A Study Of Metacognitive Strategy Use In Listening By Chinese Vocational College Students

This thesis is to find out what metacognitive strategies vocational college students employ in EFL listening process. Three research questions explored in the study include: (1) What are the common metacognitive strategies adopted by EFL listeners when they listen? (2) Is the employment of metacognitive listening strategies related to better comprehension? (3) What factors may affect the use of metacognitive listening strategies by EFL learners?The present study adopts multi-methods to analyze EFL listeners' performance, by which listeners' metacognitive listening strategies are identified from questionnaire, retrospective verbalization and interview. All data is operated on the computer by SPSS and analyzed based on the categories of metacognitive strategies from Vandergrift(1997). Participants are 129 vocational college students from the department of foreign language.Main conclusions are made based on the findings of this study. Firstly, the top three metacognitive listening strategies frequently used are Attention, Identification, and Monitoring respectively. Secondly, research also shows that metacognitive strategies have a positive influence on English listening comprehension. Furthermore, it is found that the number of years of learning English, learning experience and beliefs contributed to the participants' use of metacognitive listening strategy. The results of the study present some implications for teaching and learning.