A Study On The Relationship Between Senior High School Students’ Meta-cognitive Awareness And Listening Comprehension Proficiency

It’s well known that listening is an essential part in English learning and real life events. Thus it’s significant to enhance learner’s listening proficiency. The past decades have witnessed an increasing attention to listening comprehension in the second language acquisition. Recent researches suggest that meta-cognitive awareness can help deploy effective strategies in listening(Vandergrift, 2006; Goh2002, etc). Meta-cognitive awareness is the degree to which language learners are aware of their strategies, adjust and control the process of L2 listening comprehension. Many researchers have conducted the relevant research in this area in Western countries, but little research has been carried out in China. Therefore,there is an urgent need to explore the meta-cognitive awareness of L2 listening in Chinese senior high school students.One hundred and fifty students from Nanchang University Attached Middle school participated in this research. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods,this research attempted to address the three questions:(1) what is the general tendency in meta-cognitive listening awareness of senior high school students?(2) What are differences in meta-cognitive listening awareness between high proficiency students and low proficiency students?(3) What is the relationship between meta-cognitive listening awareness and listening proficiency? The questionnaire used in this thesis is Vandergrift et al’s Meta-cognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire(MALQ), and the data was analyzed by SPSS 16.0.The study has revealed a number of findings:(1) the subjects revealed a high level of meta-cognitive awareness when they were involved in English listening tasks. A close examination of the means of each of the five sub-scales showed that directed attention and person knowledge were important;(2) there is a high correlation between the students’ listening proficiency and their meta-cognitive awareness, especially in problem-solving and person knowledge.However, the effects of students’ directed attention, planning and evaluation on theirlistening proficiency are weak;(3) there is a significant difference between high-proficiency and low-proficiency group’s meta-cognitive awareness in listening comprehension. Individual participants reported different level of strategy use in problem-solving, planning and evaluation strategies, personal knowledge and directed attention.On the basis of the findings above, several implications for English teaching and learning can be offered. First, teachers should examine students’ use of meta-cognitive strategies and help their students to find an effective approach to becoming successful English listeners. Secondly, students’ meta-cognitive awareness of English listening should be strengthened in various aspects. Thirdly, teachers should create opportunities for less-skilled listeners to identify their problems and find ways to overcome them. Finally, teachers should become familiar with strategy-based instruction to broaden their strategy repertoires and increase their confidence and ability in teaching students how to use meta-cognitive strategies.