Exploring Students' Use of Metacognitive Strategies in Listening Comprehension of the TEM-4 : A Study of English Majors at a Chinese College

Listening comprehension plays a vital role in Chinese students’ acquisitionof English; however, the current situation of students’ listening comprehension learning is notsatisfactory. As one category of learning strategies, metacognitive strategies are essential forsuccessful learning. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the students’ frequency ofmetacognitive strategy use, and the relationship between their use of metacognitive strategiesand their performance in a listening comprehension test from the TEM-4 test. 100sophomores of English major were chosen to participate in the test and then divided into threelevels based on their scores. Afterwards, 10 students from each level were randomly selected,which means there was a total of 30 students and they were asked to participate in thequestionnaire. Through the data collected from the listening comprehension test and thequestionnaire, the investigation finds that on the whole, the 30 students use metacognitivestrategies in the medium level. By comparison, the students in the three groups utilizemetacognitive strategies in different levels. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between30 students’ frequency of metacognitive strategy use and their performance in the listeningcomprehension test. However, there are 4 students whose frequency of metacognitive strategyuse and scores in the listening comprehension test show a negative relationship. Thus, aninterview was conducted among them to find the reasons. These include that they havedifferent difficulties in using metacognitive strategies or dealing with the listeningcomprehension tasks, and then some suggestions are put forward to help teachers improvetheir teaching quality, and students enhance their listening comprehension abilities