An Empirical Study On Language Self-efficacy And Listening Comprehension Strategies Of Non-English Majors In EFL Context

This thesis aimed at analyzing the effects of non-English major learners" language self-efficacy and listening strategies on their academic achievements so as to enlighten teachers and educators to probe better conception and ways to English teaching.After a brief literature review,the present study draws two hypotheses on the basis of the two questionnaires:language self-efficacy and listening strategies questionnaires.H1.There is significant correlation among language self-efficacy,listening strategies and academic achievements.H2.The correlation between language self-efficacy and language learning is higher than that of listening strategies.In order to test these hypotheses,this study collected and analyzed the scores on listening test from 87 non-English majors of third-year learners.The data was analyzed by statistical software SPSS(13.0).The procedures of statistical analysis were:first,descriptive statistical analysis was conducted to describe listening comprehension scores.Second,Pearson correlation analysis was carried out to test the correlation between academic achievements,Language self-efficacy and listening strategies.Third,One-way analysis of Variance(ANOVA) procedures were conducted to confirm whether there exists significant difference in means on different academic achievements levels of learners.Forth,two-way analysis of variance(ANOVA) was done to test the effect on academic achievements of the two independent variables,how many strategies used and language self-efficacy;at the other hand,ANOVA was employed again to test the effect on academic achievements of another two independent variables,different levels of self-efficacy and listening strategies use.Finally,independent samples T-test was used to compare whether exist gender difference in language self-efficacy and listening strategies use.The final analysis comes to the following conclusions:1.Almost all the learners consider listening comprehension is significantly important in English learning.However,their efforts have not reached their goal because of the lack of strategy use,the perceived self-efficacy and other factors such as,language aptitude,learning tasks,motivation,and individual differences.2.Chinese learners' language self-efficacy is positively correlated with their academic achievements.Especially,the factor perceived capability;the Person correlation coefficient is.42, which is significant at.01 levels(two-tailed).For different levels of learners,learners with better perceived language self-efficacy usually have better academic achievements3.Chinese learners' listening strategies is positively correlated with their academic achievements.Especially,the factor Social/Affective Strategies,the Person correlation coefficient is.27,which is significant at.05 levels(two-tailed).Mother-tongue-reliance Strategies is the least significant(P＞0.05).4.Both T-test of gender on Listening strategies and language self-efficacy show that the differences in listening strategies based on gender failed to reach significance level(P＞0.05).So the present study did not analyze gender factor.5.Learners' language self-efficacy and listening strategies are positively correlated with each other.The Person correlation coefficient is.97,which is significant at.01 levels(two-tailed). Hypothesis 1 is partly upheld.6.Comparing the two factors influencing language learning,language self-efficacy has higher prediction(The Person correlation coefficient is.37 which is significant at.01 levels(two-tailed) than listening strategies(The Person correlation coefficient is.21,which is significant at.05levels (two-tailed) to academic achievements.Higher level learners have better perceived language self-efficacy(The Person correlation coefficient is.36,which is significant at.01 levels(two-tailed), while listening strategies(The Person correlation coefficient is.27,which is significant at.05 levels (two-tailed).Hypothesis 2 is upheld.7.There exists inner correlation both in language self-efficacy and listening strategies.Based on this research,several suggestions are pointed out for teachers in English:First,the learners' language self-efficacy should be reinforced.Second,it is important to reinforce learners' language self-efficacy and train them to be more proficient in applying and mastering listening strategies.Third,more attention needs to be paid to the social affective emotion.Fourth,it is necessary to bring up learners' basic competence for language learning.