College English Majors’ Listening Strategies and Difficulties While Taking TOEFL Presenter: Wen-Hsin Chang Date:Nov. 23, 2009

Contents Introduction Literature Review Methodology Results Conclusion

Introduction The purpose of the study was to find out English majors’ listening strategies and listening difficulties, mainly proficiency differences and grade differences in taking the TOEFL listening comprehension test.

Listening strategies With assistance of strategies, learners’ proficiency would be improved and their self-confidence would be increased. Oxford, 1990

Listening difficulties Four sources of listening difficulties: the message, the speaker, the listener, and physical setting. Yagang, 1993

Methodology 169 English majors divided into high, mid, and low proficiency listeners according to their scores in the TEFOL listening comprehension test.

Methodology The instruments in the study includes the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL, a listening strategy and difficulty questionnaire, and an interview guide.

Research Questions (1) What are the listening strategy and listening difficulty of English majors while taking the TEFOL listening comprehension test?

Results English majors tended to adopt metacognitive strategy most frequently, followed by cognitive strategy and then affective strategies. Before listening to the text, they tended to prepare themselves to concentrate on the text

Results The listening difficulty including Text factor Listener factor Process factor Speaker factor

Results The text difficulties: Unrepeated texts, unknown words, professional contents, and lengthy sentences

Results As to listeners’ factor: The limited vocabulary, unfamiliar with the contents, Lack of practice, The inattention

Results During the listening process, The participants usually thought about previous contents which made them unable to pay attention to the following passages.

Results In terms of the speaker factor, The speakers’ fast speed was the most difficulty

Research Questions (2) Is there any difference in listening strategy and listening difficulty among different proficiency levels when English majors take the TOEFL listening comprehension test?

Results High-proficiency listeners would listen for key words and find the meanings from context Mid achievers would find the known words Low achievers would find key words but could not understand few words and do nothing

Results High-proficiency listeners had difficulties in the speaker’ fast speed and male voice, Mid-proficiency listeners had difficulties in fast speed, linking sounds, and informal English Low-proficiency listeners had difficulties in fast speed, male or female voices, linking sounds, and informal English.

Research Questions (3) Is there any difference in listening strategy and listening difficulty among different grade levels when English majors take the TOEFL listening comprehension test?

Results Freshmen and sophomores used more translation strategy than juniors & seniors Higher graders tends to predict, associate, relate to know words, and resort cognates significantly more frequently than lower graders did

Results Lower graders had more difficulties than higher graders getting the main ideas, poor English competence, fast speed of the speaker, and unrepeated texts.

Conclusion The study provided some suggestions: Learners need to be instructed with different types of listening texts English majors need to be instructed with knowledge in different professional field English learners need to be instructed with listening strategies.

Thanks for your listening