| Summary: | 碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 應用英語學系碩士班 === 96 === Researchers (Flowerdew and Miller, 2005) of second language acquisition (SLA) have often suggested that listening has been treated as the “Cinderella” of the four macro-skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. However, as an essential part of communicative competence, listening is a skill that deserves equal treatment with the others, both in the classroom and in the preparation of the language teacher. Second language (L2) listening, relatively ignored for many years within applied linguistics, has today come into its own. Consequently, how to make students aware of the listening skills they are employing and also awaken university studies’ consciousness in the listening comprehension process for their further improvement becomes substantially important.
Therefore, this qualitative study aimed to discover what listening strategies were used by university students, and how the strategies use varied with language proficiency within relatively low and higher proficiency groups. All participants were university juniors. The one-to-one interviews were conducted, and the think-aloud method was employed to elicit their listening strategies used in the English listening comprehension process. In addition, a pretest was carried out by using a high-intermediate GEPT simulated listening test in order to differentiate participants’ language proficiency. Afterwards, data analysis based on qualitative methodologies involved sorting out listening strategies the participants employed in the listening situations as well as observing their listening mental processes. Interesting findings were related to the relationship between the participants’ proficiency levels and their strategy use.
The results of the current study indicated that some metacognitive, cognitive, socio-affective, and additional strategies which differed from previous findings (for example, conversing in English, self-study, and word by word) differences existed between two proficiency groups, when they listened to English tasks or communicated with people in daily conversations. A number of research findings regarding the L2 strategy use of different proficient students (Chamot, 1987; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Goh, 1998; Peterson, 2001; Flowerdew & Miller, 2005) have complementarily supported that language learners with different language proficiency used metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective strategies in their language comprehension. Furthermore, the results showed that these differences differentiated the English learners with relatively low level from relatively high level.
On the other hand, the present results had the same perspective as Goh’s (1998) think-aloud research, which validated that it is still difficult to determine the wide and flexible use that made relatively higher English listeners more competent than low English listeners. On the contrary, these research findings differed from some research findings (Peterson, 2001; Lau, 2006; McKeown & Gentilucci, 2007) proposed that good learners have better strategy competence and can use strategy better than poor learners.
In sum, this study has findings that contributed to the research line on listening strategy use, provided additional knowledge for our understanding of language learners’ use of strategies in making sense of what they hear, and reveals implications for both language programs and teachers. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are provided at the end of the study. Finally, the qualitative validation was checked through participants’ opinions of the transcribed information, and data triangulation of two research protocols as well as literature review was also included in this research.
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