To counter listening comprehension difficulties, listening strategies are employed and taught in language classrooms. More proficient listeners are found to use strategies more often and with wider ranges while less-proficient listeners tend to be negatively affected by linguistic and attentional constraints (Berne, 2004). As listening to a foreign
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language can sometimes be difficult and demands full attention, application of listening strategies require certain level of language proficiency (Ridgway, 2000).
Forty English majors in Egypt participated in Ghoneim’s (2013) study of strategy use. It is found that students with different levels of proficiency encounter similar problems but utilize strategies with different level of frequency. Top-down strategies, especially the use of background knowledge, are particularly prevalently used among advanced students. And intermediate students rely more on word by word meaning and choose to move on even if comprehension is affected.
O’malley, Chamot and Küpper (1989) find that students’ listening strategy use parallel with listening process, with attention being a fundamental factor. The think-aloud protocol reveals that listeners monitor their listening, elaborate the contents with personal and world knowledge, and make inference, sometimes in the form of self-questioning. Effective listeners use both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies while ineffective listeners are often restricted in individual words.
Bacon (1992) compares students’ strategy use in the face of different levels of listening inputs. It is suggested that listeners employ more text-based strategies on more difficult inputs. And more monitoring strategies are found for easier inputs. People who make personal connection with the inputs could comprehend more successfully, which also indicates the importance of background knowledge use.
Some scholars try to see beyond strategy use and other factors. Salahshour, Sharifi, and Nedasalahshour (2012) conduct research on Iranian high school students to see the relationship between listening strategy use, listening proficiency, and student gender.
With students’ self-report and their English listening test, it is found that students show medium frequency of strategy use, with meta-cognitive strategies being used the most
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frequently and cognitive strategies used the least. More strategy use is found among students of higher proficiency and of female gender.
In a longitudinal study, Graham, Santos, and Vanderplank (2008) investigates two lower-intermediate learners of French for six months. While listening, one of the students predicts words, writes visual prompts and selects attention on particular words.
The other student double checks his interpretation with given information, vocalizes the heard words, and seems to automatize his strategy use. The stable use of strategies over time is found in two students, with the pre-existing difference of proficiency still persisting after six months. The authors suggest that strategy use is highly individualized and strategy instruction be taught with allowance for students’ own selection and evaluation.
Strategy use is also related to students’ self-efficacy, which is the main focus of the literature review in the next section. In this part, some study of listening strategies and self-efficacy will be discussed briefly. For instance, preservice language teachers with higher self-efficacy are found to listen to English songs, watch English movies or news more frequently than teachers of lower self-efficacy. They also guess meaning in the context and are active in checking words on dictionaries or with friends (Wong, 2005).
In another study done by Adnan and Mohamad (2011), students first hear specific information, refer to reference material, and check for their prediction. It is confirmed that students’ listening self-efficacy is significantly correlated with reading, listening, speaking, and vocabulary strategy use. And in fact, self-efficacy is correlated with all language learning strategies.
On investigating strategy use, self-efficacy, and proficiency, Yilmaz (2010) concludes that students with good and fair levels of self-efficacy exhibit significantly
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more cognitive strategy use compared with those of poor self-efficacy students. The same situation goes for compensation strategies. But for metacognitive strategies, there is a significant difference between good and poor self-efficacy students but not between good and fair or fair and poor comparison. The emerging pattern suggests that students with higher self-efficacy use more cognitive, compensation, and metacognitive strategies.
When proficiency and age issues are brought to the study of language learning strategies and self-efficacy beliefs, Magogwe and Oliver (2007) find that their Boswana students’ strategy use increases with proficiency but the preference of their strategy use varies. Primary kids tend to use social, metacognitive and cognitive strategies more.
Secondary school students utilize metacognitive and social strategies the most. And the ranking of strategies for tertiary level students is metacognitive, cognitive, social, affective, memory, and compensation strategies. The result of their self-efficacy also shows that these participants demonstrate positive and significant correlation of self-efficacy beliefs and strategy use.
Even when self-efficacy study is coped with reading and writing strategy use, similar results emerge. Singaporean school children with higher self-efficacy are found to command more strategies in both reading and writing. Students with high self-efficacy perform more goal-setting and planning, comprehension enhancement, attention management, and monitoring and evaluation while reading. For writing, higher self-efficacy students tend to use activate prior knowledge, plan, monitor, draft, control quality and use good vocabulary more than those with lower self-efficacy (Gong, Zhang, Zhang, Kiss & Ang-Tay, 2011).
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