An Investigation Into English Listening Comprehension Strategies Of College Non-English Majors

Language is learned for the purpose of communication and listening is the most frequently used mode of human communication. However, it is widely acknowledged that listening comprehension is a complex, active process. Due to the limitation of short-term memory (STM), listeners often resort to various listening comprehension strategies to help them make predictions, judgments and generalizations to achieve comprehension and accomplish tasks.The study of listening comprehension strategies is one of the major concerns in second language acquisition since 1980's and it evolves from the study of language learning strategies. The main purpose of this study is to find out: (1) what are the factors blocking students listening comprehension? (2) What is the relationship between learners'listening strategies and their listening achievement?(3) Is there a combination of listening strategies that can predict comprehension scores? (4) Are there any differences between listeners with high marks and listeners with low marks in the frequency and effectiveness of strategy use?The subjects are 202 Chinese students at Zhejiang Forestry College and 195 students from China University of Petroleum who are all second year non-English majors. The research is conducted in the form of a test and a questionnaire. The SPSS software is selected as a tool to analyze the data. With the output of the calculation the answers of the research questions are acquired.As to the first research question, the results of the questionnaire reveal that the subjects believe that vocabulary is the most important factor affecting their listening efficiency. In addition, practice opportunities, general ability in English, ability to attend and concentrate, the degree of anxiety and confidence, and general knowledge of the world are also regarded as salient factors.As to the second research question, according to the results of correlation, all the three large categories of metacognitive, cognitive, social/affective strategies have significant relationship with their listening scores and 16 out of the 20 items of the listening strategies showed significant relationship with their scores.As to the third research question, the SPSS analysis shows there is the combination of 4 listening strategies that could predict listening scores. According to the equation, the more frequently the subjects use the 4 strategies of the 20 ones, the higher listening scores the subjects could obtain.As to the fourth research question, t-test analysis shows that there are significant differences between students with high marks and students with low marks in the frequency of strategy utilization. Students with high marks use strategies much more frequently than students with low marks do. Also, the correlation results indicate that the former group is better at effectively using more types of strategies than the latter one.The statistical results are of great significance to language teaching.