您可以在百度里搜索“元认知策略研究：二语听力理解与附带词汇习得（英文版） 艾草文学(www.321553.xyz)”查找最新章节！

　　2.2.3 Listening StrategiesThe following section will review studies related to listening strategies, firstly, by presenting a definition and classification of listening strategies, secondly, by presenting studies conducted to investigate the use of listening strategies by FL/L2 learners, and thirdly, by reviewing a number of studies on listening strategy training.

　　2.2.3.1 Definition and Classification of Listening Strategies

　　Strategies are special techniques or activities that learners apply to facilitate the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information (Oxford, 1990). Applied to listening, cognitive strategies are used to infer, predict, interpret, store and recall information acquired from listening input; metacognitive strategies are used to plan, monitor and evaluate mental processes and to manage difficulties during listening; social strategies serve to enlist the help or cooperation of interlocutors to facilitate listening comprehension; and affective strategies enable the listener to manage emotions, motivation and attitudes that influence comprehension.

　　With respect to the classification of listening strategies, O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) taxonomy of cognitive, metacognitive and social-affective strategies and Vandergrift's (1996; 1997b) refined version of that have received the widest acceptance among listening strategy researchers. Grounded in information-processing theory (Anderson, 1980), these taxonomies have facilitated the clarification and categorization of different listening strategies.

　　O'Malley and Chamot (1990) differentiated listening strategies in terms of phases in the listening comprehension process. For example, students reported using attentional strategies that maintained their concentration on the task during perceptual processing, such as being aware of when to stop attending and when to make an effort to redirect attention to the task. Students also reported segmenting portions of the oral text based on cues to meaning or on structural characteristics during the parsing phase, such as by listening to larger chunks of the text, inferring meaning from context for unfamiliar words and using both top-down and bottom-up approaches to process the text for comprehension. In the utilization phase, learners reported using different types of elaboration (i. e., using prior knowledge from outside the text or conversational context and relating it to knowledge gained from the text or conversation in order to fill in missing information) to assist comprehension and recall and they also used elaboration to support inferencing the meaning of unfamiliar words. O'Malley and Chamot thus related different listening strategies to the different listening processes. They associated perceptual processing with selective attention and self-monitoring, parsing with grouping and inferencing from the context, and utilization with elaboration from world knowledge, personal experiences, or self-questioning (1990, p.133).

　　Table 2 provides a comprehensive list of listening comprehension strategies, as defined in a figure by Vandergrift (1997b).

　　Table 2 Listening Comprehension Strategies and Their Definitions

　　(Continued)

　　(Continued)

　　(Source: Vandergrift, 1997b, p.392-395)

　　2.2.3.2 Research on Language Learners' Use of Listening Strategies

　　In general, researchers investigating listening strategies (e. g., Bacon, 1992; Flowerdew & Miller, 1992; Murphy, 1985; O'Malley, Chamot & Kupper, 1989; O'Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Kupper & Russo, 1985; Vandergrift, 1997a, 1997b) have found that listeners who were able to flexibly use various listening strategies were more successful in comprehending spoken texts, whereas listeners without the ability to apply adequate listening strategies concentrated on the text by word-for-word decoding. Therefore, the use of listening strategies seems to be an important indicator of whether a learner is a skillful listener or not.

　　Studies have examined more-proficient and less-proficient listeners, and findings indicate that more-proficient listeners use a wider variety of strategies with greater flexibility, frequency, sophistication, and appropriateness to meet task demands (e. g. Goh, 2002; Smidt & Hegelheimer, 2004), and employ more configurations of strategies compared to less proficient listeners (e. g. Vandergrift, 1997b; 2003a).

　　Using a think-aloud method, Murphy (1985) examined the strategies used by adult ESL listeners in academic lectures. Murphy determined that more skilled listeners were open and flexible, using more strategies and a greater variety of different strategies. Less skilled listeners, on the other hand, either concentrated too much on the text or on their own world knowledge. Murphy concluded that the more skilled listeners engaged in more active interaction with the text and used a wider variety of strategies that interconnect like “links in a fence. ”Listening strategies, according to Murphy, should be seen as “interweaving components to a single animated language process” (p.40).

　　Vandergrift (1997b) looked at differences in strategy use by learners of different proficiency levels. Using students of French in their first, second, and fifth years of language study (labeled as novice) and students in their eighth year of study (labeled as intermediate), Vandergrift found that the novice listeners relied heavily on elaboration, inferencing, and transfer to build up meaning and that they overcame their limited knowledge of words by using what they knew (cognates). This finding led him to suggest that the cognitive constraints of processing at the novice level are so great that there is little room for metacognitive processing strategies such as monitoring.

　　Goh (2002) reported on the broad strategies and specific techniques (referred to as “tactics”by Goh) employed by a group of Chinese adult learners of English as a second language in Singapore. Both cognitive and metacognitive strategies were identified. The cognitive strategies included inferencing, elaboration, prediction, translation, contextualization and visualization, and the metacognitive strategies consisted of self-monitoring (referred to by Goh as “directed attention”), comprehension monitoring, selective attention and self-evaluation (referred to as “comprehension evaluation”). As for strategy use differences between learners of different listening ability, both the high-ability and the low-ability students reported a combination of the use of prior knowledge, text and context. One important difference was that the high-ability students manifested a greater number and higher quality of inferencing, comprehension monitoring and comprehension evaluation strategies.

　　Vandergrift (2003a) examined the types of listening strategies used by more skilled and less skilled 7th graders while they listened to authentic texts in French. In the two-year longitudinal study, the progress of an experimental and a control group of 36 learners was compared to address the following two research questions: (1) What are the strategies that junior high school learners of French use while listening to authentic text in French? (2) What are the differences in the use of listening strategies reported by more skilled and less skilled listeners? In the listening comprehension test, authentic dialogues in French were first presented followed by multiple-choice questions that required the learners to verify their comprehension. By using the three-category listening strategy taxonomy (i. e., metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective) as well as the sub-strategies within each category, as previously shown in Table 2, Vandergrift used think-aloud to gather data. The mean and the percentage use of each strategy by the more skilled and less skilled listeners were also calculated, and the quantitative analysis resulted in the following findings:

　　(a) with the exception of the “evaluation”strategy, all the metacognitive and cognitive strategies were used by the listeners;

　　(b) by mainly using such metacognitive strategies as “comprehension monitoring, ”the more skilled listeners had better control over the listening process;

　　(c) the more skilled listeners demonstrated openness and flexibility in their approach to listening by using more cognitive strategies, such as “question elaboration”;

　　(d) and the less skilled listeners, on the other hand, appeared to engage in more direct translation strategies, involving bottom-up processing, which impeded the development of a conceptual framework and the efficient construction of meaning.

　　By analyzing the think-aloud protocols of the listeners, Vandergrift's study showed how a given strategy or a particular combination of strategies was used to build meaning in the process of listening. In his study, a less skilled listener appeared to rely on translation and bottom-up processing, which resulted in superficial engagement with the text and limited construction of its meaning. In contrast, a more skilled listener seemed to employ a more dynamic approach by combining bottom-up andtop-down processesto allocate more resources to organize more metacognitive strategies.

　　The studies reviewed above have shed light on listening strategy research in a number of ways.

　　(a) the more skilled listeners were found to use more metacognitive strategies (Goh 2002; Vandergrift 1997b & 2003a).

　　(b) the less skilled listeners made frequent use of more superficial strategies, such as translation (Murphy 1985; Vandergrift 1997b & 2003a).

　　(c)and the proficiency level of the learners was found to have a clear impact on the strategies they used. That is, the more skilled listeners were more purposeful and flexible in approaching the listening task, whereas their less skilled peers were more passive (Murphy 1985; Vandergrift 2003a).

　　A review of research into listening strategies by Macaro, Graham, & Vanderplank(2007) identified the strategies that have consistently been advocated as playing an important part in the listening process:

　　1. making predictions about the likely content of a passage;

　　2. selectively attending to certain aspects of the passage, deciding to “listen out for”particular words or phrases or idea units;

　　3. monitoring and evaluating comprehension—that is, checking that one is in fact understanding or has made the correct interpretation; and

　　4. using a variety of clues (linguistic, contextual, and background knowledge) to infer the meaning of unknown words. (p.78-79)

　　2.2.3.3 Research on Listening Strategy Instruction

　　As reviewed on the previous section, several studies have examined the range and type of listening strategies used by good language learners and the differences in strategy use between more and less effective listeners. However, it is not until the last two decades that studies focusing on teaching listening strategies in classroom settings have been documented.

　　Strategy-based instruction focuses on a range of strategies deemed appropriate to listening in “real world”situations or tasks (Mendelsohn, 1994). It focuses on helping listeners to develop top-down processes in order to extract meaning from contextual and cotextual clues or by educated guessing based on other available information to compensate for comprehension breakdowns (Vandergrift, 2007a). Nevertheless, since listening processes can never be used in isolation due to the interdependence of bottom-up and top-down listening processes (Tsui & Fullilove, 1998), listening strategy instruction should also cater for strategies involved in bottom-up processes which can facilitate meaning-based comprehension.

　　Some studies of FL/L2 listening strategy instruction have reported improved performance in listening comprehension of those learners who received listening strategy instruction. Thompson and Rubin's (1996) classroom-based, longitudinal study of foreign-language learners provided strong evidence that strategy training is effective in helping language learners comprehend oral input. Thompson and Rubin taught university students who were learning Russian as a foreign language to apply metacognitive and cognitive listening strategies. The cognitive strategies taught in the study included a) “Drama”, with a focus on the story line, b) “Interview”, with a focus on question-and-answer sequences, and c) “News”, with a focus on who, what, where, when, and how. Metacognitive strategies included planning, defining goals, monitoring, and evaluating. The results confirmed that systematic instruction in the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies did improve listening comprehension. The students in the experimental group showed a significant improvement in the ability to comprehend video text compared to the group that was not given instruction on listening strategies. Anecdotal evidence in this study indicated that the use of metacognitive strategies helped students manage how they listened. Although the number of the participants in the research was not large, the evidence of this study indicates that instruction in strategies can help students to capitalize on the language input they receive, and to improve their performance on listening tasks.

　　Focusing on academic listening tasks over a six-week period, Carrier (2003) gave a class of seven volunteer U. S. high school ESL students with 15 class sessions of explicit listening strategy instruction. The sessions, each about 20-30 minutes long, focused on strategies for developing discrete listening skills (bottom-up) and video listening skills (top-down) as well as effective note taking. Data were collected from pretests and posttests, which were of the same format and focus. The results showed that the explicit listening strategy instruction significantly helped the group of high school ESL students improve their discrete listening ability, their video listening and note taking abilities. Despite this positive result, methodological concerns limit the generalizability of the findings (e. g., the small sample size, only 7 participants).

　　To raise the awareness of the listening process through tasks designed to develop effective listening strategies, Vandergrift (2003b) undertook a study with French-as-asecond-language university students. After being told the topic of the listening task, the students completed part of a worksheet in which they listed their predictions about the information they might hear, and then they listened to the text, checked the predictions and vocabulary they had anticipated, and added new information. Next, the students worked in pairs to compare and discuss their understanding before listening a second time, which was followed by a class discussion. After the third time of listening, students wrote a personal reflection on their own listening processes and the strategies they might use in future to improve their listening comprehension. The written reflections given by the students revealed positive reactions to the strategies, increased motivation and understanding of their own thinking processes during the listening tasks.

　　Nevertheless, some concerns arise, regarding the effectiveness of listening strategy instruction. As Graham and Macaro (2008) noted, “evidence from the previous research that strategy instruction can lead to short-term improvement in listening as measured by pretests and posttests, is inconclusive” (p.752).

　　Besides, contrary to the studies reviewed above, other studies revealed very limited and slight improvement in listening or mixed results. For example, O'Malley et al. (1985) found differences in the gain scores of three groups of ESL learners who received different amounts and types of strategy instruction, but the differences were not statistically significant.

　　Seo (2000) reported inconsistent results for listening strategy instruction directed at news videotexts. In the study, Seo initially used a multiple-choice Japanese Language Proficiency Test to determine the baseline listening ability of 10 Australian tertiary level Japanese-as-a-foreign-language learners, and then chose three cognitive strategies (identifying key terms, elaborating, and inferencing) and taught them to a randomly assigned group of 5 learners. After a five-week period of instruction and a one-week review session, the intervention group and non-intervention group were given some videotexts followed by a comprehension test consisting of multiple choice, true/false and key-word questions. Though noticeable improvements in performance were witnessed in the intervention group, the non-intervention group also recorded gains and even outperformed the intervention group in five out of the seven posttests.

　　However, Seo's findings should be viewed with caution due to the following facts: ①The study involved a very small sample size (i. e., only ten participants) ; ②The results from the 7 videotext tests were compared with results of an audio-only pre-test, and thus involved an unconvincing comparison.

　　Another limitation is that none of the studies reviewed above included a delayed posttest, and thus could not address whether any advantage of the strategy training was maintained over time. Furthermore, though in some studies short-term improvement in listening was demonstrated in a posttest, this might have been because of the similarity between the type of tasks used in the posttest and the strategy instruction that the participants had received in the study.

　　In light of the various problems of earlier listening studies, this study will attempt to ensure a more valid design by:

　　(a) employing a large sample to allow for generalizability;

　　(b) investigating the durability of the strategy training by using a battery of pretest, posttest and delayed posttest, all of which are identical in both format and content;

　　(c) conducting both the pretest and posttest in the same session of instruction in order to avoid the possibility of influencing the posttest result by any out-of-class activity. 元认知策略研究：二语听力理解与附带词汇习得（英文版）