therefore, the ultimate purpose of the present study is how to improve listening ability of English learners. With the guidance of Brown's language curriculum design theory and Oxford's eight-step stages training model, the present study plan to investigate 176 non-English majors of Xihua University with two questionnaires and two tests, aiming to find out: (1) the main factors confronting the non-English majors in listening comprehension; (2) the frequency of listening strategies use by non-English majors; (3) the effectiveness of the listening strategy-based instruction. By analyzing the two questionnaires, the results are: (1) the main factors are limited vocabulary quantity, poor memory, taking-notes slowly, distracted attention, lack of necessary listening learning strategies and skills, aimlessness in listening learning and practice, lack of knowledge about pronunciation and cultural background, and so on. (2) the frequency of overall listening learning strategies is at a medium level, that is, sometimes used. The high frequency of specific strategy is list as following: overviewing and linking with already known material, self-managing, selective attention, translating, and the like.Basing on the results of the above survey and the relevant teaching objectives and planning, through the listening strategy-based classroom instruction training model, the author try to verify whether the present research and practice will bring about better effectiveness than that was expected or not. The research was designed to select two classes, which were at the same level in listening ability, to be the control and experimental group after pre-test. Then the experimental group received listening strategy-based classroom instruction training, while the control group received traditional listening teaching approach. It took one semester for two groups to receive listening learning, and then they carried out the post-test. According to the performance of two groups in the post-test, all the data were analyzed by SPSS16.0 and indicated that both traditional listening teaching method and listening strategy-based instruction training model have a good effect on listening performance, but the latter is more effective than the former.In conclusion, the present study provided a trial example for college English listening teaching and learning, and have a great significance to the future study. For a more effective teaching achievement, college teacher should take the college students'listening problems and the frequency of listening strategies into consideration, and then make an appropriate and relevant training plan combined with listening course.