Study Of The Cultivation Of Listening Strategies For Non-English Major Postgraduates

During last several decades, there has been a steadily growing interest considering thetask of language learning from the learner's point of view and in changing the focus of the classroom from a teacher-centered one to a learner-centered one. In particular, there is growing interest in defining how learners can take charge of their own learning and in clarifying how teachers can help students become more autonomous. Inherent in this shift in focus is also a shift in the responsibilities of both teachers and students in the foreign language classroom. No longer does the teacher act as the focus of all instruction, controlling every aspect of the learning process. Rather the learners themselves now, more than ever, are sharing the responsibilities for successful language acquisition and in doing so, are becoming less dependent on the language teachers for meeting their own individual language learning need. Learners are being encouraged to "learn how to learn" and "learn to use" a foreign language in a variety of communicative setting around the world. At the same time, language-learning strategy theory has become increasingly mature in the years. The learning strategy theory assumes that some of students' success in language learning can be attributed to particular sets of cognitive and metacognitive behaviors that enable them to be successful. Research into learner strategies assumes that both explicit and implicit knowledge of learning strategies can contribute to learning and making learning decisions conscious can lead both poorer and better learners to improve the obtaining, retrieving and using of the information, that is can lead them to better learning. Many researches done in strategy training seem to prove training in learning strategies is the facilitator of learners' autonomy.This thesis reports a strategy-based training program carried out with some postgraduates of Lanzhou University of Technology. By explicitly training students learning strategies, especially listening strategies in ten weeks, 40 hours, the program tries to teach the students knowledge of learning strategies, especially listening strategies and train them to use the strategies in different communicative situations to improve their listening abilities and test skill for listening comprehension. The whole thesis includes five chapters. Chapter! is the general introduction to the study. In this part, the author stresses students' listening difficulties and various causes for them. The author strongly believes strategy-based training can be an effective way to improve students' listening abilities. In the second chapter, the author narrates the theoretical assumption, research history and typology of learning strategies and emphasized the importance ofthis study. It is a meaningful study of learning strategy because it focuses on postgraduates and it is a cultivation of specific language skill. Through the program, it was found out: 1. Fresh postgraduates have a low consciousness of learning strategies, except for some skills for learning vocabularies and reading texts.2.Overt learning strategy training is both effective in increasing students' strategy awareness and learning autonomy.3.There are statistical differences of strategy employment between the top students and the lower score students. The author hopes more and more English teachers can do the strategy training to greatly improve learning efficiency.