The Effects Of Thinking Styles And Topic Familiarity On English Listening Comprehension Of High School Students

For junior high school students,English listening comprehension is a difficult as well as an important point in their study of English.Many psychologists and educators believe that people may be practically identical in their abilities and yet possess very different styles.A style is a preferred way of thinking,and it is not an ability,but rather how people use the abilities they have.People whose thinking styles match those certain situations are judged as having higher levels of abilities and fit between those people's thinking styles and the tasks they are confronting.The thinking styles of high school students play a very important part in their listening comprehension.Previous research discovered that there are some certain interactive effects of thinking styles and topic familiarity on the English listening comprehension,because the learners are able to apply their knowledge and experience they have learned previously to the relevant listening comprehension.The study is carried out in a key high school in Nanchang.The 90 participants are the junior high school students in Grade Two,40 students(21 boys,19 girls)are chosen from a key class,and the other 50 students(32 boys,28 girls)are from an ordinary class.One of most important instruments--thinking style inventory(originally designed by Sternberg in 1997)edited by Dai(2010)is adopted.The topic familiarity questionnaire and listening comprehension test are also applied in the study.The data analysis is completed with the help of SPSS 13.0.The present study aims to figure out the general tendency of high school students' thinking styles,the relationship between high school students' thinking styles and listening comprehension achievements,the relationship between high school students' topic familiarity and listening comprehension achievements and the effects of the thinking styles and topic familiarity on listening comprehension.Through the data collected and analyzed,the findings are as below:To begin with,as for the general tendency of high school students' thinking styles,among the thirteen thinking styles,most of the students prefer legislative style,followed by liberal style,executive style,external style and hierarchic style,while the students least prefer conservative style followed by monarchic style.Second,some items of thinking styles have significant correlation with listening comprehension achievements.In general,legislative style,hierarchic style,external style have significant positive correlation with listening comprehension achievements,while monarchic style and anarchic style have negative correlation with listening comprehension achievements.As for the key class,legislative style,hierarchic style,external style have significant positive correlation with listening comprehension achievements,while the global style has negative correlation with listening comprehension achievements.As for the ordinary class,legislative style,executive style,hierarchic style and external style have significant positive correlation with listening comprehension achievements.What's more,topic familiarity has definite correlation with students' listening comprehension achievements.The students' listening comprehension achievements are relatively high when they are familiar with the topics,while if the students are not familiar with the topics,the correlation coefficient between topic familiarity and listening comprehension achievements is lower.Finally,the listening comprehension achievements mainly depend on some items of thinking styles and the average level of topic familiarity,Y(listening comprehension achievements)= 0.146 × legislative style(X1)-0.093 × monarchic style(X2)-0.88 × anarchic style(X3)+ 0.393 × topic familiarity(avg.)(X4).The students' listening comprehension achievements mainly depend on the legislative style and the average level of topic familiarity.Attention should be paid that the students' listening comprehension achievements would be impeded if they tend to prefer monarchic style and anarchic style.