| Listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which individual listeners focus on selective aspects of aural input, construct meaning from context, and relate what they hear to existing linguistic knowledge, background knowledge and life experiences. It is considered to be one of the most difficult skills in English learning. But we may find though many students can get good marks in English tests, not all of them can perform well in listening and speaking. One of the reasons is that they lack effective learning strategies. Effective learning strategies are the precondition and assurance of improving the learning efficiency and developing learner autonomy.This thesis mainly analyzes the listening obstacles that the rural high school students in Nanning , the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, confront and discusses how to develop effective listening strategies to improve the ability of listening comprehension. The thesis consists of six parts:Part I is a brief introduction to the purpose and the structure of this study.Part II is a literature review looking back upon the current researches on listening strategies at home and abroad. These researches make descriptions of listening strategies, and some even provide specific listening strategies. The many outcomes also show that applying effective listening strategies to conduct listening can contribute to more successful listening comprehension. However, most of these researches are intended for urban middle school students. Researches into rural high school students'listening strategies are few and they are not so comprehensive at all. What's more, researches into listening strategies for the rural high school students of Zhuang minority in Guangxi are even fewer. Hence the author writes this thesis hoping to fill the gap.Part III focuses on the theory on which this study is based, introducing the nature of listening, the process of listening comprehension, factors that affect listening comprehension, and some definitions and classifications of foreign language learning strategies, especially Oxford's(1990)and O'Malley & Chamot's(1990)strategy classifications.Part IV investigates the rural high school students'listening obstacles and their application of listening strategies, and the data are analyzed. Most of the students are mainly from poor rural areas of Nanning. There is a gap between them and urban students in English listening. Through the investigation, the author finds the main listening obstacles that the students encounter are: limited vocabulary, disturbance of local dialect, poor pronunciation, lack of background knowledge and life experiences, and lack of effective listening strategies. While of all the obstacles, lack of effective listening strategies to conduct listening is the chief problem. Though the rural high school students have certain sense of listening strategies and master some of them, they still need to be instructed and trained to use effective listening strategies.Part V is the main part of this thesis. It first explores student's role and teacher's role in the process of listening comprehension, because learning is an interactive process involving student's"learning"and teacher's"teaching". As a student, first, he must be an active participant but not a passive receiver to take part in the listening activities; second, he should understand the nature of listening comprehension, understand that the purpose of listening comprehension is to catch the speaker's real meaning, or the key point of the material, but not to keep down the meaning of every word; third, he should understand there are differences between individuals, not all strategies suit him, and he should select strategies suitable for himself. As a teacher, he should understand his role as an"instructor"in the teaching of listening, make effort to perfect his teaching, learn to think, feel, and teach reflectively, help students to develop effective listening strategies, and build a good listening circumstance for his students. Then from four aspects: cognition, metacognition, affect and communication, the author offers some listening strategies based on Oxford's (1990) and O'Malley & Chamot's (1990) strategy classifications for the rural high school students in Nanning, combining the result of the investigation with the author's many years of teaching practice and experience. In cognitive strategies, as the rural high school students'life experiences and background knowledge are usually narrower than urban students, they should make full use of the existing schemata, utilize school's learning facilities to fill the gap between them and urban students. At the same time, students should improve their pronunciation, diminish the disturbance of local dialect, enlarge vocabulary, and listen intensively and extensively. In the process of listening intensively, students can practice the listening skills such as taking notes, predicting, inferencing, and so on; while listening extensively, they can enrich the listening contents and get familiar with different accents. In metacognitive strategies, students should set clear and practical goals, work out plans by stages, find suitable learning methods, ask for help when necessary, actively take part in in-and-out-of-class activities, make self-evaluation and sum up learning methods. In affective strategies, students should consciously develop the interest in English learning, activate learning motivation, overcome anxiety, and avoid negative emotions. In social/communication strategies, students should seize the opportunities to communicate in English so as to improve their listening and speaking, be bold and confident, overcome language obstacles and maintain communication.Part VI is a conclusion, summarizing what has been discussed and pointing out the defects of the current study.The thesis aims to arouse the rural high school students'awareness of listening strategies, give them a perceptual knowledge of listening strategies, improve their learning methods, activate their learning motivation, help them to use listening strategies effectively, and develop learner autonomy. Besides, this study shows immediate significance to perfecting the learning of English listening in the minority-inhabited areas, and narrowing the gap between urban high school students and rural high school students.
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