A Study Of The Effect Of English Majors’ Listening Styles On Their Listening Comprehension Performance

Listening, as an integrative language skill, plays an important role in foreign language teaching and learning. Since the1990s, a large number of scholars home and abroad have conducted researches on listening comprehension. Most of the researches focus on the context, background knowledge, and strategies used in listening comprehension. However, few researches have been made into listening styles, and even fewer researches have been conducted into the effect of listening styles on the listening comprehension performance in different text types. Therefore, the present study is intended to identify the listening styles of English majors, analyze the distribution pattern of different listening styles among different listening proficiency students, and explore the possible effects of listening styles on listening comprehension performance in different text types.The specific research questions to be addressed in the study are as follows:1) What is the general tendency of listening styles of the English majors?2) What is the distribution pattern of different listening styles among different listening proficiency students?3) What is the effect of students’ listening styles on listening comprehension performance in terms of text types (Conversation; News Broadcast)?4) What is the effect of students’ listening styles on listening comprehension performance in terms of question types (Global Question; Local Question)?Both quantitative and qualitative research designs are conducted in the study to respond to the research questions. The participants involved in the study are altogether66, all of whom are English sophomores from two classes in Foreign Language School in Yangzhou University. The quantitative research designs include a test of the listening comprehension and a questionnaire. The test of the listening comprehension is composed of Conversation and News Broadcast selected from TEM4, with the test items of multiple choices covering Global Questions and Local Questions. According to the scores they get in the listening comprehension test, the participants are divided into three different listening proficiency levels. The questionnaire, which is used to determine the listening styles of the participants, includes20statements falling into two categories:10of them describe analytic listening style, and the other10relate to global listening style. The qualitative research design is interviews with6students. The interviews are tape-recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions are synthesized and analyzed later.Detailed analysis of both the quantitative and qualitative data yields the findings as follows:Firstly, all three listening styles, that is, the analytic style, the global style and the synthetic style are found to be popular among the English majors. Among the three types of listening styles, the analytic style takes the overwhelming proportion, accounting for42.4%of the whole. The synthetic style is the second most popular style among English majors, occupying31.8%of all the participants. In addition, the global style ranks in the last place with the proportion of one fourth among all the students, taking up25.8%of all the participants.Secondly, there exist a close connection between listening styles and the listening proficiency levels on the whole. Among the high proficiency students, the majority of them (78.6%) belong to the synthetic listening style. Among the intermediate level students,47.4%of the students belong to the analytic listening style, and26.3%possesses the synthetic listening style. Among the low proficiency students, half of them (50%) adopt the analytic listening style and the other half (50%) employ the global listening style. Therefore, it can be concluded that the students with higher listening proficiency level have more tendency to employ the synthetic listening style.Thirdly, listening styles have a significant effect on the listening comprehension performance in terms of different text types. In Conversation listening comprehension, the statistically significant differences exist not only between the synthetic listeners and analytic listeners (P=0.002), but also between synthetic listeners and global listeners (P=0.000). In other words, the synthetic listeners perform much better than both analytic listeners and global listeners in Conversation listening comprehension. However, in the News Broadcast listening comprehension, the only statistically significant difference exists between the synthetic listeners and the global listeners (P=0.004), with the synthetic listeners outperforming the global listeners in News Broadcast. The results demonstrate that in different text types, listening styles have different effects on the listening comprehension. However, whether in Conversation or in New Broadcast listening comprehension, the synthetic listeners perform best among all the three types of listening styles.Finally, listening styles have different effects on Global Question and Local Question. In Global Question listening comprehension, the statistically significant differences exist not only between the synthetic listeners and analytic listeners (P=0.002), but also between global listeners and analytic listeners (P=0.002). That is to say, the synthetic listeners and global listeners perform better than the analytic listeners. In terms of Local Question, the statistically significant difference exists not only between synthetic listeners and global listeners (P=0.000), but also between synthetic listeners and analytic listeners (P=0.022), as well as analytic listeners and global listeners (P=0.002). A conclusion can be made that synthetic listeners perform best, analytic listeners get a moderate performance, and the global listeners perform worst in Local Question listening comprehension.The implications from the findings of the study are as follows. Firstly, it is practical and important for English teachers to make the students have a better understanding of the characteristics of the three different listening styles. Teachers can exploit flexible teaching strategies to help students form better listening styles. Secondly, the students should learn to identify their own listening styles and accordingly adopt appropriate listening strategies in the listening comprehension. After proper training, they can gradually develop their listening strategies and combine the top-down information processing and bottom-up information processing approaches together to improve their listening comprehension ability.