後設認知策略訓練對國中生英語聽力、聽力焦慮、後設認知意識影響之研究

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士論. 文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 後設認知策略訓練對國中生英語聽力、聽力焦慮、後設認知意識影響之研究. The Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Listening Proficiency, Listening Anxiety, and Metacognitive Awareness. 指導教授：程玉秀博士 Advisor: Dr. Yuh-show Cheng 研究生：王姝文. 中華民國一百零五年六月 June 2016.

(2) 摘要國中教育會考已於 2014 年開始加考英文聽力。為了增進國中學生聽力理解能力，教師進行聽力策略教學有其必要性。在眾多聽力策略中，後設認知策略尤為重要，它不僅能調整學生使用認知策略的方式以達到更有效的聽力理解，亦能培養學生獨立思考、自主學習的能力。本研究探討後設認知聽力策略教學對於國中學生的聽力表現、聽力焦慮及後設認知覺察的影響。來自北台灣某公立國中的 56 位八年級學生參與了這次的實驗，受試者分為實驗組(28 人)及對照組(28 人)兩組。實驗為期八週，在此期間，實驗組接受一週兩次共 16 次的後設認知聽力策略教學，教學過程中由研究者引導學生使用後設認知策略步驟來練習聽力。對照組每週亦練習相同的聽力題目，但未接受任何聽力策略教學。所有受試者在實驗前後都接受全民英檢初級聽力測驗，並在測驗後回答聽力焦慮量表(SLLAS)及後設認知覺察聽力量表(MALQ)，以檢視聽力焦慮程度及後設認知覺察的變化。研究者使用了描述性數據，t 檢定，及 ANCOVA 來分析學生的成績及量表填答變化。實驗結束後，兩組中進步最多及退步最多的各五位學生接受訪談，以了解受試者接受聽力測驗時的細節，包含聽力測驗時遇到的問題、焦慮情形、以及聽力測驗時所使用的策略。本研究發現實驗組在英語聽力測驗的得分並未顯著高於對照組；若與實驗組本身前測相比，則呈現顯著的退步。在焦慮層面，實驗組焦慮問卷的得分與對照組並無顯著差異，但對照組後測的得分顯著地低於其本身的前測，顯示對照組的焦慮程度在後測時顯著地降低。在後設認知策略覺察上，實驗組的表現顯著優於對照組，與實驗組本身前測相比亦呈現顯著的進步，尤其是在引導注意力和心譯兩個面向。學生的訪談中顯示出此教學法對於學生的聽力表現和焦慮程度未能有顯著的改善，但對於聽力後設認知覺察有顯著的提升。依據此研究的發現，我們提出一些在國中英語課堂上實施後設認知聽力教學的建議。. 關鍵字: 後設認知、聽力策略、焦慮、聽力學習成就. i.

(3) ABSTRACT Listening. comprehension. tests. have. been. officially. included. in. the. Comprehensive Assessment for Junior High School Students since 2014. To enhance students’ listening performance, it is essential for EFL teachers to teach listening strategies. Among the listening strategies, the metacognitive listening strategies are considered to be especially important because they not only help listeners regulate listening comprehension effectively but also help them become more self-regulated and independent. The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how metacognitive listening strategy instruction can affect EFL junior high school students’ listening proficiency, listening anxiety, and metacognitive awareness. The participants in the present study were 56 eighth grade students in a junior high school in northern Taiwan and they were divided into two groups, the experimental group and the comparison group. The experiment lasted for eight weeks. In the eight-week experiment, the experimental group received metacognitive listening strategy instruction, a process-based instruction which focuses on four major metacognitive strategies, twice a week. The comparison group received traditional listening instruction which merely provided listening comprehension exercises, without any instruction on listening strategies. The listening comprehension exercises the two groups did were the same. Before and after the experiment, both groups took GEPT listening tests, Second Language Listening Anxiety Scale (SLLAS), and Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) to reveal the participants’ changes in listening proficiency, anxiety level, and metacognitive awareness. Descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, paired-t tests, and ANCOVA were conducted to analyze the data. Interviews were conducted with five students that made greatest progress or regress in each of the two groups after the experiment to explore details of the listening process, including the difficulties the participants encountered, the anxiety they experienced, and the strategies they used in listening. The results showed that the two groups had no significant difference in the listening post-test, but the experimental group’s listening post-test score was significantly lower than its pre-test score. Similarly, the listening anxiety levels between the two groups did not differ significantly in the post-test, but the comparison group’s anxiety level on the post-test was significantly lower than its anxiety level on ii.

(4) the pre-test. The experimental group significantly outperformed the comparison group on metacognitive awareness on the post-test. Similarly, the experimental group’s metacognitive awareness scores on the post-test were also significantly higher than its pre-test scores, especially on the factors of directed attention and mental translation. According to the interviews with the experimental group, the metacognitive strategy instruction did not significantly improve the participants’ listening performance and anxiety, but the instruction significantly enhanced their metacognitive awareness on listening. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications are provided for metacognitive listening strategy instruction in junior high school English classes.. Key words: metacognitive awareness, metacognitive listening strategies, anxiety, listening performance. iii.

(5) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to many people whose help has been crucial to my success in completing this dissertation. Without their great support and assistance, it would not have been possible to complete this dissertation. First of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Yuh-show Cheng, who has done everything in guiding me throughout this dissertation. It would not have been possible to complete this study without her great support and valuable advices. In addition to her unfailing guidance on my thesis writing, Dr. Cheng is also an outstanding mentor for me. Whenever I encountered difficulties in thesis writing, she always provided instructions patiently. I benefitted a lot from her knowledge in the research filed and was inspired to be a wonderful teacher just like her. I also want to express my sincere appreciation to the other members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Huei-Chun Teng and Dr. Shu-Chen Huang, for their insightful comments and valuable suggestions. I am thankful to them for pointing out certain problems in this dissertation. Their helpful advices made the dissertation more organized and complete. Special gratitude is also extended to my colleague, Katie Hsu, and all the research participants. They have assisted me in finishing questionnaire survey and further interviews. I am deeply grateful for their cooperation and effort. Their practical support has made my research vision become a reality. Finally, my heartfelt appreciation goes out to my mother, my sister, and Joseph Lu, for their constant encouragement and mental support throughout the whole writing process.. iv.

(6) TABLE OF CONTENTS CHINESE ABSTRACT ….…………………………………………………………ⅰ ENGLISH ABSTRACT ….…………………………………………………………ⅱ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………..ⅳ TABLE OF CONTENTS ….………………………………………………….......ⅴ LIST OF TABLES ….……………………………………………….................. ⅷ LIST OF FIGURES ….………………………………………………..................ⅹ. CHPATER ONE INTRODUCTION……………………………………………1 Research Background ….………………………………………………....1 Importance of Listening Instruction…………………………………….1 Approaches to Listening Instruction …................................................2 Problems of Listening Instruction in Taiwan ………………………..........2 Effects of Listening Strategies on Performance and Learning ………...........3 Purpose of the Study ………………………………………………………4 Significance of the Study ………………………………………………….5. CHPATER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ……………………………………6 An Overview of Listening Comprehension ………………………………..6 The Process of Listening Comprehension…………………………….6 Factors Related to L2 Learners’ Listening Performance ………………8 Studies of Listening Difficulties …………………………………….........9 Foreign Language Listening Anxiety ……………………………………...10 Sources of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety …………………….10 Studies of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety and Listening Performance………………………………………………………………...12 Listening Instruction……………………………………………………….15 History of Listening Instruction …………………………………......15 Language Learning Strategies ……………………………………………..16 Categories of Listening Strategies ……………………………………17 Studies of Listening Strategy Use ……………………………………19 Metacognitive Listening Strategies ………………………………………..21 v.

(7) Definition of Metacognition ………………………………………….21 Categories of Metacognitive Listening Strategies ……………………22 Studies of Metacognitive Listening Strategies Use ……………………...23 Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction ………………………..25 Studies of Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction …………….25 Models of Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction …………….28. CHPATER THREE METHOD …………………………………………..…....31 Research Design ……………………………………………........................31 The Pilot Study………………………………………………………….31 Participants ……………………………………………………………..32 Data Collection Procedures ………………………………….…………32 Instruments ……………………………………………………………...32 Metacognitive Strategy Instruction Procedure ……………………………...37 Data Analysis Procedure…………………………………………………….41. CHPATER FOUR RESULTS …………………………………………..…..........43 Results of the Background Information Questionnaire……………………...43 Results of the Listening Comprehension Tests ……………………………...46 Results of the Second Language Listening Anxiety Scale ………………….49 Results of the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire …………55 Results of the Worksheets and the Interviews ………………………………62 Results of the Worksheets ……………………………………………….62 Strategies Assisting Listening Comprehension ………………………….62 Responses of the Interviews ……………………………………………..64. CHAPTER FIVE DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION.………………………...69 Metacognitive Strategy Instruction and Listening Performance ……………..69 Metacognitive Strategy Instruction and Listening Anxiety …………………..72 Metacognitive Strategy Instruction and Metacognitive Awareness ………….74 Implications of the Study ……………………………………………………..76 Limitation and Suggestions for Future Research ……………………………..79 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………81 vi.

(8) REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………….............82 Appendix A Background Information Questionnaire ………...….…………………...91 Appendix B Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire…………………….95 Appendix C Second Language Listening Anxiety Scale ………………................99 Appendix D A Sample of Listening Strategy Learning Worksheet ………...............101 Appendix E Semi-structured Interview Guidelines ……………………...................108. vii.

(9) LIST OF TABLES Table 1. The Factors of the MALQ ………………………………………………..35 Table 2. Descriptions of the Metacognitive Strategies Instructed …………………36 Table 3. Participants’ Reported Materials for English Listening Practice Outside of the Classroom …………………………………………………………. …44 Table 4. The Time Spent on English Listening in a Week …………………………44 Table 5. The Participants’ Listening Difficulties …………………………………..45 Table 6. Descriptive Statistics of the GEPT Listening Test ………………………..46 Table 7. Between-Group Comparison of Listening Comprehension Tests ………..47 Table 8. Within-Group Comparison of Listening Comprehension Tests …………..48 Table 9. Between-Group Comparison of Listening Test Score Drop ………………48 Table 10. Descriptive Statistics of the SLLAS ……………………………………..49 Table 11. Between-Group Comparison of SLLAS …………………………………50 Table 12. Within-Group Comparison of SLLAS …………………………………..50 Table 13. Descriptive Statistics of the Three Dimensions of SLLAS ………………51 Table 14. Between-Group Comparison of the Three Dimensions of SLLAS ………52 Table 15. ANCOVA of SLLAS—Cognitive Anxiety ………………………………53 Table 16. Within-Group Comparison of the Three Dimensions of SLLAS— Comparison Group …………………………………………………………53 Table 17. Within-Group Comparison of the Three Dimensions of SLLAS— Experimental Group ………………………………………………………..54 Table 18. Between-Group Comparison of SLLAS Score Drop ……………………..54 Table 19. Descriptive Statistics of MALQ …………………………………………..56 Table 20. Between-Group Comparison of MALQ …………………………………..56 Table 21. Within-Group Comparison of MALQ …………………………………….57 Table 22. Between-Group Comparison of the Five Factors of MALQ ……………..58 Table 23. Within-Group Comparison of the Five Factors of MALQ — Comparison Group ………………………………………………..59 Table 24. Within-Group Comparison of the Five Factors of MALQ — Experimental Group ………………………………………………60 Table 25. Between-Group Comparison of Gain Scores ………………………..…….61 Table 26. The Strategies Reported in the Worksheets …………………………….….63 Table 27. Students’ Self-Developed Strategies Reported in the Worksheets…………63 viii.

(10) Table 28. The Most and the Least Effective Strategies Reported by Those Who Made Progress………………………………………………….67 Table 29. The Most and the Least Effective Strategies Reported by Those Who Made Regress …………………………………………………..68. ix.

(11) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Stages in Metacognitive Pedagogical Sequence for Listening Instruction….38 Figure 2. The Comparison of the Instructional Procedures between the Two Groups..41. x.

(12) CHAPER ONE INTRODUCTION. Research Background English is a required foreign language course for students from primary schools to colleges and has received much attention in education in Taiwan. According to the national curriculum guidelines for English, students should master four language skills, including speaking, listening, reading and writing. Although English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Taiwan understand that the four language skills are equally important, they tend to put more energy on teaching reading and writing for various reasons. Listening and speaking are less emphasized in class. Therefore, most EFL learners in Taiwan do not have many listening and speaking practices in class, nor do they know how to develop listening and speaking skills by themselves. As a result, they do not have confidence in using English in daily conversations even though they have studied English for many years. Importance of Listening Instruction Listening and speaking play important roles in communication. Compared with speaking, listening, which can facilitate other language skills, is even more fundamental in language learning process (Rivers & Temperley, 1978; Vandergrift, 1999). However, listening is also the most difficult skill for language learners to learn because it is the least explicit skill among the four language skills (Vandergrift, 2004). Listening is more than just hearing the sounds; it requires complicated knowledge, like understanding words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and discourse, for listeners to process what they hear correctly (Oxford, 1993). Besides, listeners have to respond in real time and process the input quickly because when the text is over, listeners can only rely on their mental representation to interpret what they heard. As a result, EFL learners need systematic listening instruction to help them comprehend listening materials effectively and improve their listening proficiency. Even though most EFL teachers in Taiwan understand the importance of teaching listening skills to their students, instruction of listening is often neglected by junior high school teachers. The neglect may be due to the fact that listening is implicit and hard to teach or that it requires a lot of time to develop listening ability. Most EFL teachers in Taiwan may not have so much time to teach students “how to listen” in class, nor do they have enough knowledge of listening instruction. Another 1.

(13) reason for the neglect of listening instruction at junior high schools may be related to students’ motivation toward listening. Most junior high school students in Taiwan just want to prepare for the language skills that would be tested in the entrance examines; therefore, their motivation for learning listening skills might not be as high as that for learning reading or writing skills, the only two skills assessed in the entrance examines up to 2013. To change this situation, the Ministry of Education, Taiwan decided to officially include listening comprehension tests in the Comprehensive Assessment for Junior High School Students in 2014. Because junior high school students have to get good grades in the exam in order to enter their ideal senior high schools, their motivation toward learning listening skills may thus be enhanced. At the same time, more and more researchers emphasize the importance of listening instruction and indicate that listening is an active process and should be taught as a language skill systematically (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011). Under these conditions, EFL teachers at junior high schools in Taiwan start to consider how to teach listening systematically in class so as to improve their students’ listening performance. Approaches to Listening Instruction In recent years, there has been a growing interest in listening instruction in the last 50 years, and the focus of listening instruction in different periods of time differs (Goh, 2008). In the 1950s and 1960s, listening instruction was influenced by behaviorists and the practice of drills for discriminating sounds and answering comprehension questions based on listening passages was popular (Goh, 2008). In the 1970s and 1980s, listening instruction was affected by sociolinguistics, and responding to spoken texts in socially and contextually appropriate ways became the focus of listening instruction (Goh, 2008). Since 1990s, listening instruction has focused on the use of listening strategies and developing metacognitive awareness of L2 listening (Goh, 2008). Problems of Listening Instruction in Taiwan A traditional teaching method that many EFL teachers in Taiwan apply is to ask their students to take numerous listening comprehension tests or quizzes in class. They believe doing different kinds of listening practices through quizzes would improve their students’ listening proficiency. These teachers neglect the importance of providing listening instruction, especially listening strategy instruction, which may help students to accomplish their listening comprehension tasks more effectively. 2.

(14) Field (2000) indicated that listening comprehension practice without appropriate strategy instructions would develop in learners a sense of failure and could not help unskilled listeners. EFL learners, especially beginners in learning a foreign language, do not know how to expand their listening ability through listening comprehension practices or quizzes without explicit strategy instruction (Brown, 2000). In addition, instructors cannot easily distinguish those students who partly understand the listening content from those who do not understand the content at all merely based on students’ answers to the listening comprehension questions on the quizzes. Hence, researchers suggested that listening instruction should focus not only on the product of listening but also on the process of listening (i.e., how listeners understand the message correctly), such as use of strategies (Arnold, 2000; Sheerin, 1987). Lack of knowledge about listening strategies may lead to listening anxiety (Vogely, 1998; Kim, 2000). Without proper instruction in listening strategies, students may feel anxious or frustrated when they face difficulties in listening, especially when they notice that they have no ability to deal with listening comprehension problems effectively. They may worry that their misinterpretation or misunderstanding of listening messages will bring them embarrassing outcomes (MacIntyre, 1995). This listening anxiety has negative correlation with listening comprehension (Golchi, 2012; Kim, 2000; Yang, 2012; Zhang, 2013). If students feel anxious at the beginning of the listening comprehension tests and if they cannot control their anxiety, they cannot stay calm enough to work through the difficulties and continue the tests (Chang, 2005). On the contrary, if learners know how to apply strategies to alleviate their anxiety and to monitor their listening process, their performance can be improved (Atasheneh, 2012; Zhang, 2013). The importance of providing effective listening strategy instruction to students in Taiwan is obvious. Effects of Listening Strategies on Performance and Learning Since the late 1970s, researchers have started to investigate the effects of listening strategies. Firstly, they found that listening strategies can improve EFL learners’ listening comprehension effectively (Chin, 2010; Chou, 2014; Goh, 2006; Hung, 2010; Li, 2009; Lin, 2012; Thompson & Rubin, 1996; Tsai, 2011; Wang, 2014). More importantly, it is found that high ability listeners tended to use more listening strategies and used them flexibly while answering listening comprehension questions. These strategies helped them perform better on the tests. In contrast, low ability listeners tended to merely translate each word and tried to understand every word they 3.

(15) heard (Goh, 2005; Vandergrift, 2003). This strategy is called mental translation, which is not a good listening strategy, and high proficiency listeners avoid using it (Graham, 2006b; Hasan, 2000; Wenden, 1986, 1999). Secondly, some studies showed that listening strategy use and anxiety were negatively correlated (Yang, 2012) and that listening strategies and tactics could alleviate learners’ anxiety (Han, 2004; Movahed, 2014). Among the listening strategies investigated, metacognitive strategies are considered to be especially important in recent years. According to O’Malley and Chamot (1990), metacognitive strategies are “higher order executive skills”, which help listeners to use cognitive process to regulate listening comprehension effectively. These strategies include planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluation. Studies have revealed several positive effects of metacognitive strategies. First, use of metacognitive strategies was found to be effective in improving learners’ listening performance (e.g., Chin, 2010; Han, 2014; Hung, 2010; Li, 2009; Lin, 2012; Movahed, 2014; Oxford, 2003; Vandergrift, 2002). Secondly, Goh (2008) indicated that learning metacognitive strategies helped learners decrease listening anxiety and increase self-confidence in learning. Thirdly, metacognitive strategy instruction was found to increase learners’ metacognitive awareness, defined as “listener awareness of the cognitive process involved in comprehension, and the capacity to oversee, regulate, and direct these process” (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012, p.23). With this awareness, learners will plan, monitor, and evaluate their behavior before, during, and after the process of listening comprehension in order to achieve their cognitive goals (Goh, 2002). Fourthly, metacognitive strategy instruction helped learners know how to apply what they learned to familiar tasks (Movahed, 2014) or transfer learned strategies to different tasks outside the classroom (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Learners also became more self-regulated and more independent after receiving metacognitive strategy instruction (Movahed, 2014; Vandergrift, 2002). Purpose of the Study Based on the above review of literature, the facilitating effects of metacognitive listening strategy instruction on listening performance and learning seem to be clear. However, few metacognitive listening strategy instruction programs have been applied at junior high schools in Taiwan except for Li (2009) and Hung (2010), none of which explored the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on listening anxiety though previous research suggests that learning metacognitive strategies could 4.

(16) reduce anxiety. As a result, the aim of this study was to investigate whether and how metacognitive listening strategy instruction affected EFL junior high school students’ metacognitive awareness, listening proficiency, and listening anxiety by adopting a quasi-experimental research design. The following research questions are addressed: 1. Does metacognitive listening strategy instruction improve EFL junior high school students’ English listening performance? 2. Does metacognitive listening strategy instruction reduce EFL junior high school students’ listening anxiety? 3. Does metacognitive listening strategy instruction enhance EFL junior high school students’ metacognitive awareness? Significance of the Study There have been many studies researching the relationship among general language learning strategies, learning anxiety, and learning performance, but few studies specifically focused on listening strategies and explored how they influence listening performance, listening anxiety, and metacognitive awareness. In addition, few studies focused on instruction of metacognitive listening strategies. Most research, instead, investigated learners’ reported use of listening strategies without providing instruction to them. Even though these researchers provided pedagogical implications for teachers at the end of their reports, no solid evidence indicated that their suggestions for teaching would be beneficial for EFL learners, especially for junior high school EFL students, to deal with their listening problems. By conducting an experiment on the effects of metacognitive listening strategy instruction, this study provided more solid evidence for the effects of metacognitive listening strategy instruction. Effective listening instruction has become an important issue to junior high school teachers in Taiwan after listening comprehension tests were officially included in the Comprehensive Assessment for Junior High School Students. The findings of this study thus might help teachers design more effective listening activities in junior high school English classes.. 5.

(17) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter consists of five sections to review literature related to listening comprehension, listening anxiety and listening strategies. The first section is an introduction to listening comprehension. The second part discusses listening anxiety. The third part presents listening instruction and studies of listening instruction. The fourth part introduces language learning strategies. Finally, metacognitive listening strategies and studies of listening comprehension strategies are discussed. An Overview of Listening Comprehension Listening is recognized as an important language skill which helps language learners receive language input and facilitate other language skills (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). There has been growing interest in listening research. Thirty years ago, the interest was triggered by Krashen’s (1985) proposed input hypothesis, in which L2 learners’ exposure to comprehensible input is considered beneficial to cultivate their listening skills and enhance their language acquisition. More recently, research focus has been shifted from what comprehensible listening input is to how learners process listening input. As Taguchi (2002) points out, knowing what strategies listeners apply in their mental processes and what difficulties they encounter while listening can provide better pedagogical suggestions and help learners listen efficiently. The Process of Listening Comprehension Listening comprehension is a complex process. O’Malley and Chamot (1990) pointed out that listening comprehension is “an active and conscious process” (p. 133) in which listeners can construct meaning by applying the information hidden from the context. To successfully comprehend the listening message, listeners need to distinguish sounds, understand vocabulary and sentence structures, discriminate stress and intonation, maintain what they hear, and interpret it based on the context within a short period of time. Therefore, listening comprehension needs more support and analysis (Vandergrift, 1999). A better understanding of the listening comprehension processes may inform listening instruction. Scholars have proposed different types of listening comprehension process. Generally speaking, most researchers (e.g., Mendelsohn, 1998; Oxford, 1993; Rubin, 1994; Vandergrift, 2004) agree that listeners understand the information of input through top-down or bottom-up processes. In the bottom-up process, listeners decode what they hear from small segmentation of sounds, and make the sounds into 6.

(18) meaningful units. Through the process, listeners gradually understand the meanings from phonemes to words, phrases, clauses, full sentences, and discourse (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). In other words, listeners interpret the message from “lower” levels to “higher” levels (Brown, 2000). On the other hand, in the top-down process, listeners use context and prior knowledge, such as topic, genre, culture, and other schema knowledge in the long-term memory, to interpret the sound stream (Vandergrift, 2004). Although bottom-up and top-down processes seem to work in parallel, these processes rarely operate independently in real listening situations (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). In particular, proficient listeners can coordinate top-down and bottom-up processes efficiently or even automatically though listeners with lower proficiency apply the bottom-up process more often. Compared with the common distinction of bottom-up and top-down processes, Anderson (1995) divided the process of listening comprehension into three phases: perceptual processing (i.e. perception), parsing, and utilization. In the perceptual processing phase, listeners use the bottom-up approach to analyze the sounds they hear and retain them in their memory; in the parsing phase, listeners parse the sounds retained in the memory into meaningful units and activate the potential word candidates related to the context or topic; in the utilization phase, listeners relate the meaningful units to their prior knowledge (i.e. schemata) stored in their long-term memory to correctly interpret the hidden meanings. These phases are interconnected and can affect or be affected by the results of processing which precedes or follows (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Similarly, Brownell (1996) proposed the HURIER listening process, which contains six interrelated segments, namely, hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding. Hearing refers to the reception of sounds. Understanding is decoding the received passages. Remembering is listeners’ retaining and recalling what they hear. Interpreting is listeners’ effort in comprehending what they hear based on the context and nonverbal messages. Evaluating is listeners’ making careful judgment of their interpretation. Responding is listeners’ giving appropriate responses to speakers after they analyze the situation. Although there are various kinds of listening comprehension processes, most researchers agree that listening is transient and the process of listening often occurs within limited working memory (Rost, 1994). The tasks become more difficult for foreign language learners, who, unlike native speakers, cannot automatically process 7.

(19) listening comprehension and their knowledge of linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the content of the speech are not as rich as native speakers’ (Goh, 2002). Factors Related to L2 Learners’ Listening Performance A variety of factors are considered to facilitate or hinder L2 listening, but very little research can provide empirical evidence to prove that those factors really cause the success or failure of L2 listening comprehension. Vandergrift and Goh (2012) stated listening success is attributed to the factors from three main aspects: cognitive factors, affective factors, and contextual factors. Cognitive factors include vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, metacognition, prior knowledge, working memory, L1 listening ability, and sound discrimination ability. Affective factors, such as anxiety, self-efficacy, and motivation, can maximize listeners’ ability to comprehend listening messages, whereas learners’ confidence, their attitude toward L2 listening tasks, and their worry for making mistakes in front of others are believed to have great impact on their listening performance. Contextual factors include the formal/informal distinction and degree of interaction concerning the listening situation. Several additional factors associated with L2 listening performance have been posited by Rubin (1994). These factors include text characteristics, interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics, and process characteristics. Text characteristics refer to the variation of listening passages or associated visual support, and thus include text type, three temporal variables (i.e. speech rate, pause phenomena and hesitation), morphological and syntactic modifications (e.g., syntactic, modifications, redundancy, morphological complexity, word order, and discourse markers), and other variables (e.g., level of perception, stress, rhythmic patterning perception, and L1/L2 differences). Interlocutor characteristics refer to variation in the speakers’ personal characteristics. Task characteristics are the variation in the purpose for listening and associated responses. Listener characteristics are the variation in listeners’ individual differences, including language proficiency level, memory, affect, age, gender, background knowledge, motivation, and self-confidence. Process characteristics are the variation in listeners’ cognitive activities and in the nature of the interaction between speakers and listeners, and thus involve listening strategies as well as top-down, bottom-up, and parallel processing. Since there are too many factors which are related to L2 learners’ listening performance, some researchers (e.g., Chao & Chien, 2005; Goh, 2000; Graham, 8.

(20) 2006a) have turned to investigating what the key factors leading to the failure of their listening comprehension are and what difficulties these listeners encounter while taking listening tasks. Studies of Listening Difficulties Goh (2000) posited ten main problems of listening comprehension reported by forty English as a second language learners from Mainland China. The researcher classified these ten problems into three categories based on Anderson’s listening process phases: perception, parsing, and utilization. Problems occurring at the perception stage included difficulties with attention and sounds recognition (i.e. which sounds should be regarded as distinct words or groups of words). Parsing problems involved difficulties with developing a consistent mental representation of words. Problems occurring at the utilization stage referred to lack of prior knowledge or inappropriate application. Similar result was found in a later study done by Graham (2006a), who investigated 595 French learners whose L1 was English and found that the main difficulties the participants encountered in listening comprehension were the delivery speed of texts and lack of ability in distinguishing individual words in a stream of spoken French. Most students attributed their failure of listening to their low ability, the difficulty of the listening tasks and texts, and their ineffective listening strategies. The researcher pointed out that because the participants did not know how to use strategies to monitor the effectiveness of their strategies, they used strategies in isolation and could not combine one strategy with others. In Taiwan, Chao and Chien (2005) investigated the listening strategies used by college students at different proficiency levels and the difficulties they encountered while taking the listening section of a simulated TOEFL test. The results showed that the lower proficiency learners had difficulties in the listening process, and they tended to translate English into Chinese. On the other hand, the middle-proficiency learners had difficulty in diving streams of speech into meaningful segments, which requires a lot of cognitive knowledge of foreign language and is related to listeners’ language proficiency level. Listeners at the beginning level are often struggled with the limitation of working memory because it is not easy for them to group what they hear into meaningful chunks, which can not only lessen the load of working memory but also be processed effectively (Vandergrift, 2004). Aside from these cognitive factors described above, affective factors such as 9.

(21) anxiety can also hinder listening comprehension (Vogely, 1998). Unlike cognitive factors which are related to listeners’ language proficiency level, affective factors may occur at any proficiency levels, no matter how low or high the language learners’ proficiency level is. Hence, it would be important to uncover the impact of such affective factors as listening anxiety on learners’ listening performance. Foreign Language Listening Anxiety E. K. Horwitz, M. B. Horwitz, and Cope (1986) stated that “foreign language anxiety is a distinct set of beliefs, perceptions and feelings in response to foreign language learning in a classroom and not merely a composite of other anxieties” (p. 128). In other words, foreign language anxiety is a situation-specific anxiety which learners may experience when learning a second or foreign language. Foreign language anxiety relates to three types of anxieties: communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. Communication apprehension refers to the fear associated with communicating with others orally or in other forms (McCroskey & Beatty, 1984). Test anxiety refers to the anxiety which stems from a fear of failure (Horwitz et al., 1986). Fear of negative evaluation is similar to test anxiety, but it is broader than test anxiety. Test anxiety only happens in tests, but fear of negative evaluation could happen in other situations, such as “apprehension about others’ evaluations, avoidance of evaluation situations, and the expectation that others would evaluate oneself negatively” (Horwitz et al., 1986, p. 128). Research in foreign language learning has proved that anxiety would weaken learners’ motivation and cause negative affective responses to the foreign language they are studying (Gardener, Lalonde, Moorcroft, & Evers, 1987). Listening anxiety often occurs when learners face a difficult or unfamiliar listening task and do not have enough ability to comprehend it (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). For example, many less proficient language learners believe that they have to listen to and understand every word in order to comprehend the message successfully. This misconception causes great pressure on low proficiency listeners, and they may have low self-confidence in listening when they find they cannot reach the goal (Vogely, 1998). Sources of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety To uncover the sources of listening anxiety and provide pedagogical suggestions, Vogely (1998) investigated sources of listening anxiety reported by 140 Spanish foreign learners and collected their suggestions to alleviate listening anxiety. The results of her study revealed 220 sources of listening anxiety and 165 suggestions for 10.

(22) alleviating listening anxiety were reported. The reported sources of anxiety could be classified into four main categories (i.e. input, process, instructional factors, and personal factors), and so could the suggestions for alleviating listening anxiety. According to the findings of the study, among the four categories of listening anxiety sources, the “input” category received the most responses. In this category, “nature of the speech” (e.g., the delivery speed of the speech) (p.70) was the source which received the most responses, while poor enunciation and different accents were also the sources of anxiety. The most effective suggestion for reducing listening anxiety with input characteristics was “making input comprehensible”. The second major source of anxiety belonged to the “process” category, in which “inappropriate strategies” received the most responses. In other words, if listeners do not know how to use appropriate strategies, like directing attention or listening to the key words, they would easily feel frustrated and anxious when they encounter listening difficulties. However, the participants’ suggestions for alleviating listening anxiety from this category were the fewest. This surprising result showed that learners knew little about listening process, like strategy use, to help them deal with the difficulties. As a result, listening strategy instruction would be beneficial for listeners to cope with their listening difficulties and lower their listening anxiety. To further explore the sources of and the changes in second language learners’ listening anxiety which were not available in Vogely’s study (1998), Cheng (2005) conducted a longitudinal research, examining 23 EFL learners’ listening anxiety and their changes over one semester. Both audio and video resources were applied in the study in order to investigate under which condition learners’ listening anxiety would be provoked. The result showed that audio-listening activities provoked more anxiety than video-viewing activities. There was a negative association between anxiety and listening grades, and learners’ listening anxiety level was quite stable throughout the semester. To minimize the anxiety provoked by input, she suggested language teachers to ensure the listening materials are at the appropriately difficult level and more comprehensible for language learners. As for the issue of minimizing the anxiety generated in the process, she suggested teachers teach listening comprehension strategies explicitly so that learners can regulate their listening process, manage their emotion, and alleviate their anxiety. As for anxiety which occurs in instructional practices, teachers were suggested to remove students’ fear of negative evaluation and to help them learn listening comprehension effectively rather than just 11.

(23) evaluate their listening comprehension performance. She also proposed new sources of anxiety which were not reported in Vogely’s (1998) study, such as texts presented for the first time, the instructional practice of playing audio-tape only once, difficult or unfamiliar comprehension tasks, and a poor physical state. Unlike the results of Vogely’s (1998) study, Cheng indicated that while instructional factors (e.g., evolution and testing) received about 30% responses and tended to cause anxiety on students, personal factors only received 3% responses, the number of which was much smaller than that reported in Vogely’s (1998) study (about 13%). The differences between the two studies may be due to the difference in participants and Cheng suggested that language teachers, instead of getting confused with the inconsistent findings in different research, should investigate their students’ anxieties in their own classrooms so that they can provide more appropriate instruction to alleviate their students’ anxiety. Similar research was conducted by Sharif and Ferdous (2012), who also investigated the sources of listening anxiety based on Vogely’s (1998) classification and provided suggestions to help learners to lower their anxiety. The participants included sixty EFL college students and three teachers. Classroom observation and questionnaires were employed as the instruments. The findings showed that listening anxiety is most likely to be associated with input and listening process. Among the listening anxiety sources belonging to input and process, “the nature of speech” received the most responses from the participants, and this finding is consistent with that of the study conducted by Vogely (1998). “Level difficulty” was the second major listening anxiety source, and many participants stated that the materials of difficulty at a higher level, like those containing complicated syntax and unfamiliar vocabulary, would make them feel anxious. In order to lower learners’ listening anxiety, Sharif and Ferdous suggested that when designing listening instruction, teachers should take the sources of listening anxiety into consideration. They also suggested that instructors should provide an anxiety-free listening environment and teach students how to use listening comprehension strategies so that students’ listening anxiety would be decreased. Studies of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety and Listening Performance There have been a great number of studies which investigate the relationship between foreign language listening anxiety and listening performance (e.g., Cheng, 2005; Atasheneh & Izadi, 2012; Golchi, 2012; Zhang, 2013). Atasheneh and Izadi 12.

(24) (2012) investigated the effects of foreign language anxiety on the test results of students’ listening comprehension. The findings showed that the high anxious students who lowered their anxiety level after the treatment had a significant improvement in the listening post-test, and there was a moderate but significant negative correlation between anxiety and listening comprehension. The same finding was also pointed out by other researchers (e.g., Cheng, 2005; Golchi, 2012). Atasheneh and Izadi (2012) also indicated that anxiety could hinder the results of listening comprehension tests; therefore, if teachers want to accurately evaluate their students’ listening performance, they should take anxiety into consideration. In addition, most of the participants reported that they felt embarrassed and anxious when they made mistakes or being corrected in front of their peers, and they reported that teachers’ response was also a source of anxiety. As a result, instructors should help students build their confidence in foreign language learning by giving positive feedbacks, and their expectation for students should be realistic because too much teachers’ expectation would also create anxiety. Instructors were also suggested to teach their students strategies, such as listening for main points because intermediate students do not have enough time to listen to every word and they often feel nervous when they fail to catch up with the information while taking the listening tests. Likewise, Zhang (2013) conducted a study to investigate the possible causal relationship between foreign language listening anxiety and listening performance. Three hundred EFL college students in China participated in the study and Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) was applied to investigate participants’ listening anxiety. Zhang’s research showed that foreign language listening anxiety could affect foreign language listening performance. This finding was consistent with previous studies (e.g., Golchi, 2012; Atasheneh & Izadi, 2012). Reversely, foreign language listening performance did not appear to systematically affect foreign language listening anxiety. Zhang also indicated that individual difference factors such as self-efficacy, motivation, learning strategies, and self-regulation were important in determining the outcome of learning a foreign language. Anxiety may also have an impact on use of strategies. Chang (2005) investigated how listening anxiety affects Chinese students’ strategy use, and the results showed that the listening strategies applied by the high-anxious students and low-anxious students were very different. High-anxious students were afraid of guessing and tended to focus on hearing every word clearly and translate what they heard into 13.

(25) Chinese. Anxiety was particularly detrimental to high-anxious students, especially at the beginning of the listening part. They were also concerned about the performance of other test takers around them and were easily influenced by others. On the contrary, low-anxious students stayed calm, trying to work through unintelligible information and continuing their listening. Similar research was conducted by Golchi (2012). The study investigated listening anxiety and its relationship with listening strategy use and listening comprehension. The participants were 63 EFL learners in Iran, who were required to complete questionnaires after a listening comprehension test. From the gathered questionnaires, the researcher found that listening anxiety had negative correlation with listening comprehension and listening strategy use. Besides, learners with low anxiety used metacognitive strategies more often than learners with high anxiety did and performed better in the listening comprehension tests. However, there was no significant difference in the use of cognitive and social-affective strategies between the high- and low-anxiety groups. Compared to Golchi’s study (2012), another similar research conducted by Xu (2013) had different findings. Xu made a survey of the relationship between listening anxiety and listening strategies to understand whether students of different anxiety levels apply different listening strategies. The participants were 178 EFL college students in Mainland China. The findings showed that there was a significant negative correlation between students’ listening anxiety and their use of listening learning strategies, especially with their use of cognitive strategies. The latter finding was different from Golchi’s (2012) study, which indicated there was no significant difference in the use of cognitive strategies. The difference between these two studies might be due to the different categorizations of listening strategies. Compared to Xu’s study, Golchi’s study included one more listening strategy, namely, the metacognitive strategy, which is believed to be beneficial to control and manipulate the listening process. But both of them agreed that there was no significant difference in socio-affective strategy use among students of different anxiety levels. According to the studies discussed above, instructors are suggested to help students lower their anxiety so that they can have better performance in listening comprehension, and the use of effective listening strategies may play an important role in lowering listening anxiety. If teachers can provide strategy instruction and appropriate tasks for students to complete and experience success, students’ anxiety 14.

(26) could be reduced, and their confidence and motivation toward learning may be enhanced. Listening Instruction Listening is a basic and important skill in language learning, but it did not receive great attention in language teaching and was often viewed as a subordinate skill until the 1970s (Field, 2008). With the advance of technology in global communication, the importance of listening increases and listening instruction has become crucial to non-native speakers (Mendelsohn, 1998). In the past 60 years, listening instruction, which is influenced by different pedagogy, has changed a lot over time. First, in the audio-lingual period, the listening instruction required listeners to repeat and mimic a great number of drills they hear, but the meaning of these sentences might remain unknown to them. Later on, answering listening comprehension questions became a common way in listening instruction (Vandergrift, 2004). More recently, the strategy instruction, which encourages listeners to notice and regulate their listening process, has become the core of listening instruction (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). To sum up, the focus of listening instruction changed over time, shifting from the product of listening to the process of listening. History of Listening Instruction Looking back on the history of listening instruction, there are three different stages of listening instruction in the past 60 years: text-oriented instruction, communication-oriented instruction, and learner-oriented instruction. Text-oriented and communication-oriented instruction emphasize the product of comprehension, and learner-oriented instruction seemly focuses more on the process of listening, such as cognitive strategy instruction (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). In the 1950s and 1960s, listening instruction was text-oriented, which focused on decoding skills, and learners were required to recognize and understand the input component. The most common ways for assessing listening comprehension abilities at this stage was asking listeners to answer different kinds of listening comprehension questions based on the listening passages. However, the listening passages, which were far from the authentic materials, were often “lexically dense and did not represent the linguistic features of spoken texts” (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012, p.7). The listening instruction in the early 1970s became communication-oriented, focusing on the communication function (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). The Council of Europe proposed “a model of communicative needs of the archetypal adult foreign 15.

(27) language learners” and started to emphasize the practical function of listening in real world communication. The communicative language teaching (CLT) methodology that emerged in the 1970s brought innovative methods for teaching. Teachers started to apply authentic materials, like songs, movies, and recorded daily conversations to listening instruction. Although different kinds of listening activities were applied in the classroom on the stage, listening was only regarded as an unimportant partner, providing background information without receiving the same importance as speaking and writing (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). In addition, few teachers provided instruction on self-regulated learning. Until the late 1970s, Munby (1978) proposed models for learning the four language skills, emphasizing that listening was a complex communicative skill like writing and reading, not just an additional skill which could be “picked up” easily by learners. In late 1970s and 1980s, comprehensive approach became the center of language teaching (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). The teaching method like Total Physical Response and New Approach emphasize the students’ comprehension process more, and listening instruction turned to learner-oriented, emphasizing more on learners’ learning styles and learning experiences. Researchers started to investigate why some learners were more successful in learning foreign languages than others (i.e., good language learner research) and what strategies they used to enhance their learning, and provided some pedagogical suggestions for teaching and learning individual language skills accordingly, including listening (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1990; Wenden & Rubin, 1987). Since 1990s, listening instruction has focused on the strategy instruction. How to apply appropriate strategies while listening becomes the focus of listening instruction, and a strategy-based approach to listening instruction was proposed then (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). The strategy-based approach, which is influenced by socio-cognitive theory, trains learners how to apply strategies to deal with the difficulties they encounter while listening (Mendelsohn, 1998; Goh, 2008). Teacher-modelling is essential in this approach. Through teacher-modelling, learners learn how listeners construct their understanding of the listening passages and their listening awareness is also raised from the pre-communication activities prepared by teachers (Goh, 2008). Language Learning Strategies Learning strategies, as O’Malley and Chamot (1990) defined, are “the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain 16.

(28) new information” (p.1). Proposed by Oxford (1990), another definition describes learning strategies as “specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed and more transferable to new situations” (p. 8). The investigation of learning strategies in second language acquisition first emerged to identify what are the learning strategies that effective second learners use (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). The “good language learner” research had indicated the effective strategies were reported by learners or were observed in language learning situations and contributed to learning (Rubin, 1975). The results of these studies show that learners do apply learning strategies when learning a second language; in addition, these strategies applied by the learners can be distinguished and classified (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). Furthermore, learners with learning strategies are more independent and autonomous learners (Oxford, 2003), but many language learners may not be aware of the power of L2 learning strategies which can help them learn more quickly and more effectively (Nyikos & Oxford, 1993). Thus, teachers should remind their students of the importance of their awareness of learning strategies and help them apply appropriate strategies based on the tasks (Oxford, 2003). Categories of Listening Strategies O’Malley and Chamot (1990) classified language learning strategies as metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and socio-affective strategies. Metacognitive strategies, which are related to learners’ self-regulatory actions, contain. planning,. advance. organizer,. direct. attention,. selective. attention,. self-management, self-monitoring, problem identification, self-evaluation, and functional planning. Cognitive strategies, which are techniques that learners apply to manipulate listening materials directly, include repetition, resourcing, grouping, note-taking,. deduction,. substitution,. elaboration,. summarization,. translation,. inferencing, imagery, and recombination. Socio-affective strategies, which learners apply while adjusting their emotion and interacting with instructors or other learners to solve a problem, refer to questioning for clarification, cooperation, self-talk, and self-reinforcement. Oxford (2003) has further divided L2 learning strategies into six categories, including cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective and social strategies. Cognitive strategies include reasoning, analysis, note-taking, summarizing, synthesizing, outlining, reorganizing information to develop stronger 17.

(29) schemas (knowledge structures), practicing in naturalistic settings, and practicing structures and sounds formally. These strategies help learners to deal with language materials directly, and they are significantly related to L2 proficiency and are often used to solve learning problems. Metacognitive strategies include planning for a task, gathering and organizing materials, monitoring mistakes, selecting attention, and evaluating the success of any type of learning strategy. These strategies not only help learners to manage the whole learning process but also influence their cognitive strategy use directly. Memory-related strategies include using acronyms, rhyming, images, keyword method, body movement, mechanical means, and location. These strategies help learners to connect new information with another, and learners will have a deeper understanding and better memorization. Affective strategies, including awareness of one’s mood and anxiety level, using positive self-talk, deep breathing, and self-reward, are significantly related to L2 proficiency (Dreyer and Oxford, 1996). Compensatory strategies, such as guessing from the context, help learners make up the missing information, and like cognitive strategies, these strategies are also significantly related to learners’ second language proficiency. Social strategies include asking questions for clarification, talking with a native-speaking conversation partner, asking for help while doing a language task. These strategies help learners to work with others and understand the target culture and the language. The previous two classification schemes are made for language learning strategies in general, whereas Goh (2002) focused on listening strategies and tactics. An inventory of listening strategies and tactics was proposed based on 40 ESL learners’ retrospective verbal data. Specifically, in addition to the twelve cognitive strategies proposed by O’Malley and Chamot (1990), Goh (2002) proposed four new cognitive strategies, prediction, contextualization, fixation, and visualization. Goh also added two more metacognitive strategies: pre-listening preparation, and real-time assessment of input, into Oxford’s metacognitive strategies (2003). In total, Goh introduced 44 listening comprehension tactics, which were grouped into eight cognitive strategies (i.e., inferencing, elaboration, prediction, contextualization, translation, fixation, visualization, and reconstruction) and six metacognitive strategies (i.e., pre-listening, selective attention, directed attention, comprehension monitoring, real-time assessment of input, and comprehension evaluation). She also indicated that more proficient listeners used both cognitive and metacognitive strategies more effectively, listening comprehension could be improved through 18.

(30) awareness-raising tasks, and that there seemed to be a strong relationship between learners’ metacognitive knowledge and strategy use. Studies of Listening Strategy Use Many studies have explored the strategies used by learners in listening. Chiu (1997) investigated 163 college students’ listening strategies when they took the GEPT listening test. The participants were required to fill out the questionnaires right after they finished each of the three parts in the listening test. It was found that firstly, in general, the participants used affective, metacognitive, and compensation strategies most frequently throughout the three sections of the listening test. To be specific, affective strategies were used most frequently, followed by metacognitive strategies and then by compensation strategies. Secondly, the participants were discovered to use different listening strategies according to the types of listening questions; for example, compensation strategies were used most frequently when learners were confronted with question types involving picture description and question/statement response; affective strategies were applied the most in answering listening questions about a short conversation; memory-related strategies were reported to be used the least in the test. Last but not least, the significant differences between strategy use were found to be mainly related to metacognitive strategies. Another similar study was conducted by Yang (2012), who investigated the relationship among listening anxiety, strategy employment, and listening performance in three text types. The participants were 211 junior high school students in Taiwan. The results, distinct from those in Chiu’s study (1997) described above, revealed that compensation strategies were most frequently used and affective strategies were reported to be least applied. Furthermore, students of low anxiety used more listening strategies, especially compensation and memory-related strategies, and performed significantly better than students of high anxiety, especially in the text types of picture questions and conversations. Most important of all, listening anxiety was found to be negatively correlated with overall listening performance, listening performance in conversation texts, overall strategy use, as well as the employment of compensation, memory-related and metacognitive listening strategies. Therefore, learners’ listening anxiety could be regarded as a predictor for their listening performance. In order to understand what listening strategies proficient and less proficient learners use, Taguchi (2002) investigated the strategies used by college students while they took a listening test and aimed to find out whether there were significant 19.

(31) differences between proficient and less proficient listeners in their strategy use during the test. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between proficient and less proficient listeners in using top-down strategies and their reported sources of listening difficulty. The proficient listeners had better retrospective observations on their strategy use and used top-down strategies more frequently, and this result agrees with previous research (e.g., Conrad, 1985; O’Malley et al., 1989). In other words, proficient listeners seemed to be more aware of their listening process and have better awareness of their strategy use. In addition, the frequency of the use of top-down strategies was positively correlated with test scores. In fact, it was found that there was a wider range in proficient listeners’ use of affective and compensatory strategies, whereas the listeners who focused on every word they heard experienced frustration or anxiety when unable to translate every word successfully. The former result reflected Goh’s (2005) finding that proficient listeners would flexibly coordinate different kinds of strategies and lower anxiety in listening comprehension; while the latter result actually corresponded to Vogely’s (1998) finding that less proficient listeners relied more on bottom-up processing and matched her interpretation that not only do less proficient listeners tend to overload the short-term memory so much that they do not have extra energy to use more important strategies, like predicting or inferencing, but bottom-up processing such as decoding word-by-word would also make listeners anxious and hinder their listening process. Listeners who want to successfully comprehend listening messages have to engage in mental processes and have their own listening strategies. These strategies include not only cognitive strategies (i.e. knowing how to recognize sounds and structures) but also metacognitive (i.e. knowing how to manipulate and control the listening process) and socio-affective strategies (Goh, 2002). Some researchers further contended that what unsuccessful foreign language learners need most is not cognitive strategies in foreign language learning, but metacognitive strategies such as awareness and control ability (Chiu, 1997; Han, 2014). Though cognitive strategies are significantly related to L2 proficiency, low proficient students may face difficulties while applying cognitive strategies (Oxford, 2003). In contrast, metacognitive strategies can be used by L2 learners at all levels of proficiency and applied to all sorts of language and non-language tasks; and they are often predictors of L2 proficiency (Oxford, 2011). As a result, the instruction of metacognitive strategies is believed to be more beneficial for language learners, and more studies have been 20.