A Study Of English Majors' Metacognitive Knowledge And Learning Strategy Use In Listening

Listening is a very important skill that every English learner should be equipped with.With the development and opening-up of China,it becomes more and more important for the successful communication.At present,the study of listening strategies provides some insight to listening learning and teaching.The metacognition theory shows another perspective for listening.However,little is known about the role of metacognitive knowledge in the choice and use of listening strategies.Therefore,it has practical significance to investigate listeners' metacognitive knowledge and explore its relationship with strategy use.This study investigates metacognitive knowledge and learning strategy use in listening.The participants are 100 sophomores in English department.It uses both the quantitative method and the qualitative method to conduct the research.Instruments consist of two questionnaires,two listening tests and an interview.The purpose of the study is to 1) find out the metacognitive knowledge held by listeners and their use of listening strategies,2) examine differences between successful and unsuccessful listeners in terms of metacognitive knowledge and learning strategy use and 3) explore the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and learning strategy use in listening.The results show that students have rich metacognitive knowledge in listening and they use listening strategies at a high level.Among three categories of metacognitive knowledge,task knowledge gets the highest mean,followed by person knowledge and strategy knowledge ranks the lowest.For three categories of learning strategy use,listeners use cognitive strategies most frequently.The use of metacognitive strategies is at the medium level and social/affective strategies are used least frequently.As far as the second research question is concerned,there are some significant differences in some aspects of metacognitive knowledge they hold about listening and strategy use between successful and unsuccessful listeners.For the metacognitive knowledge,differences exist in the awareness of the task demand and the knowledge about cognitive strategies.For learning strategies,differences lie in the use of directed attention,elaboration and self-talk.Specifically, eight aspects in metacognitive knowledge and eleven listening strategies differentiate successful listeners from unsuccessful ones.For the third research question,results show that the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and learning strategy use is significant and reciprocal.Learners' metacognitive knowledge may influence their choice and application of listening strategies.Also,the effective use of listening strategies tends to help listeners reflect upon and refine their metacognitive knowledge about listening. Based on the results,some suggestions are made.Teachers should attempt to enrich listeners' metacognitive knowledge,which can be realized by encouraging students to use the ways of pre-listening activity,verbal report during listening and writing web-blogs after class. They can also offer strategy training in listening by integrating the influential factor of motivation into it.