An Effect Of English Proficiency And Gender On High School Students' Use Of English Listening Strategies

In recent years, research on learning strategies has become the new domain in the area of the second language acquisition (SAL). Of all the research in this area, listening comprehension strategies have attracted researchers'special attention. Listening is one of four basic language skills. However, most of these studies were conducted either in Western countries or in Chinese universities, and there is little research on the listening strategies use of middle school students, especial those in little counties. Therefore, more empirical researches and investigations are needed to examine listening strategy use by this group of students.This study was conducted in two intact parallel classes in grade three in the first middle school of Chongren, Jiangxi Province. Altogether there were 90 students. The study starts by reviewing literature on language learning strategies at home and abroad, and then tries to look back at relevant studies on listening strategies in this area. It aims to explore: 1) the general pattern of listening strategy use by high school students;2) the effect of proficient level on listening strategy use; 3) the effect of gender on listening choice.Several instruments were used in the present study: questionnaire, English proficiency test and interview. The questionnaire is composed of 13 listening strategies. The second instrument is an English listening test. In addition, interview was employed here to provide future explanations and support for the quantitative findings. With the help of SPSS 13.0, the descriptive data were conducted and Independent Sample T test was employed to analyze the collected data.The results indicate the following findings: (1) Chinese high school students were medium listening strategies users. They used a variety of meta-cognitive strategy and cognitive strategy strategies, but seldom adopt the social-affective strategy; (2) more-proficient listeners used strategies significantly more than less-proficient listeners; The former were better than the latter in focusing their attention, make inference, low anxiety; (3) female listeners made greater use of monitoring, planning, perceptual processing, using resources and translation strategies than male listeners.Pedagogical implications can be drawn from the above findings. First of all, English teachers in senior middle schools should conduct strategy training in classroom to enhance high school students'strategy awareness and strategic ability. Following that, the listening teaching methods of five specific strategies are suggested, that is, teach students how to use planning strategy, monitoring strategy, evaluation strategy, inferencing strategy, and help students deal with anxiety. The present study also suggests that teachers talk to students in the target language in class and enhance the attitude of the learners.Though this study has made some contribution to research on listening strategy use, there are some limitations, such as the small sample size, limited use of research instruments, and narrow ways of testing students'listening proficiency level. To overcome these limitations, the study finally offers some directions for the future research in this field.