非英语专业大学生英语听力焦虑与听力学习策略研究(英文).doc

非英语专业大学生英语听力焦虑与听力学习策略研究徐海波摘要：尽管有关语言学习焦虑和语言学习策略的研究非常丰富，有关于这两个因素相互关系的研究却比较少。本研究旨在探索英语听力理解焦虑和听力学习策略之间的相互关系。具体的研究问题主要包括：英语听力焦虑与听力学习策略的使用是否存在显著相关性；处于低、中、高三种焦虑水平的学生在使用听力学习策略方面是否存在显著差异。研究结果表明：学生的听力焦虑水平与听力学习策略的使用呈显著负相关，而且不同焦虑水平的学生在其中13个策略的使用方面存在显著差异。本研究的重要启示是英语老师在帮助学生降低英语听力焦虑时应该考虑听力学习策略与听力焦虑呈显著负相关。教学生掌握并使用一定的听力策略应该能帮助学生减少听力焦虑。关键词：听力理解，听力理解焦虑，学习策略study on english listening comprehension anxiety and listening learning strategies of non-english majorsabstract: despite the rich researches on both language learning anxiety and use of learning strategies by foreign language learners, studies concerning the relationship between the two factors are relatively scarce. this study took a step in the direction of examining listening comprehension anxiety experienced by non-english majors. it was focused on three major aspects: exploring the relationship between english listening anxiety and use of listening learning strategies; comparing the differences in the use of strategy categories across the low, medium, and high anxiety levels. the results of the present study revealed that learners listening comprehension anxiety was rather pervasive and it had a significant negative correlation with use of learning strategies. significant differences existed in the use of 13 individual strategy items among the three anxiety levels. it was expected that teachers of english in china would take into account the negative correlation between listening anxiety and use of listening learning strategies, while contriving to help english learners diminish anxiety. keywords: listening comprehension, listening comprehension anxiety, learning strategies1. introduction classroom activities such as speaking and listening prove to be most anxiety-provoking and problematic for foreign language learners (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986). actually, in a large body of researches speaking is often cited as the most anxiety-producing skill in foreign language classroom (daly, 1991; horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986; koch & terrell, 1991; young, 1990,1992). at the same time, there do exist some researchers who describe listening comprehension as anxiety-provoking for foreign language learners (scarcella & oxford, 1992; vogely, 1998; von worde, 2004). according to the study done by scarcella & oxford (1992), listening anxiety occurs when students feel they are faced with a task that is too difficult or unfamiliar to them. krashen (qtd in young, 1992: 163) acknowledges that listening comprehension is “highly anxiety-provoking if it is incomprehensible”. the findings of various researches on the relationship between language strategy use and language performance indicate that students with better language performance generally use learning strategies more frequently (oxford & nyikos, 1989; wen & johson, 1997; green & oxford, 1995). as a matter of fact, strategy instruction or training to students can facilitate vocabulary acquisition (cohen & aphek, 1988), speaking performance (omalley, 1987) and listening comprehension proficiency (thompson & rubin, 1997). it can be further assumed that the improvement in learners learning performance might enhance their self-confidence in language learning. more self-confidence and self-fulfillment will probably result in less anxiety, fear or sense of frustration. therefore it is somewhat reasonable to assume that learners use of learning strategies more or less interferes with their learning anxiety. however, to date only a few researches have dwelled on the subject of exploring the relationship between use of language learning strategies and language learning anxiety. warr and downing (2000) examine the interaction between some language learners learning strategies and learning anxiety. they find that learners who employ particular strategies are less anxious than others. a few more studies (macintyre, noels & clement, 1997; zou, 2003) reveal that language anxiety is negatively correlated with language learning strategy use. in these studies, both language anxiety and learning strategy use are mentioned in broad terms. it is therefore necessary to explore the correlation between anxiety and use of learning strategies related to specific language skills such as listening, reading, speaking and writing. this study is to take a step in the direction of exploring the relationship between listening comprehension anxiety and use of listening learning strategies.though listening comprehension has been generally recognized as essential to language learning, the subject of listening remained a young field that merits more attention. take the aspect of language anxiety as an example, very few researches discuss the subject of anxiety accompanying listening comprehension tasks either in classroom contexts or in test situations. this study is designed to examine the anxious feelings sensed by some non-english majors, particularly aiming at exploring the relationship between listening comprehension (lc) anxiety and use of listening learning strategies. the purpose of the present study is twofold. first, this study is an attempt to increase our understanding about english listening comprehension anxiety by examining the relationship between learners listening anxiety and their use of listening strategies. second, it aims at examining the difference in the use of listening strategies among students at different anxiety levels. it is expected that the results of this empirical study will provide another instance on the question of listening comprehension anxiety and thus make a further understanding of how to create a low-anxiety and supportive classroom environment that facilitates language learning. also, it is hoped that the findings of this study will help foreign language teachers further understand the importance of listening strategy instruction and make the language learner aware of the role of listening comprehension strategies in diminishing listening anxiety.2. the research questions of the present studythis study aims at examining non-english majors lc anxiety level and their use of listening learning strategies. it is assumed that, like the general foreign language anxiety, lc anxiety might be pervasive among chinese english learners. it is likely that their lack of effective learning strategies more or less contributes to their listening anxiety. in order to discover the relationship between learners lc anxiety and their use of listening learning strategies, the research centers on the following questions: 1)is there any significant correlation between lc anxiety and use of listening learning strategies? in other words, do learners of lower anxiety level demonstrate more frequent use of listening strategies than learners of higher anxiety level?2)is there any significant difference in the use of three strategy categories among students of different listening anxiety levels?3)is there any significant difference in strategy use among students of different anxiety levels at the individual strategy item level? 3. research methods3.1 subjectssubjects participating in the present study were 127 second-year students of two intact classes from the college of gardening at southwest agricultural university. most of them have been exposed to listening comprehension class ever since they were in junior middle school even when in primary school. by the time of their second year in college, these students might have developed their own way of dealing with listening exercises and may probably have consciously or unconsciously employed a series of learning strategies relevant to listening skill. two questionnaires, the listening comprehension anxiety scale (lcas) and the english listening learning strategies (ells), were administered to 127 students in their listening class, with the instructions of the questionnaires well explained. nine of the 127 students, who failed to properly finish both of the two questionnaires, were eliminated from analysis. finally the participants selected for this study were 118 students, including 52 male students and 66 females.3.2 instrumentsone of the essential questionnaires is the listening comprehension anxiety scale (lcas), serving as an instrument to measure students anxiety levels in dealing with listening comprehension either in class or in extra curricular training. the sources of this questionnaire could be located in other influential scales like foreign language classroom anxiety scale (horwitz, horwitz & cope, 1986), the input, processing and output anxiety scale (macintye and gardener, 1994) and another listening anxiety measuring scale designed by zhou (2003). some adaptations and modifications were made so as to ensure the questionnaire could reflect chinese english learners actual feelings in listening activities. in addition, the present researcher supplemented a couple of items, drawing on her own experiences with english learning and teaching. this questionnaire consisted of 18 items written in chinese version to make sure that all the students can fully understand. each item was to be answered on a 5-point likert scale, including “strongly agree”,“agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree”, “strongly disagree”.the 18 items in the lcas cover the following aspects: fear of negative evaluation, self-confidence in listening comprehension, the perceived difficulties arising from the uniqueness of listening such as familiarity of the background knowledge, speech rate, number of unfamiliar words and long sentences with complex grammatical structure, etc.another vital questionnaire was the english listening learning strategies (ells), used for measuring the frequency of listening learning strategy use. the design of ells counted on many sources, including the strategy inventory for language learning (oxford, 1990) and some listening comprehension strategies obtained from other researchers investigations (omalley & chamot, 1990; vandergrift, 1997). it was composed by 38 strategy items, including 18 cognitive strategies items, 8 metaeognitive strategies and 12 socioaffective ones. in choosing the strategy items, a framework of three broad categories was adopted. cognitive strategy items cover inferencing, repetition, note-taking, auditory presentation, summarization and so on. metacognitive strategy items include directed attention, selective attention, self-management and self-monitoring etc. socioaffective strategy items involved self-encouragement, seeking cooperation from others and direct way of lowering anxiety. still some subtle modifications were made so that the questionnaire can better reflect the situations of chinese english learners. meanwhile the questionnaire was translated into chinese so as to guarantee greater accuracy of the results, especially with the less proficient students. like the design of lcas, each item in the ells were to be answered on a 5-point likert scale, ranging from “never use”, “some times use”, “half of the time use”, “most of the time use” and “always use”. 4. results4.1 correlations between listening anxiety and use of listening learning strategiesin the present study, it was assumed that learners use of listening learning strategies might more or less influence their listening anxiety. since several other studies found negative correlations between language anxiety and use of language learning strategies, it could be predicated that use of listening learning strategies would be negatively correlated with listening anxiety. in other words, learners with lower listening anxiety would probably report more frequent use of the listening learning strategies. therefore, pearson correlation analyses were conducted to identify the strength of correlation between students lc anxiety level and their use of listening learning strategies (see table 4.1).4.2 correlations between lc anxiety and use of listening learning strategy categories table 4.1 correlations between lc anxiety level and use of listening learning strategy categoriesoverallcogmetsoapearson correlation-.387*-.405*-.379*-.194*sig. (2-tailed).000.000.0000.035note:p=significant level, * p.05，* p.01cog=cognitive strategies met=metacognitive strategiessoa=socioaffectire strategies overall=overall strategiesas it could be seen from table 4.1, students listening anxiety level was negatively and significantly related with use of cognitive, metacognitive, socioaffective strategies and overall strategies. the strongest correlation (r=-.405,p.000) fell on the relationship between anxiety level and use of cognitive strategies, followed by other statistically significant negative correlations between anxiety level and overall strategies (r=-.387,p=.000), between anxiety level and metacognitive strategy category (r=-3.79, p=.000), and between anxiety level and socioaffective strategies (r=-1.94, p.035).obviously, cognitive strategies were more negatively correlated with listening anxiety than metacognitive strategies. this indicated that for non-english majors, use of cognitive strategies probably had stronger effects on listening anxiety than metacognitive strategies. cognitive strategies mainly involved mental activities for manipulating the language to accomplish a task, while metacognitive strategies involved self-management, self-evaluation, and knowledge about cognitive process.4.3 individual strategy items showing significant negative correlation with listening anxiety more correlation analyses were conducted to discover the strength of correlation between lc anxiety and each individual listening strategy. table 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 summarized the specific significant correlations between lc anxiety and the use of individual strategy item in each strategy category.among all the cognitive strategy items, item 7 showed the strongest negative correlation with listening anxiety (r=-.467). the result indicated that the students who had the habit of memorizing the contents in english version rather than doing translation in listening process tended to experience lower level of listening anxiety. on the other hand, students who had a compulsion to do translation while listening reported higher level of anxiety. the possible reason behind this might be that when students translated what they heard, they were incapable of keeping up with the incoming input and therefore experienced greater difficulty in holding in memory. an inability to develop a solid mental representation of the text in memory might preclude the suppression of irrelevant information, resulting in rapid fading of recently comprehended information (gernbarcher, varner & faust, 1990). even worse, when encountering unfamiliar words, they would probably linger on recalling the meanings of the unknown words and became even more anxious. therefore students should be encouraged to memorize the important information in listening materials directly in english version and to avoid doing word-by-word translation. table 4.2 cognitive strategy items showing significant negative correlations with lc anxietyanxietycognitive strategy items124678911122224pearson correlation-.298-.420-.378-.240-.467-.359-.205-.252-.283-.212-.204sig.001.000.000.009.000.000.026.006.002.021.026notes:item 1 guessing the meaning of an unfamiliar word from the context.item 2 skipping the unknown word and going on with listening task.item 4 distinguishing the implications of the same sentence spoken in different intonations.item 6 applying different methods to different types of listening materials.item 7 remembering the main ideas read in english version without doing translation.item 8 focusing on the overall meanings rather than on every single word or sentence. item 9 summarizing the main ideas from what was caught in listening contents.item 11 taking notes of an event with the key words like the time, the person and the process etc. item 12 using abbreviated verbal, numeral, or graphic forms to take notes. item 22 listening to the contents failed to understand in class and trying to find out reasons.item 24 accumulating frequently used words and expressions in listening materials.item 2, skipping an unfamiliar word, showed a significant negative correlation with listening (r=-.420). the result indicated that students at low anxiety level were more likely to employ this strategy and could restrain them from lingering on the unknown word or phrase. for students with high lc anxiety, they acknowledged that an unknown word or phrase would send them recalling its meaning and thus distracted their attention. even worse, the distraction might intrigue more anxiety and inevitably impaired their comprehension. it was therefore advisable learners should focus on catching the essential points in oral messages rather than attempting to grab every single word or sentence.item 4, capturing the implication of a sentence according to its intonation, revealed a correlation of r=-.378 with listening anxiety. awareness of intonation knowledge allowed the listeners to identify the exact implication of a specific sentence, which contributed to better understanding of a sentence or a text. yet only 26% of the low anxiety students and 7% of the medium anxiety students reported that they “always” or “most of the time” used this strategy. nobody in the high anxiety level reported frequent use of this strategy.item 8, focusing on the general ideas, showed a correlation of r=-.359 with listening anxiety. respectively 68% of the low anxiety students, 61% of the medium anxiety students and 46 % of the students at the high anxiety level reported that they “always” or “most of the time” used this strategy. the result suggested that students who failed to attach importance to grabbing the rough ideas of listening contents most likel