The Effect Of EFL Students' Listening Styles On Their Text Listening Comprehension Performance

It is generally recognized that listening plays a significant role in language learning. Its important role in teaching and learning English as a second language can never be undermined. While, compared to the studies conducted on the multi-variables that account for the students'listening comprehension such as language aptitude, anxiety and motivation etc., relatively few studies have been conducted on learning styles. The results of researches investigating the relationship between learning styles and language learning performance are not in consistency, and few studies have ever investigate the specific language learning style. The effects of listening styles on the students'listening comprehension performance are blank. Moreover, to have a clear picture concerning students'listening styles and their effect on listening comprehension performance will certainly provide teachers with some insight and guidance in their future teaching.This study is designed to investigate the listening styles students adopt and their text listening comprehension performance, the relationship between students'listening styles and their text listening comprehension performance is also discussed by answering the following four research questions: 1) While listening to texts, what are the types of listening styles used by the students? Are there any differences among the students with different language proficiency levels? 2) What are the levels of listening comprehension performance in relation to global question and local question of the students? Are there any differences among the students with different language proficiency levels? 3) Do different listening styles have different effects on the listening comprehension performance? 4) Do different listening styles have different effects on the listening comprehension performance in relation to the global question and local question? The information about the subjects'listening styles were collected through the self-report (Appendix II, III, IV for three different language proficiency levels) and interview, and the information about the students'text listening comprehension performance collected by two tests (Appendix V, VI) for all the subjects. The subjects of this study are 151 (61 females and 90males) freshmen from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, they were divided into three different language proficiency levels.The results of the study indicated that the analytic style is the most prevalent style, synthetic style is the second prevalent; and one third of the students were showing global style, meanwhile it was found that the students with higher language proficiency have more tendency of having the synthetic listening style. The analysis of the test revealed that in the text listening comprehension performance, these non-English majors are moderate at both levels of getting the answers to global questions of the text and the local questions, and the students'text listening comprehension is affected by their language proficiency. Furthermore, the results also revealed that there is close relationship between the listening styles and text listening comprehension performance; the synthetic listeners have statistically significant higher performance than both analytic listeners and global listeners, and the global listeners have a relative better performance on the global questions than the analytic listeners, while the analytic listeners performed better than the global listeners on getting the answer to local questions. It is suggested teachers should be aware of the students'different listening styles and change their teaching method to suit the learners'needs better, learner training should be provided so as to help them to become autonomous in their listening, to be aware of their own listening style and strategies.