An Empirical Study On Meta-cognitive Listening Strategy And Listening Achievement Of Minority College Students

Since1980s the focus of second language acquisition has transferred from "how to teach" to "how to learn". Hence research on learners’listening strategies became one heated topic. As one of listening strategies, the meta-cognitive strategy is a kind of self-regulated learning process. In this process the language learners make attempts at planning, inspection, supervision, selection, modification, evaluation, etc to make their learning more effective. Meta-cognitive strategies are important because they can be used to oversee, regulate, or direct language learning process. When students are engaged in the use of prediction, monitoring, evaluating and problem-solving in listening processes they are actually making use of meta-cognitive listening strategies. Generally, these strategies consist of pre-listening planning strategies, while-listening monitoring strategies, and post-listening evaluating strategies. In other words, when learners are applying meta-cognitive strategies, they consciously supervise or manage their own listening, and control their cognition by planning what they will listen, checking how the listening process is going, and then evaluating how it will go. It is suggested that students can really be instructed in strategy use to improve their performance in listening, and strategy instruction should be effective in enhancing initial learning.The subjects participating in this empirical study were80sophomore minority students of Grade2010of Xinjiang Education Institute where the researcher works. The research is on the basis of quantitative analysis, using Meta-cognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (Vandergrift, et.al,2006) and Listening Comprehension part of Practical English Test for Colleges (PRETCO) Band B in2010. After the accomplishment of questionnaire, pre-test and post-test, the data was collected and analyzed through SPSS16.0.The research results indicate that:On the whole, the minority students in Xinjiang do not have ample meta-cognitive strategy awareness and they do not frequently use meta-cognitive strategies in English listening comprehension. Besides, there is a significant difference of using meta-cognitive listening strategy between competent and less competent minority college students. Secondly, there is a correlation between the use of meta-cognitive listening strategy and listening achievement of minority students. Lastly, instruction in meta-cognitive strategies will greatly improve minority students’ listening proficiency, especially those less competent listeners.This empirical study will be a supplement of researches on meta-cognitive listening strategies. But selecting minority students as experiment sample makes it new and different from other relevant studies. Last but not least, this study has both theoretical and practical implications, and further verifies the relationship between meta-cognitive strategies and listening achievement.