A Study On The Application Of English Listening Cognitive Strategies In Art Majors’ English Listening Instruction Based On The Reflective Perspective

Under the condition featured by the new philosophy of English curriculum reform and new educational policies, highlight the insights of language goals: knowledge, skills, strategy, culture and emotions etc; study how students learn, how English teachers teach, how exams are implemented and how English teachers improve their own quality in teaching practice, which has became the current focus in English language teaching and research. In the Requirements for College English Instruction in 2007, one of the teaching aims of college English is to cultivate the students’ comprehensive competence, especially listening and speaking. However, as for English teachers, teaching English listening is always a sticky problem, particularly in West of China, which is caused by English listening itself is rather of complexity and other relevant factors of objective conditions. As a result, there are more hypothesis and researches on listening. Abroad, the influential figures include O’Chamot, Hedge, Graham, Goh, Rost, Ur. Penny, among whom O’Chamot divided listening strategy into meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and affective strategies; at home, Prof. Wen Qiufang, Prof. Wang Yiu and Prof. Wang Lifei are well-known as strategy experts. And the listening research mainly involves the impact of co-relations of different listening strategies, strategy training and frequency of strategy use on English listening proficiency as well as listening interest. Besides, researches on English teaching models and methods employed to improve listening achievements are conducted more.Grounded on the above presented, the author sought to explore the application of English listening cognitive strategies in art majors’ English listening instruction based on the reflective perspective to find out whether it can enhance art majors’ listening proficiency, interest in English listening and improvement of English teacher reflective awareness and professional development. Hopefully, this study can have some implications on the art majors’ English listening instruction and English teacher professional development.Then the author chose 60 art sophomore majors as subjects majoring in traditional Chinese paining education in Northwest Normal University, who were divided into two groups and one was control group and the other was experimental group. Each group was made up of 30 students. The research instruments included tests( CET-4 listening comprehension parts of December, 2006 and June, 2007 as the pre-test and the post-test), interview and reflective journals( teacher’s reflective journals and students’ reflective journals). During the ten-week study, the English listening cognitive strategies instruction embedded with listening lessons and connected to the given listening materials was conducted in the experimental group while the control group was taught in a traditional way. Another, the two groups were taught by the same teacher. After the treatment, through the analysis and discussion on the data and results, conclusions were shown below:First of all, after the application of English listening cognitive strategies in listening instruction, it was significant that the listening proficiency in experimental group was much higher than that in control group, which demonstrates that it is helpful and effective for art majors with weak English foundation so the English listening cognitive strategies can improve their English listening proficiency.Moreover, from the students’ interview of audio recordings and reflective journals, it could be found out that students’ changes in English listening interest from no interest or a little to a little interest or more, which means that the English listening cognitive strategies instruction is meaningful for art majors. Therefore, English listening cognitive strategies applied in listening instruction can improve their interest in English listening interest.Furthermore, based on teacher’s reflective journals or retrospections, apparently, it could be figured out that the English teacher was changing and growing from a listening strategy novice to an experienced teacher in listening instruction gradually by his continuous reflecting himself and learning on his own, which convincingly embodies that the teacher is able to develop his profession and improve his own reflective awareness. Consequently, the English teacher can improve his own reflective awareness and professional development by English listening cognitive strategies instruction and keeping retrospections.