A Study On The Different Use Of Listening Strategies Between The More Proficient Listeners And The Less Proficient Listeners In Senior High School

The present study is aimed to investigate the different use of listening strategies between the more proficient listeners and the less proficient listeners among high school students through listening test,questionnaire,think-aloud survey and interview as well.And the participants were senior one students from a high school in Hangzhou.And the research procedures are divided into four stages which are consistent with four research methods.First,listening text results provide the reference for identifying students of three different levels of listening proficiency,at high,intermediate and low levels.Second,the questionnaire is used to investigate the current situation of using listening strategies among senior one students.Next,the think-aloud method is adopted to allow participants speak aloud what occurs in his/her mind when processing oral input and listening materials,thus supervising students' real-time listening process and recording their present strategy using situation.Finally,the interview is adopted to supply some additional information that cannot be reflected in the questionnaire and the think-aloud survey.Based on the quantitative analysis of the listening strategy questionnaire results,it is suggested that the more proficient listeners employed meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and socio-affective strategies more frequently than the less proficient ones and there is significant difference in the use of meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies,while no significant difference in the use ofsocio-affective strategies is found.In addition,the qualitative analysis of the listening comprehension process through think-aloud survey further illustrates that the more proficient listeners are better at using meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies than the less proficient listeners who are busy dealing with basic language difficulties,such as words' pronunciation,speech intonation and new words.Relevant researches adopting think-aloud method to study listening strategies in China are still limited.Therefore this study makes an attempt to adopt think-aloud method in supervising real-time listening comprehension process,offering some suggestions for teaching English listening.