A Study On High School Zhuang Students' MCS In English Listening Comprehension

As we all know, in learning a language, listening values the first and is the most difficult of the four abilities which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. And listening comprehension (LC) is the key to achieve barrier-free communication.Meta-cognitive strategies (MCS) in English listening teaching in the rural high schools of Guangxi can yet be regarded as a good approach to teaching. However, its practical application to the teaching is yet to be proven, and whether the MCS will be the good approach to change rural Zhuang students'listening problem or not still needs studying.Four questions are addressed in this thesis as follows:1. What is the present situation of the rural high school Zhuang students'LC?2. What is the present situation of meta-cognitive strategies application (MCSA) in the LC classroom of rural high schools in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region?3. What are the differences in the MCSA between the rural students who used to speak Zhuang as their first language and others who speak mandarin in listening comprehension performance (LCP) and ability cultivation?4. Is there any relation between the application of the three strategies of MCS in Zhuang students learning process of LC and their performance?For the purpose of solving these problems, the author chose 123 students in Wuming high school in the rural area of Nanning city in which there are more Zhuang students than other nationalities. What is more, most of the Zhuang students in this area speak genuine Zhuang as their first language. In this case, to analyze the present situation of MCSA in LC is typical.Two questionnaires and a LC test were adopted as instruments in this study. Questionnaires were designed to figure out the present situation by MCSA of students in the rural high school. And the LC test, in which the materials were chosen from the textbook or other relevant listening books, was meant to be an approach to find out the correlation between MCSA and their performance.The results of the study show some problems that exposed in the MCSA in the listening process. Firstly, the rural high school Zhuang students'MCSA is lower than average level. Secondly, Zhuang students in rural high schools (ZSRS) would like to use three MCS of planning, monitoring, and evaluation. However, their abilities to use them are still poor and need teachers'training. Thirdly, there is no difference between ZSRS and students from other nationalities in the MCSA. And finally, the MCSA is positively correlated with the LCP. Totally speaking, Zhuang students encounter more difficulties in improving LCP than others.Based on the problems, the author suggests that MCS in listening process be not only employed by students to improve their ability in applying MCS, but also employed by teachers to help students in their LCP.