On The Effect Of Strategy Instruction On EFL Learners' Autonomy And Listening Proficiency

With the development of humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics, learner autonomy, learning strategies and strategy instruction have attracted much attention in second language teaching and researching. The present study is based on the theories and researches of learner autonomy, learning strategies and strategy instruction. It aims to prove the effect of strategy instruction on the promotion of learners'autonomy and language proficiency, to be specific, the listening proficiency. 56 non-English-major freshmen from two classes in Chongqing University have participated in the present study, with one being the experiment group, and the other, the control group. Both groups of students have experienced autonomous learning listening in a self-access center. Prior to the experiment, a preliminary investigation into learners'strategy use is conducted on the participants through a self-designed 40-item questionnaire. Two listening comprehension tests randomly selected from CET-4 are used to assess students'listening proficiency both before and after the experiment. A strategies-based instruction is adopted as a means to raise learners'awareness of strategy use, to develop and apply new listening strategies. And learners'learning diaries are used as instruments for observing learners'autonomous learning and strategy use. After the instruction is finished, the questionnaire previously used is administered on the experiment group to find whether there exists improvement on strategy use which might influence learners'listening proficiency. And the following findings have been generated from the present study: (1) Strategy instruction has significant effect on promoting students'autonomy in their learning listening; (2) Strategy instruction has significant effect on improving students'use of strategy and on their listening proficiency. Such findings provide practical implications for Chinese college English teaching. That is, in order to help learners to be more autonomous and more proficient in their learning, teachers should take the responsibility of instructing learners to learn and apply the learning strategies.