An Investigation Into Listening Strategies Of English Majors At One Key Chinese Military University

Learning strategies play a very important role in the field of second language acquisition. The research concerned not only helps us get a better understanding of the essence of language learning process and, at the same time, offers many theoretical instruments for teaching various designs and methods and thus, language learners can improve their language learning ability during the learning process. The performance of language learners'employment of learning strategies to accomplish foreign language learning, to great extent, influences their proficiency level of the language. The current thesis is mainly concerned about English listening strategies. Listening is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirements. Therefore, how can language learners make use of listening strategies effectively to improve listening proficiency is a very important topic in second language acquisition field.The theoretical frameworks of listening strategies research both at home and abroad are based on learning strategies researches. Listening strategies are classified into many kinds and the most commonly-accepted one is the classification from O'Malley and Chamot (1990). In accordance with information processing theory, they classify listening comprehension strategies into: Metacognitive strategy, cognitive strategy and social-affective strategy.The earliest foreign language learners are mainly Rubin (1975), Naiman et al. (1978) and Stern (1983), etc. Rubin formally opens up the research of foreign language learning strategy. She mainly observes the good language learners'behaviors and analyzes the employment situation of learning strategies through questionnaire, interview, etc. Domestic foreign language researches are mainly divided into macro researches and micro researches. Macro researches are involved with strategy concept and the correlation between strategy and language proficiency (Wen Qiufang, 1996; Li Jiongying, 2002; etc.) while micro researches are involved with cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy and correlation between proficiency and strategies in vocabulary, listening, writing or reading (Wang Yu, 2002; Su Yuanlian, 2003; Gao Haihong, 2000;etc.). Generally speaking, the research in listening strategy field both at home and abroad has made huge progress. However, there are still great shortages. For example, the researches are mainly concerned with non-English major students. Consequently, there are still great gaps needing our further exploration.The thesis carries out a quantitative research to one key military university in order to find the general situation of learners'listening strategy employment and the correlation between strategy employment and listening achievements. Results of the research will be offered for the reference of the listening teaching activity at this university. The thesis is trying to answer the following three questions:(1) What are the general situations about the subjects'listening comprehension strategies employment?(2) What are the strategies that have a positive correlation with the listening achievements and what are the strategies that have a negative correlation?(3) What are the differences in the selection of listening strategies by the high achievers and low achievers respectively?In order to answer the above questions, the author chooses 28 sophomores majoring in English as the subjects. The research data are divided into two parts. The first part is the subjects'individual information in strategy employment situation through questionnaire, while the other part is the subject's listening achievements based on tests. In accordance with their listening achievements, they are divided into high achievers group and low achievers group. The research gives analysis to the data calculated through software SPSS 14.0. Firstly, the mean score of each variable is figured out through descriptive statistics and their general situation in strategy employment will be analyzed. Then correlation coefficients are calculated to test the correlation between strategy and listening achievements. Lastly, independent sample T-test is applied to analyze the differences between high achievers and low achievers in strategy employment.The results of the study show that most subjects are willing to employ strategies frequently during the listening process, though there are some individual differences. The general correlation coefficients between the subjects'achievements and their choices of listening strategies are low. However, there are still some strategies which have medium correlations with listening achievements and some strategies which have negative correlations at the same time. These positive strategies are not confined to only one strategy category while these negative strategies mainly belong to cognitive strategies and they are respectively translation and transferring. Besides, the main differences between the high achievers and low achievers in the listening strategies employment lie in the following three points: 1) there are more high achievers making use of the listening strategies with a huge frequency. 2) high achievers tend to employ more affective strategies than low achievers. 3) high achievers tend to employ more cognitive strategies than low achievers.The significance of the research lies in that it finds out the English majors'general situation and problems of strategy employment in this military university and offers implications for English teaching activity. The teaching of listening strategy should be integrated into daily listening teaching let students get a proficient mastery of such strategy. At the same time, teachers should help the students realize the differences of high achievers and low achievers in listening strategy employment thus they can understand what strategies are effective and what strategies are not. They should be encouraged to practice effective strategies and avoid ineffective strategies. To sum up, teachers should consciously try to improve students'strategy employment ability and thus finally help them to enhance their listening proficiency.