The Study Of Listening Strategies For College Non-English Majors

In the past twenty years, teachers and scholars have gradually understood the importance of listening comprehension and the significant role it plays in language learning and communication. Since the 1970s, researches and theories in language acquisition have shifted from examining the methods of teaching to investigating the processes of learning, and increasing numbers of studies have been undertaken from the learners'perspective. The correlative researches abroad have shown that metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies which are advocated by O'Malley & Chamot (1990) are the three main aspects of listening strategies.In order to explore what listening strategies should be developed and how to train these strategies, an investigation about listening strategies used by college non-English majors is undertaken.The results of this investigation are presented. In listening activities, as a whole, the subjects of this investigation do employ listening strategies to help them improve listening ability. In this investigation female listeners use overall listening strategies in listening activities more often than male ones, but the differences of the use of total strategies are not statistically significant. Good listeners of this investigation tend to use all the three major listening strategies more frequently in listening activities than poor ones.Based on the major findings, suggestions are made that listeners should have a comprehensive system of knowledge about listening tasks and listening strategies. Besides, the limitations of the investigation and the areas for further research on listening strategies are also proposed.