Empirical Study On The Training Of Listening Strategies

The study of the learner's strategy plays a very important role in ESL/EFL. Its achievements not only make the teachers and researchers better understand the nature of language and language learning process but also help them gain insight in the design of teaching syllabus and the improvement in pedagogy. It is believed that learning strategies can be taught and trained. The task of language teachers includes not only teaching the language but also teaching the knowledge to learn languages. Learning strategy is one of the important knowledge to make language learning process and language use much easier and smoother.It was not until 1970s that the study of language learning strategies had been paid attention to. Cohen (1998) divides the strategies into two classes according to the purpose of applying the strategies: the language learning strategies and language use strategies. Oxford (1990) believes that there are two kinds of strategies in accordance with the relationship between language and the language learning process: the direct strategies and the indirect strategies. O'Malley and Chamot (1990) divide the strategies into three categories based on the information processing theories. They are the cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and social/affective strategies.In China, the study and the research of language learning and language use strategies started in 1980s. Wen Qiufang investigated 400 2nd year college English majors about the application of learning strategies through questionnaire inventory and interviews in 1990. She finds that strategies vary from student to student, and there is definitely certain relationship between the application of strategies and the test results. She believes that strategy training is very useful in language learning process; it makes learning more meaningful and efficient. Zhou Qijia (2000) has conducted an investigation on the influence of learning strategies on English listening comprehension and he finds out that the effect is obvious. Wang Yu (2002) has investigated 178 non-English majors. From the experiment, he concludes that the application of strategies between effective learners and ineffective learners tends to be different, and listening strategies can have a positive effect on listening outcome but only to a limited degree. There are still many others who have conducted investigations on learning strategy and techniques. Nevertheless, the research of ESL/EFL, especially the one of the strategy training is still comparatively retarded.The experiment in this paper centers on the training of certain listening strategies in the college students'listening course. Beginning with the questionnaire on the students'listening strategy, the experiment involves training and instructing the subjects in grasping and applying listening strategies in their study. By integrating listening strategy training with strategy-based instruction, the experiment aims to test the feasibility of new methods in teaching listening comprehension. The concrete steps are as the following: first, to investigate the students'awareness and application of listening strategies through questionnaires; second, to sum up the top ten and bottom ten listening strategies used by the students and analyze them in order to make use of the results in the following strategy-based instruction; third, to...