Strategy Use Awareness in Academic Listening Practices Relative to L2 Motivation among Chinese Tertiary Students

Academic listening has been widely studied from the perspective of note-taking, attention to discourse markers, and schematic knowledge. Learner variables, such as motivation, degree of anxiety, and learner beliefs, have all received increasingly attention from researchers, but have not yet been sufficiently explored in second language (L2) listening. This paper investigates the correlations between second language learning motivation and learners’ strategy use awareness in academic listening practices. Quantitative data was obtained using questionnaires issued to 79 second year English-major students after a TOEFL lecture listening practice. The results suggest that teacher classroom instruction and feedback, task significance, and learners’ commitment encourage the listeners to apply more listening strategies. Pedagogical implications drawn from the results are discussed, concluding that L2 listening teachers should develop motivation-based strategy instruction with emphasis on creating a learner-centred constructivist learning environment. In addition, a skill-oriented approach is proposed in order to improve course design in L2 listening instruction. This would train students to consciously use strategies to improve their listening comprehension in an EFL ( English as a Foreign Language) context. Suggestions are provided at the end for future research