The Utilization of Listening Strategies in the Development of Listening Comprehension Among Skilled and Less-skilled Non-native English Speakers at the College Level PDF Download

Author: Yi-Chun Liu
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Languages : en
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Book Description
This study aimed to explore Chinese and Korean EFL learners' perceptions with regards to the use of listening strategies. The purpose is to learn whether Chinese and Korean students achieve academic listening comprehension through specific listening strategies. The data were collected from first and second year students currently studying abroad in the US. Although they are immersed in an English speaking environment, the use of listening strategies still affects their development of academic listening comprehension based on what they have learned in their home countries. For this reason, this study provides a corpus for understanding Chinese and Korean EFL students' listening behavior and what constrains their English listening comprehension. The research design is one hundred and sixty-six college level students from three public universities in Texas who completed web-based questionnaires. Skilled and less-skilled groups were differentiated according to their TOEFL listening scores. If the student had a score of more than 570, he/she was categorized into the skilled listeners group; below 570, they belonged to the less-skilled listeners group. In terms of the need for additional research on the different factors that affect developmental outcomes in L2 listening comprehension, the following research questions were investigated: 1) Is there a statistically significant relationship between the self-reported use of listening strategies and self-reported listening comprehension scores on the TOEFL? 2) Is there a difference between skilled and less-skilled non-native English speakers in the self-reported use of four categories of listening strategies (memory, cognitive, meta-cognitive, and socio-affective)? 3) What factors influence the use of self-reported listening strategies? The findings show that students in this sample tended to employ memory strategies as a means of achieving listening comprehension. In theory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies are more difficult than memory strategies, prompting a lack of sophisticated strategies for Chinese and Korean students. In addition, students' listening skills are not mature. The pedagogical implications of this study for EFL education are that teachers, while teaching listening, should be alert to spot such phenomena and, specifically, instruct students to reach listening maturity via cognitive and metacognitive strategies.