The Role Of Discourse Cues In Information Grasp For L2 Academic Listening Comprehension

Academic listening comprehension is important for second language learners who are engaged in English academic tasks. However, in spite of the acknowledged importance of academic listening skills, pertinent research indicates that many L2 learners, even those with adequate English language proficiency, have various difficulties comprehending academic lectures. Discourse cues, which are believed to be important for text processing, have been extensively studied in reading comprehension. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the role of discourse cues in listening comprehension, even less was focused specifically on L2 listening comprehension of academic lectures. Moreover, even the few existing studies provide inconsistent support for the beneficial effects of discourse cues on L2 academic listening comprehension. And most of them also fail to present a clear picture of the cues'influence on learners'grasp of different information in the text.Since the findings offered by previous research are in a great discrepancy, it is believed that it is necessary to conduct more studies on discourse cues in academic listening so as to show a clearer picture of the role of discourse cues in listening. In this way, the findings of the present study are supposed to enrich the heavily insufficient data and experimental experience in this field. Furthermore, it is hoped that it could draw more attention and inspire some further studies in the future. On the other hand, the findings obtained in the current one are also hoped to provide authentic evidence and warrant for future reform of pedagogy for teachers'teaching and improvement for students'learning strategies.The present study, which included a quantitative part and a qualitative part, examined the effects of discourse cues in the information grasp of academic lectures. The quantitative part involved 84 Chinese learners of English as a Foreign Language, who minored in English in Beijing Normal University. They were from a variety of academic disciplines and had studied English as a school subject for about 9 years. The qualitative part of the study served as a supplementation, which contained interviews with 8 participants chosen from the 84 ones in the quantitative part. Questions about their subjective opinions of the listening materials, the role of discourse cues, their difficulties in listening and etc were asked and answered.The final findings of the current research showed that discourse cues play an important role in the grasp of high-level information (main ideas and topics); they also play positive role in learners'grasp of the overall information in the text; however, no significant effects have been found for the grasp of low-level information (supporting ideas and details).