A Case Study On The Listening Strategies Used By Non-English Majors Based On The Think-aloud Protocols

With the release of College English Curriculum Requirement in 2007,listening and speaking has been one of the core contents of teaching and remains a weakness of Chinese students.Therefore,a considerable number of scholars have devoted to the study of college English listening teaching.Among them,the study of college English listening strategies can be viewed as a key to improve students’ English listening ability more effectively,and it also helps teachers to conduct more targeted listening strategy training.At present,most studies in this field focus on large groups of research objects,and the research methods are mainly questionnaire and interview,ignoring the subtle changes in the listening process of individual cases.In fact,there are individual differences in the use of listening strategies.In view of this,based on think-aloud protocol and interview,a case study was conducted.It attempts to explore the subjects’ thinking processes and capture the subtle differences with different listening levels when processing the same listening materials through asking them to report various information in the brain anytime,anywhere during the completion of a listening task.This study mainly intends to examine the following four questions:(1)What are the types and distribution of metacognitive strategies used by non-English majors in listening comprehension?(2)What are the types and distribution of cognitive strategies used by non-English majors in listening comprehension?(3)What are the types and distribution of social/affective strategies used by non-English majors in listening comprehension?(4)What are the differences in the listening strategies used by nonEnglish majors with different listening levels in the listening comprehension process? The results of think-aloud protocol and interview transcripts were evaluated through text analysis.The six subjects participating in this study were all non-English majors from a provincial key normal university,including those with high and low level of English listening competence.They first participated in the think-aloud protocol experiment in turn.Since the think-aloud experiment could only measure the strategies adopted by the subjects in the listening comprehension process,they were interviewed after the experiment as a supplement to the study.The relevant strategies before and after listening were supplemented by interview.Combined with the analysis of the experiment and the interview,four major findings emerged: 1)The metacognitive strategies adopted by the subjects in the experiment were selective attention strategy,self-monitoring strategy and language awareness strategy,respectively from high to low frequency.In the interview,they supplemented the metacognitive strategies that were not measured in the experiment: planning strategy,self-management strategy and self-evaluation strategy.2)The eight cognitive strategies adopted by the subjects in the think-aloud protocols experiment were ranked in order of frequency: inferencing,note-taking,prediction,keywords,connection of old and new knowledge,summarizing,repetition,and translation.In the interview,they supplemented the cognitive strategies that were not measured in the experiment: resources strategy,dividing sense group strategy and native language strategy.3)There was only one affective strategy adopted by the subjects in the thinkaloud protocols experiment: reducing anxiety.In addition,in the interview,they supplemented the affective/social strategies that were not measured in the experiment: cultivating interest,encouraging themselves,asking for advice from teachers or classmates,and communicating learning methods with teachers or classmates.4)The high-level listeners adopted all the three strategies more frequently than the low-level listeners,but both of their use of social strategies was insufficient.Based on the analysis results,the conclusions and implications of this study have been drawn as follows:(1)The frequency and quantity of students’ use of metacognitive strategies are insufficient.Teachers should strengthen students’ ability of self-management,self-monitoring and self-evaluation.(2)Cognitive strategies are the most frequently used by non-English majors,but they are not standardized in their use.Teachers should spare no effort to improve the efficiency of students’ use of this kind of strategy by demonstrating and explaining the correct use of each one.(3)The use of social and affective strategies by non-English majors is far from sufficient,especially social strategies.Teachers need to emphasize the importance to students,set up group tasks to encourage students to cooperate and help each other,and mobilize students’ subjective initiative.(4)Teachers should teach students at different levels in accordance with their aptitude,so as to meet the specific needs of individualized teaching.By setting different tasks,improve the efficiency of high-level student strategy use,and focus on strengthening the language skills of low-level students.The discovery of this research is of great significance to help teachers explore more effective teaching methods and to further promote foreign language teaching research in China.The thesis ends with a brief description of the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research.