商务英语专业学生论文

分类号：学校代码：11460学号：06201103南京晓庄学院本科生学士学位论文英语专业大学生听力策略使用情况调查Investigation into Listening Strategy for EnglishMajors所在院（系）：行知学院学生：陆洋指导老师：蒋晓霞研究起止日期：2009年9月至2010年3月二○一○年三月学位论文独创性声明本人郑重声明：本论文是本人在导师的指导下独立从事研究取得的成果。

文中除以参引或注释形式标明出处者外，不含任何其他个人或机构已发表或未发表的著述或研究结果。

对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和机构，均已在“致谢”中加以说明。

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本人签名———————年月日Abstract and Key WordsAbstract:The purpose of the study is to find out the listening strategies employed by Business-English majors. The subjects involved in investigation were two classesmajored in Business-English in Nanjing XiaoZhuang college. They were asked tocomplete a listening strategies questionnaire. Based on the findings, suggestions aremade that listeners should have a comprehensive system of knowledge about listeningtasks and listening strategies. Also, they should be clear about personal factors thatmay facilitate listening. Teachers should conduct strategy-based instruction byweaving strategy instruction into language teaching. Besides, the limitations of theinvestigation and the areas for further research on listening strategies are alsoproposed. However, it is assumed that the study may provide a truthful description oflistening strategies used by college Business-English major and offer some helpfulsuggestions to the teaching of listening and the improvement of listeners’ ability.Key words: listening comprehension; meta-cognitive strategies; cognitive strategies;social/affective strategies摘要：本文对南京晓庄学院两个商务英语班学生进行听力策略调查研究，目的在于发现商务英语班学生使用什么样的听力策略。

本次调查的对象是两个商务英语班的学生。

调查工具是一份听力策略调查问卷通过研究提供几点建议：在听力学习中，学生应注意提高自己的听力策略意识。

应该对自己及听力学习任务和听力学习策略有一个全面的认知。

教师应将听力策略的培训与听力教学结合起来。

本研究结果肯定了听力策略的运用在听力教学中的积极作用，对听力教学和策略培训有一定的指导意义。

关键词：听力理解；元认知策略；认知策略；社会/情感策略CONTENTS1. Introduc tion (1)2. Definitions and Classifications of Listening Strategies (2)2.1 Definitions of Listening Comprehension…………………………………………………...2.2 The Importance of Listening Comprehension……………………………………………….2.3 Classifications of Listening Strategies………………………………………………………3. Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension (3)3.1 Weak Basis of Knowledge……………………………………………………....3.2Different Culture Backgrounds………………………………………………….3.3 Psychological Factors…………………………………………………………...4. Methods of Investigation (4)4.1 Subjects………………………………………………………………………….4.2 Instruments……………………………………………………………………...4.3 Data Analysis……………………………………………………………………5. Implications and Suggestion (7)5.1 Major Findings of the Investigation……………………………………………..5.2 Listening Strategy Instruction…………………………………………………...5.3 Suggestion to Listeners and Teachers……………………………………………6. Conclusion (8)Investigation into Listening Strategy for EnglishMajors1.IntroductionLearning strategies play an important role in the language learning. People can also use them to solve the existing problems and complete the learning tasks successfully. The correlative researches abroad have shown that meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies which are advocated by O’Malley & Chamot (1990) are the three main aspects of listening strategies. Learning strategies are also exerting an influence on listening comprehension. However, in china, influenced by the old-fashioned teaching methodology, listening is always considered as the weak item of many students. Researchers focus on the listening strategy since 1990s. In our country, the research began in the early 90s of last century and developed rapidly in the late 90. We can find no matter in the research depth, area and a method, the listening strategy is developing in depth direction. Li Dong Mei (2002) thinks in china the researches in the listening strategy mainly including the students who learned foreign languages(especially those who learned English), the research contents are Chinese students listening foreigner’s conversation in listenin g classes, so these researchers are mainly interested in the process of listening comprehension in communication style. Wen Qiufang & Wang Lifei thinks Chinese university students whether they are English majors or Non-English majors have the desire of learning English well. But they have some differences in language proficiency and learning environment so they are not at the same level of listening proficiency. Jiang Zukang thinks the reasons of these differences are teaching methods, managements and students and so on. The listening strategy in foreign county including two aspects: one is foreign language listening strategy research; the other is the training in foreign language strategy research. O’Malley& Chamot(1990) found those students are good at listening and poor ones have obvious different ways in learning strategy. At the same time V andergrift thinks we should pay attention to the listening strategy at the beginning of listening. People have made a great achievement in the listening strategy research, such as listening、speaking and reading, but not balanced. Especially the listening strategy of English majors, researchers haven’t made any de ep study. So the aim of this thesis is to investigate the listening strategies for listening activities used by college business English majors, and how to train these strategies in listening classroom2. Definitions and Classifications of Listening strategiesIn order to discuss the importance of using mental techniques in students’ listening comprehension, it is necessary to examine and understand the nature of both listening comprehension and listening strategies. Without such an understanding, it will be difficult to see the relation between the uses of listening strategies and students’ listening comprehension ability in the target language. This chapter will be concentrated on listening comprehension, learning strategies and listening strategies.2.1 Definitions of Listening ComprehensionWhat’s listening comprehension? In its narrowest definition, it is the process by which listeners come to an interpretation on a stream of speech. In its broader definition it also includes the process by which listener use those interpretation for their intended purpose (Clark and Clark, 1977).The diversity of definition reflects different perspectives of listening study and research. Nevertheless, no matter from which perspective, it may find that important role of listening in the fields of communication and foreign language learning. In 1996, the International listening association gave a de finition to the listening comprehension: “Listening is a process of receiving and constructing meaning forms and a process of reacting to verbal and/or non-verbal information.”(Carrier, 1999:83). All recent studies describe listening as an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express.In Longman Dictionary of language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, the process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language is called listening comprehension. The study of listening comprehension processes in second language learning focuses on the role of individual linguistic units (e.g. phonemes, words, grammatical structures) as well as the role of listeners’ expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and the topic.2.2 The Importance of Listening ComprehensionIn the past twenty years, teachers and scholars have gradually understood the importanc e of listening comprehension and the significant role it plays in language learning and communication. Listening is the invisible part of language learning. Y ou can see people turn the pages of the books they read, you can not observe listening. Y ou can only observe the result of it. Listening comprehension is anything but a passive activity. It is a complex active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it immediately within the social-culture context of the utterance. As the frequently employed skill in everyday language use, it is also very important in the language classroom because it provides input for the learners. Most learners spend more time in listening to the foreign language than in producing it themselves. It is not only that they must understand what is said to them during face-to-face interaction. There is also a vast range of situations where they will be silent receiving of messages directed at them from radio, television, announcements and a multitude of other sources.V andergrift also emphasizes this usefulness of listening skills. He theorizes that listening comprehension should be given pre-eminence, due to its advantages of four different types: cognitive, efficient，utilitarian, and affective. Cognitively, to place speaking before listening is to put the cart before the horse. If so, listeners, learners must be trapped in comprehension overload. To make the listening process more efficient and to make more efficient use of the time of both learners and teachers, listening ought to focus on more meaningful language use and listening materials ought to be good language models from the teacher and realistic recordings. The utility advantage of listening skill encourages the learning and teaching of listening comprehension strategies. Finally, listening as a receptive skill, has no pressure of early oral production, thus, psychologically it brings out earlier achievement and a sense of success rather than potentialembarrassment about producing sounds in public. From the above reasons, listening comprehension plays an important role in the process of language acquisition and learning.2.3 Classifications of Listening S trategies.Despite the importance of listening, transient in nature, listening has proved to be the most difficult skill to research (McDonough, 1995). Therefore, the number of studies of listening strategies is relatively small.V andergrift (1999) claims, “Listening comprehension is anything but a passive activity. It is a complex, active process in which the listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures interpret stress and intonation, retain what is gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the large socio-cultural context of the utterance.”He investigates the effects of strategy training on listening comprehension in some high schools in Canada learning French, which finds out that the largest percentage of the strategies reported by the subjects is cognitive strategies. The result of the study also suggests that successful listeners are better at employing meta-cognitive strategies to facilitate their cognitive processing of input information. On the other hand, the less effective listeners lack the regulating control of meta-cognitive strategies to help them in efficient comprehension.Language learning strategies research has also received attention in china since mid-90s, and a number of studies have been carried out (Wen Qiufang, 1995; Jiang Zukang, 1994; Qin Xiaoqing, 1996, etc.). But as for the research on listening comprehension strategies, there are only several studies reported in China.Much of the early research (Rubin, 1994) concentrates on the compiling inventory of listening strategies, that listeners are observed to use or reported to use. Little attempt is made to classify the strategies into general categories. With the development of researches, how to classify the listening strategies is becoming more and more urgent. From the previous, it has been found that researches in foreign language and second language listening strategy instruction, as in the case of strategy training in other fields, are moving from focusing on some specific strategies to how to teach those strategies: They can be divided into three groups according to O’Malley and Chamot (1990) classification of learning strategies, namely, meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social/affective strategies. The meta-cognitive strategies include planning、directed attention、selective attention、self-management、self-monitoring and self-evaluation. Cognitive strategies include internecine、translation、elaboration、transfer、note-taking and keyword method. Social/affective strategies include cooperation and self talk.3 Factors Affecting Listening ComprehensionListening comprehension is complicated and dynamic process, which is affected by many factors. Without these factors, the nature of listening comprehension process cannot be really understood. The use of listening strategies is also determined to a great extent by these factors. There are non-linguistic, linguistic, internal factors as well external factors.Different experts hold different views about the factors affecting listening. Boyle makes a detailed classification of the factors affecting listening comprehension based on his research in this field. They are listeners’ factors and factors in the material and medium. The following is the detailed description of the three types. First are listener factors such as physical & educational,intellectual and psychological. Second are Speaker factors such as speaker’s production and personality. The last are the factors in the material medium.3.1 W eak Basis of KnowledgeSome students have basic language skill barriers, such as the aspects of phonetics and intonation. Because of these problems, they usually have great difficulty in English classes. The most important point is these students don’t have They don’t pay attention to accumulating the words and even don’t know the common words. They don’t know the meanings although identify the phonetics, all these weak basics effect the listening level. When listening, we should write down the relative information as soon as possible, especially the information such as names、addresses、time、ages etc. We can use some special signs to remember the main points and details. In normal times we should form the habit of taking notes, it can reduce the memory burden in listening and the understanding barriers, thereby we can find the answers easily.3.2 Different culture backgroundsWhen we learn the phonetics, we should also learn the culture of English countries. Cultural background can help us better understand the listening material. Each country has its own history and different culture, if you know little about them you can’t understand when you make a listening. Also there are many kinds of culture in the world; each culture has its special meaning you must know them clearly, so it is important to know the culture background.3.3 Psychological FactorsThe process of listening comprehension is a complex process of psychological activities. It includes the listeners’ motivation and sense of purpose while listening, the attitude to the speaker and the message, and the listener’s powers of attention and concentration.When we begin to learn to listen, we should stress the importance of grooming well psychological quality. First is to help students establish confidence; strengthen the courage for overcoming the difficulties. Teachers should tell them definitely, listening is an important way to learn English well. At the same time, it is very difficult to listening well; we should study hard to overcome the difficulties. The second is teachers must make students feel relax in class to remove their scaring、worrying and disliking. The last is teachers should encourage students to compete each other, arousing their interest. Teachers should praise them in time when they make progresses. So keeping well psychological can take an important affect in forming good listening habit.4. Methods of Investigation4.1 SubjectsThe subjects of this investigation are students from two Business-English classes at the author’s college. About 60 participants took a listening strategies questionnaire. Since the use of listening strategies employed by good and poor listeners will be compared, it is necessary for us to define high-ability and low ability listeners. The instrument used is questionnaire given by the research. Class three has 30 students, class four has 30students.Having had nearly four years’ study English at college, it is generally believed that they have already developed their own methods of learning, including their own methods in the listening comprehension study. So the results of this investigation could show the students uttermost use oflearning strategies.4.2 InstrumentsThe instrument is used to gather the data for this investigation: A questionnaire on listening strategies. Below is brief description of the instrument.The 60 subjects were asked to fill in the listening strategies questionnaire (see Appendix Ⅰ)，60 questionnaires were issued and 60 regained. No obsolete. The questionnaire includes two parts:1)The first part is designed to obtain the personal information of the subjects. It includesgender, class and major.2)The second part contains 39 listening strategies. They are collected and summarized fromthe previous investigation made by other researchers as well as the research’s own teaching and learning experience. The questionnaire is based on the findings of previous studies by O’Malley and Chamot(1990) and written in chinese by Cheng Guyu.4.3 Data AnalysisThis investigation was completed in November, 2009. The data collection of the investigation was mainly carried in students’ own regular English classroom in order to minimize the impact of the environment.Different values for the five choices in each question: score 1 point to choice A, 2 points to choice B, 3 points to choice C, 4 points to choice D, and 5 points to choice E. When they finished the questionnaires, the statistics for each question are written in the table1. I analyzed the statistics step by step. First I collected the numbers of each question of the each listening strategy and got the total scores then calculate the average of this strategy. Last I analyzed the average of two classes of each listening strategy.The data collection of the investigation was mainly carried in the classroom in order to minimize the impact of the environment. The students were required to fulfill the questionnaire immediately in class, the result of the questionnaire were written and analyzed by myself. Descriptive statistics in this investigation include the numbers of subjects, minimum and maximum scores, means, and standard deviations to show the total frequency of use for each listening strategy.5 Implications and Suggestions5.1 Major Findings of the Investigation1)From the table we can find the cognitive strategies are most frequently used, then themeta-cognitive strategies, social/affective strategies are least frequently used. In these listening strategies selective attention is the most used by the students, cooperation is the least used. The two classes are nearly same by using social/affective strategies and a little difference in using cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies.2)In listening activities, as a whole, the subjects of this investigation do employ listeningstrategies to help them improve listening ability. Among three major listening strategies, the frequency of using the strategies of class 4 is more than class 3. As far as the subcategories are concerned, they frequently use selective attention, directed attention, self-management, inference, elaboration, keyword method, note-taking, sometimes use planning, self-evaluation, translation, transfer, self-talk, and seldom use cooperation. Both two classes have some same strategy awareness.5.2 Implication: Listening strategy instructionImplication drawn from the research will be discussed in terms of two areas. The first is to improve listeners’awareness of using listening strategies in listening activities, especially encourage listeners to use meta-cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies. From the investigation, it can be concluded that the overall frequency of the use of listening strategies by the subjects of this investigation is not high, and only reaches a medium frequency level. Although listening proficiency is affected by different elements, listening strategies should not be ignored. The frequencies of the social/affective strategies by the subjects are not very high. So when listening, they are not good at controlling their anxiety, encouraging themselves, asking questions or cooperating with other students. So teachers should help students to gain self-confidence in listening activities, and they can also try to help students analyze the causes of their anxiety and teach them to lower their anxiety while listening. The second is suggested procedure for listening strategy training in the listening classroom. This part focuses on exploring the pedagogical sequence of English listening teaching, that is, on how to train these strategies to enhance students’ ability. In light of other research’s pedagogical sequence of pre-listening, listening and post-listening, ( V andergrift,1999 ), and integrating with the practical classroom situation, this paper presents that in listening course, teachers should introduce and reinforce the listening strategies to facilitate students’ listening activities.5.3 Suggestion to Listeners and T eachersOne of the purposes of the thesis is to encourage listeners to promote their listening strategies awareness. As a listener, he should be clear about demands and nature of listening tasks and what strategies are likely to be effective in listening. Firstly, listeners should be equipped with linguistic knowledge and schematic knowledge. Secondly, listeners should get rid of misconceptions. Thirdly, listeners are encouraged to have more opportunities to expose themselves in English speech by listening to English broadcast and English tapes, watching English TV programs and seeing English films. In this way, they will be more familiar with the features of English speech and overcome their anxiety while listening. They may acquire the ability of learning in aself-directed way and begin to take responsibility for effective learning by themselves.In the light of other researchers’pedagogical sequence of pre-listening, listening and post-listening, college English teachers can teach how to use listening strategies in listening activities in the following steps. Firstly, before listening, teaching may use pre-listening activities to activate students’background knowledge or make clear to students what they are going to listening and why. During the listening activities, teachers should encourage students to participate actively in the listening text, for example, actively making inferences from the listening text. Each time after the listening is completed; teachers should guide the students to evaluate both their methods and the outcomes of the listening tasks.6 ConclusionsIn conclusion, the research has completed the study. The study has reached the expected aims. It intends to find out listening strategies employed by college Business-English major in listening activities. In our college cognitive strategies are the most frequently used by the business English major students, meta-cognitive strategies tend to be used sometimes, to them, the least used listening strategies in listening activities are social/affective strategies. Among the three major strategies, the significant differences exist in meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies, but not in social/affective strategies.Based on the findings of this investigation, several implications and suggestions are put forward. The college English major teachers should cultivate students’awareness of using listening strategies in English listening comprehension, and encourage students to use meta-cognitive strategies as well as social/affective strategies.Bibliography:[1] Carrier, K. The Social Environment of Second Language Listening: Status Plays a Role in Comprehension? The Modern Language Journal, 83:34 -37, 1999.[2] Clark, H. & Clark, E. Psychology and Language. Newyork: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich[3] J. Michal O’Malley & Anna Uhl Chamot. Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition [M].Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.[4] McDonough, S.H. Strategy and Skill in Learning a Foreign Language. London: Edward Arnold, 1995.[5]Rubin, J. 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