Abstract

 

Listening plays an important role both in daily communication and language learning. The use of listening strategies has been wildly explored and gained productive results both abroad and at home, including the relationship between listening proficiency and listening strategy use. However, as cultural settings vary, the results of studies abroad might not be consistent with domestic situation. Besides, most domestic studies of listening strategies take college students as research subjects. Studies focusing on listening strategies use of high school students are seldom explored and thus it is necessary to explore this. This study chooses high school students as its subjects and researches on the following questions:

1. What listening strategies do middle-school students frequently use?

2. What is the relationship between listening strategy use and listening performance in high school students’ learning?

3. Are there any differences between high achievers and low achievers in listening strategies use? If yes, what are they?

The study first gives a brief introduction of the background of the research, explaining the need and the purpose of the study from both practical and theoretical perspectives, followed by Literature Review, which includes the definition and classification of listening strategies. After the first two sections, the thesis explains the research method including collecting the data collection of students’ listening scores as well as questionnaire and analyzing the collected data with SPSS. From the data collected, the study comes up with the following three findings:

1.All the three strategies, namely, meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies are often employed by high school students. But more specifically, cognitive strategies are the most frequently used, and then comes social/affective strategies and meta-cognitive strategies

2.The use of cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies is proved to have positive correlation with students’ listening performance.

3.High-achievers and low-achievers vary greatly in terms of cognitive strategies and social/effective strategies.

The findings of this thesis are expected to offer some implications for both teaching listening and developing listening skills.

 

Key words: Listening strategy, listening performance, high school students

 

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the study-1

1.2 Need of the study-1

1.3 Research purpose-2

1.4 Structure of the study-2

Chapter 2 Literature Review-3

2.1 Learning strategies-3

2.1.1 Definitions of learning strategies-3

2.1.2 Classifications of learning strategies-4

2.2 Listening strategies-5

2.2.1 Definitions of listening strategies-5

2.2.2 Classifications of listening strategies-5

2.3 Previous studies of listening strategies abroad and at home-6

2.3.1 Previous studies of listening strategies abroad-6

2.3.2 Previous studies of listening strategies at home-7

Chapter 3 Research Methodology-9

3.1Research questions-9

3.2 Participants-9

3.3 Instruments-10

3.3.1 The listening strategy questionnaire-10

3.3.2 Listening performance test paper-10

3.4 Procedure-11

3.4.1 Data collection-11

3.4.2 Data analysis-11

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion-12

4.1 General tendency of high school students’ listening strategy use-12

4.2 Relationship between high school students’ listening strategy use and their listening performance-13

4.3 Comparison between high-achievers and low-achievers-15

Chapter 5 Conclusion-18

5.1 Major findings of the research-18

5.2 Implications of the research-18

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies-19

References-21

Appendix I-23

文献综述报告-25