An Empirical Study Of Listening Strategy Training Of Art

As an important part of research on language learning strategy, the effectiveness of the listening strategy training has received extensive attention from language researchers all around the world. Research conducted on different objects has provided evidence that listening strategy training is an effective measure to improve one's listening competence; however, very little such training has been done with art students. Therefore, this empirical study tries to examine the effectiveness of the listening strategy training of art students.On the base of the nature of listening, the learning strategy theories concerned and the results of the former experimental studies, a two-term experiment was performed in two intact classes from the Institute of Art. These two classes, with 52 students for each class, served as the experimental and control group respectively. The experimental group was provided with the listening strategy training while the control group received the traditional instruction. Questionnaires were used to survey the art students'listening obstacles and their use of the listening strategy before and after the training and tests were administrated to examine the effect of the training. All the initial data were analyzed via SPSS.At the beginning of the first term, the two groups completed the listening obstacle questionnaire; in addition, the experimental group was asked to finish the listening strategy use questionnaire. Based on the results of the questionnaire, training was designed and delivered accordingly. During the first semester, a variety of strategies were instructed to the experimental group, which included planning, self-management, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, predicting, selective attention, directed attention, vocabulary, note-taking, keyword, inferencing, elaboration, questioning, cooperation and mood controlling. During the second semester, the complex training was carried out. Tests were given to both groups before, during and after the training. At the end of the training, the listening strategy use questionnaire was given to the experimental group again to survey the change in strategy use.The correlative analyses of the questionnaires survey and the performance of the three tests showed the following results. First, the listening obstacles of art students mainly lied within the deficit of one's own knowledge, the difference of one's own listening skills, the influence of the psychological factors and the restriction of objective condition. Second, the listening strategy training helped the students remove these obstacles. Third, the listening strategy contributed to the improvement of the listening comprehension of the art students. Fourth, meta-cognitive strategy training played a key role in the improvement of their listening comprehension. Fifth, the art students used the social and emotional strategy well. Sixth, there was obvious effect among the high-score group and the effect among low-score group was unsatisfactory; with regard to the use frequency, after training the metacognitive strategies finished the first, the social/affective strategies the second and the cognitive strategies the third.The findings proved that the systematic listening strategy training was effective. It could help art students know, understand, master and use the listening strategy and it was feasible and effectual to incorporate the strategy training in the normal foreign language classroom instruction. In the future, the teacher should give full play the act of guide and inspirer, impart the students the application knowledge of listening strategy, consolidate the student's acquired strategy competence, inspire the student's awareness of strategy use as well as respect students' individual differences.