An Empirical Investigation Into Listening Comprehension Strategies Use Of Non-English Major College Students

In recent years, scholars have highlighted the importance of listening comprehension in college English teaching. Listening instruction is experiencing a great change from simply providing learners with opportunities to practice to teaching listening comprehension strategies. In accordance with this change, the present study attempts to explore learners' strategic knowledge of listening and listening strategies. Specific interest is also paid to the possible differences of strategies use between efficient listeners and less efficient ones, and whether different major students may use different listening comprehension strategies to facilitate their listening comprehension. The participants in this present study are 162 non-English major sophomore students in Shandong University at Weihai. In order to prove that major could be a decisive factor in choosing listening comprehension strategies, the author intentionally chose the 162 students from four different majors: Business Administration, Executive Administration, Mathematics and Information Engineering. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire which was processed by SPSS 13.0 and reports of interviews with 8 participants, 4 efficient listeners and 4 less efficient listeners. Detailed analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative data has generated the following findings:1. Vocabulary, practice opportunity and general ability were selected by a large part of participants as the top three important factors which affecting their listening comprehension.2. The use of metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies all had significant relationship with the listening achievements of students (though varied in some degree). They all cast positive influence in enhancing the overall development of students' listening ability.3. Efficient listeners and less efficient listeners exhibited differences in their listening comprehension strategic knowledge and the strategies they adopted. Efficient listeners were more confident and they could use the listening comprehension strategies more effectively and more frequently than less efficient peers. 4. There were some differences in using listening comprehension strategies between Liberal Arts students and their Natural Science peers. Generally speaking, the students of Liberal Arts majors tended to employ strategies like self-management, elaboration, etc. more frequently than Natural Science students. On the other hand, Natural Science students were more likely to use the strategies like translation and cooperation, etc. more frequently.In light of the above findings, this study suggests that listening strategies instruction should not only focus on teaching the students listening skills, but also aim at promoting students' awareness in using listening comprehension strategies, enhancing metacognitive strategies training and bridging the gap between students' strategic knowledge and strategies use. Finally, when conducting the strategies training, the instructors should also take the characteristics of majors into consideration.