An Investigation Of Learning Strategies For Listening Comprehension That Chinese Non-English Majors Employ

The present thesis is concerned with non-English majors' learning strategies for improving their listening comprehension in their individual study . It focuses on whether there is a correlation between the use of some learning strategies and listening achievement. It explores some learning strategies which have a positive effect on listening comprehension. This thesis includes the following parts.Chapter one is a retrospection of the research on listening strategies. Most of the western researchers have attached great significance to listening strategies during the listening process. They held that an awareness and deployment of listening comprehension strategies during the listening process could help students facilitate listening comprehension. However, some researchers held different views. Wang Churning' s study suggested that the poor knowledge of pronunciation prevented the ineffective listener from understanding the passage. Employing the listening strategies while-listening did not help the ineffective listener get the better understanding of the listening material. Wang Yu' s study also suggested that listening strategies during the listening process did not correlate significantly with listening achievement. I conclude that studying the strategies learners use during the listening process affords only limited information about how to aid learners to improve their listening comprehension. It is more important to give attention to what the learners do in their individual study.Chapter two presents theoretical insights into listening process and learning strategies. Anderson (1983, 1985) differentiates comprehension into three processes: perpetual processing, parsing, and utilization. The detailed interpretation of the three components or stages of listening comprehension illustrates that listening comprehension is a complex active process. For sucha complicated and demanding process, listeners must have a good command of linguistic knowledge and background knowledge. It is obviously insufficient for researchers to only focus on the strategies learners use during the listening process. It is necessary for teachers to be fully aware of what learning strategies non-English majors employ to facilitate their listening comprehension.The second section of this chapter presents the relationship between learning strategies and language learning. Early researchers tended to make lists of strategies and other features presumed to be essential for all "good language learners" . Later, A number of studies have sought to examine whether there are specific strategies that are statistically related to second/foreign language proficiency. The results obtained by these studies are not always clear. In addition, a number of specific strategies for learning vocabulary, improving oral ability and reading comprehension have been identified. However, the number of studies in listening comprehension is relatively small, and the research base for listening strategies is even more limited (Rubin 1994).Chapter three deals with non-English majors' problems with listening. The students mainly have two problems: linguistic problems and non-linguistic problems. Linguistic problems include vocabulary, syntactic and phonetic problems. Non-linguistic problems refer to lack of background knowledge and lack of practice opportunities in class. To solve these problems, they have to put aside many hours for practice after class. To some extent, the acquisition of linguistic knowledge and background knowledge is largely dependent on their own effort. It is necessary for teachers to figure out how students cope with their language learning problems and to find out whether there is a correlation between certain learning strategy preferences and their performance in listening comprehension.Chapter four expounds the general classification model of this study. First, the frameworks of 0' Malley et Chamot and Oxford are presented. Although the two frameworks are favored by many western researchers, I find that Wen Qiufang' s framework is more reasonable.