A Study On Teaching College English Listening Strategies In Autonomous Learning Environment

Autonomy is taken as a new learning concept originating from theories of humanistic psycholinguistics and cognitive psycholinguistics. It tends to become a significant topic in the field of educational psychology. In addition, Western educationists maintain that building on students'autonomous abilities is considered as the ultimate goal of education. Autonomy is defined as the ability to control and manage learners'learning process. Compared with traditional teaching approach, learners involved in a self-access listening center are required to actively accomplish learning tasks and demands based on their individual differences and their own abilities. Thus, making use of learning strategies effectively plays a very important role in the process of fostering students'autonomous learning abilities.Listening comprehension is referred to as one of the most significant part involved in the process of language acquisition from the perspective of language acquisition. It is not only the basic pattern of human being's information exchange, but also the prerequisite of the other three language skills. With regard to listening comprehension essence, based on Anderson's cognitive theories, listening comprehension process can be differentiated into three phases: perceptual processing, parsing, and utilization. The processes are recursive because shifts may occur from one process to the next and then back to the previous process. Anderson's (1988) listening model provides a powerful base for listening strategies researches. Language acquisition stems from a great amount of comprehensible input that the self-access learning center is able to offer learners. Moreover, students who are provided with strategy training learn to appropriately apply these strategies to listening comprehension, which is taken as one of the most crucial factors in the process of language acquisition.Since 1970s, with the rise of the autonomous studies, linguists have set out to study language strategies. Learning strategies are significant factors that facilitate autonomy. Moreover, autonomy development has a close linkage with strategies. Oxford's (1990) studies towards taxonomy of learning strategies are considered relatively more complete. She classifies learning strategies into six categories. The system includes direct and indirect strategies. Direct strategies encompass memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and compensatory strategies. Indirect strategies entail metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies. These six strategies interact with each other and the use of one strategy may support the development of the other five.The paper is concerned with an empirical study on listening strategies in a self-access listening center. The primary purposes of this study are to identify the range of students'strategy use, to determine correlation between listening strategies and listening scores, to investigate strategy use differences among different levels of students in a self-access listening center, and to further compare and contrast differences of listening strategy use between effective and ineffective listeners in three phases of listening comprehension. The experiment deploys qualitative as well as quantitative approaches. By conducting the listening tests, questionnaire and interview, 75 non-English major freshmen of Shenyang Normal College are engaged in the empirical study. The results of T-test illustrate that the students'listening scores of the experimental class have priority over those of the ordinary class. The analysis also shows that the students in the experimental class employ listening strategies more frequently and profoundly than those in the ordinary class. The results imply that strategy training and a self-access listening center motivate students to employ listening strategies and thus promote their listening achievements. Subsequently, Pearson correlation analyses demonstrate that memory strategies, compensatory strategies, cognitive strategies and metacognitve strategies achieve statistically significant positive correlations with listening achievements whereas affective strategies have a significant negative relation with listening scores . Finally, the researcher compares and contrasts the range of strategy use between effective and ineffective listeners in the three phases of listening comprehension. The fact that effective listeners use listening strategies more successfully than ineffective listeners implies that the less successful students may need assistance to become more strategic learners. Due to the characteristics of a self-access listening center, teachers play a facilitative role in the entire classroom activities. Listening strategies employed in a self-access listening center are far more significant than those used in the traditional classroom. The empirical study illustrates that except affective strategies, the other five strategies inspire students to build on autonomy as well as get more achievements.