Effects Of Metacognitive Strategy Training On Listening Achievements And Styles

Listening is an important index to evaluate high school students' language competence.The new National English Curriculum Standards for general High School(NECS)has not only reiterated the significance of listening,but also emphasized the importance of learning strategy training in listening instruction.In addition,the new NECS has stressed the importance of learners' learning strategies and individual differences.In light of the findings from learning strategy research,metacogntive strategies are the most essential in developing students' listening skills.Some researchers have tried the metacogntive strategy training(MST)in listening instruction,with certain achievements gained.However,previous researches on listening metacognitive strategy mainly focused on undergraduates and neglected learners' individual differences in listening styles.Therefore,it is necessary to study the effects of MST on senior high English listening achievements and listening styles.Guided by adaptive control of thought-rational theory and metacognitive approach to listening instruction,an empirical research is conducted in Y middle school to compare the frequency of listening metacognitive strategy use before and after the MST and explore the effects of MST on listening achievements and listening styles through the methods of test,questionnaire and interview.Two classes of 121 students were randomly selected as an experimental and controlled class respectively.The research attempts to answer three questions:(1)Do students display differences in terms of use frequency of metacognitive strategy after the listening MST?(2)How does listening MST influence students' listening achievements?(3)How does listening MST influence the optimization of students' listening styles?There are three main findings.Firstly,students' listening metacognitive strategy use underwent some obvious changes.Before the strategy training,students' application ability of listening metacognitive strategy was in the intermediate level.Among the five dimensions of listening metacognitive strategy,the one most frequently used is mental translation strategy,which should however be avoided.After the strategy training,the overall strategy use frequency has improved to a high level.Except for the mental translation strategy,whose use frequency has declined to intermediate level,the usefrequency of planning and elaboration,directed attention,person knowledge and problem solving reaches high level.In addition,the mean value of two types of strategies,which are planning and elaboration,and person knowledge,has increased the most.The P value of Paired Samples Test between the listening metacognitive strategy use before and after the training reveals there is extremely significant difference between them,indicating that students display significant differences in terms of use frequency of metacognitive strategy after the training.Secondly,students' listening achievements in EC have improved significantly compared with those in CC.With the comparison of the post-test listening performance between the two classes,the mean scores of EC are obviously higher than that in CC.Moreover,the Independent Samples Test also indicates that there is a significant difference in the post-test listening achievements between the EC and the CC,and the Paired Samples Test manifests that the post-test listening achievements in EC are significantly different from the pre-test.Additionally,the Correlation Analysis and Regression Analysis between metacognitive strategies and listening achievements indicate the use of overall metacognitive strategies has a predictive ability on listening achievements and the sub-strategies of directed attention,problem solving,planning and elaboration have a significantly more explanatory power of variance in senior high students' listening achievements than personal knowledge and mental translation.Thirdly,listening metacognitive strategy has a positive effect on optimizing students' listening styles.The correlation analysis between listening metacognitive strategy and listening styles proves they are correlated with each other.The students' listening styles in EC has changed obviously compared with those in CC.Besides,the students' number of synthetic listening styles has increased saliently in EC after the listening MST.Based on the above findings,MST applied to senior high English listening instruction can facilitate students' listening.Furthermore,it can improve students' autonomous learning ability.Therefore,teachers can combine English listening instruction with MST in order to promote students' listening achievements.