Listening Learning Strategies Employed by English Majors at the Saigon International University

Abstract

It is unarguable that listening is one of the most significant macro skills in the process of language acquisition and takes the vital part in communication. However, it requires learners to possess both language knowledge and contextual knowledge in order to achieve high effectiveness in learning this skill. Accordingly, learners are presumed to execute listening learning strategies to get a better understanding of what is being spoken. The study aimed to investigate English listening learning strategies unconsciously employed by English majors at The Saigon International University (SIU) and explore the students’ level of frequency of employing these strategies. The mixed-methods study was conducted with the participation of 115 undergraduate students majoring in English. The quantitative data collected from the questionnaire were processed by SPSS (19.0), whereas content analysis was employed to analyze the qualitative data obtained from the semi-structured interview. The findings showed that cognitive strategies were identified as the most dominant listening learning methods, followed metacognitive strategies and socio-affective strategies. Among the particular listening, the top five most common strategies included listening for main ideas first and then details, listening to different kinds of input, connecting prior knowledge to the existing information of the text, applying the learned vocabulary and grammar to comprehend the content, and choosing the suitable listening texts.