The Effects Of Listening Proficiency And Listening Question Types On Chinese EFL Learners’ Listening Test-taking Strategy Use

Test-taking strategies are conscious and selective behaviors that test-takers use in thetesting context. To some extent, the use of test-taking strategies determines the success of test-takers’ performance. A review of literature reveals that test-taking strategy use is affected bytwo factors: individual and task characteristics. Most of studies have been conducted in thecontext of reading comprehension, and little attention has been paid on studying test-takingstrategy use in other situations, especially in the listening comprehension test. The presentstudy is therefore designed to investigate the variation of test-taking strategy use with twofactors: listening proficiency and listening question types (main idea, detail and inferencequestions). Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to address the researchquestions. Triangulation is accomplished by the combination of questionnaire data andretrospective written report data.105non-English major freshmen from South China University of Technologyparticipated in the experiment. During the experiment, the participants were first informed tofill in a listening test-taking strategy questionnaire and then took a listening comprehensiontest in which different listening question types were included. After the comprehension test,they were required to “write in” strategies they used for addressing listening questions in thewritten reports. Since the study took listening proficiency into consideration, the participantswere classified into three different listening-proficiency groups: high, intermediate and low,based on the scores obtained from the listening comprehension test.The main research conclusions in the current study are as follows:The findings on the test-taking strategy use at the three listening phases (beforelistening, during listening, after listening) show that:1) students use more test-takingstrategies before listening, less after listening; and2) no matter which listening phase is, thehigh-level students use test-taking strategies significantly more frequently than the low-levelstudents. The findings on the metacognitive/cognitive strategy use show that:1) the high-levelstudents are more metacognitive than the intermediate-level and low-level students;2) thehigh-level and intermediate-level students have an equal ability to use cognitive strategies;and3) among three sub-metacognitive strategies, the planning strategies are those mostfrequently used by overall students. Among eight sub-cognitive strategies, the three mostfrequently used strategies are prediction, summarization and inferencing strategies.The findings on the test-taking strategy use under three different kinds of listeningquestions (detail question, main idea question and inference question) show that:1) the detailquestion can elicit more strategies than the other two types of questions (main idea andinference question);2) students are able to adjust their test-taking strategy use with the changeof listening questions;3) some strategies are used under whatever listening questions are;4)the same strategies may be used in different ways by different listening-level students; and5)some strategies seem to be only used by the high-ability students.Overall, these findings indicate a positive relationship between listening proficiencyand strategic competence. In the conclusion part, implications for learning and teachinglistening strategies are suggested. In addition, recommendations for future related studies arealso presented.