Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 710-716
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.300 710
P
SYCHOLOGICAL
P
ROCESS OF
E
NGLISH
L
EARNERS IN
L
ISTENING
C
OMPREHENSION
Xiaozhen Chen
Abstract
Listening is an important aspect of English acquisition. Many English learners in China have difficulties in English listening. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, this paper probes deep into the psychological process of English learners in listening. First, the author introduced the connotations of metacognition and listening comprehension, and analyzed the correlation between the two issues. Then, the cognitive patterns and psychological mechanism of English listening were summed up based on the modes of information processing in listening comprehension. Next, 150 Grade 2 English majors from a university in Hunan, China, were selected for empirical research. The statistics on psychological process and cognitive change were collected through a metacognition questionnaire and an English listening test. The psychological process of the students in English listening was discussed in details based on the statistics. The results show that the metacognition of English learners has a predictive effect on their listening performance. The research results help to promote the teaching of English listening in colleges.
Key words: English Listening, Metacognition, Listening Level, Empirical Experiment. Received: 18-05-19 | Accepted: 12-08-19
INTRODUCTION
English listening is an important part of English listening, speaking, reading and writing. As the most basic language input part, English listening has a significant influence on the improvement of other three English skills (Wang & Liu, 2013) (Wet Walt, & Niesler, 2009). English listening level is not only related to internal factors of English learners, such as the pronunciation memory ability, vocabulary knowledge, listening comprehension ability and context familiarity, but also related to external factors such as the speaker, text content and language environment. Therefore, English listening is considered as the most difficult part of English application ability (Lateh, Shamsudin, Singh et al., 2017) (Aist, Campana, Allen et al., 2010). A common phenomenon in English
School of Nationalities, Lishui University, Lishui 323000, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
learners in China is the weakness in listening and speaking skills. Particularly, English listening is the main part that the English learners fail in all types of English exams in China. Therefore, improving listening level of English learners in China is an important topic in English teaching (Bright, Parker, French et Al., 2017).
The process of English listening is
complicated information processing process and psychological cognition process of the human brain. Inspired by “intelligibility input”, the center of the study of English listening acquisition gradually transferred from the analysis of listening learning strategy and the analysis of mis-listening results to psychological cognitive mechanism of English learners themselves. Some scholars have proposed
"knowledge-recognition binary structure
theory" to analyze the relationship between foreign language and learning thoughts and reveal the psychological mechanism of foreign language listening learning (Ebadi & Oroji, 2016); some scholars summarized the psychological
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schema and psychological representation level in the process of listening comprehension in combination with cognitive psychology context; some scholars studied the cognitive psychology of English listening based on working memory theory (Van, Krabbendam, De Boer et al., 2014). Looking back at the existing literature at the present stage, there are few studies in English listening from the perspective of psychology combined with empirical experiments. This paper utilizes the deep application of linguistic psychology and metacognitive consciousness in foreign language learning to analyze the psychological process of English listening of the English learners, aiming to help English learners in China improve their English listening comprehension ability.
First of all, the paper summarized the meanings of metacognition and listening comprehension and analyzed the correlation between them. Through the analysis of the "top-down" and "bottom-up" information processing modes of English listening comprehension, the paper summarized the cognitive patterns and psychological mechanisms of English listening comprehension from four aspects of speech
perception-memory-listening comprehension
cognitive process-application. Secondly,
empirical research experiments were carried out by taking the meta-cognitive psychological consciousness as a quantitative evaluation index. 150 students majoring in English from the second year of a university in Hunan province were selected as empirical research objects. The metacognitive consciousness questionnaire was used to investigate listening consciousness of English learners in the listening process and the impact of the listening consciousness on listening performance. Finally, the psychological consciousness in the listening process was
discussed and analyzed, which provides
theoretical and practical guidance for the teaching of English listening in China.
THEORETICAL BASIS
Metacognition
Metacognition is essentially a cognitive behavior that is based on cognitive activity itself. Metacognition is related to self-regulation ability and cognitive level of second language learners themselves. Metacognitive psychology not only includes cognition of cognitive behavior in the process of knowledge learning but also
covers self-regulation and monitoring of the cognitive activities by people themselves. Metacognition has the psychological functions of
planning, control, evaluation, feedback,
adjustment, etc., which are the effective management of cognitive activities, especially the function of local coordination and overall control in the process of language learning can promote the smooth progress of language learning activities (Zhao, Wang, Gao et al., 2008). Metacognition is a cognitive activity that the second language learners apply metacognitive knowledge and skills in the process of listening comprehension. Metacognition is considered to be an indispensable part in cognitive activities (Nakai, 1999).
Listening comprehension cognitive activity Listening comprehension is an input language cognitive activity. It is not only a simple and passive information receiving activity but also an active language cognitive activity. English
learners must participate in listening,
understanding, memory and storage in listening
comprehension process. Listening
comprehension activity is not a simple analytical
activity of pronunciation and meaning
information, but a cognitive activity in which the listener contacts related background knowledge,
actively completes meaning construction,
produces new information, and comprehensively understands the speaker's surface meaning and true intention. In such a cognitive activity, the listener can consciously monitor and feedback the cognitive process of listening comprehension through the adjustment of metacognitive activities and adjust and correct his or her listening performance so as to fully analyze the listening information and ensure that listening comprehension activities are developing in the right direction.
Listening metacognitive consciousness In the process of exploring the improvement of listening comprehension, scholars gradually discover the role of consciousness and strategy in the process of listening, and further explore the importance of metacognition for learners to improve English listening level. Listening metacognitive consciousness refers to the cognitive psychological activity of English learners who fully discover the internal factors of cognitive process and the advantageous resources from themselves to realize the
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF ENGLISH LEARNERS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION 712
construction and memory of listening
comprehension through metacognition.
The key to the cultivation of listening metacognitive consciousness lies in the training and application of metacognitive strategies. Relying on the language teaching classroom, learners are encouraged to apply metacognitive strategies to regulate cognitive psychology, which is conducive to the success of English listening comprehension.
The relationship between listening
metacognitive consciousness and listening comprehension level
Linguist Vandergrift, a pioneer in the study of
listening metacognitive consciousness, proposed a set of Metacognitive Consciousness Listening Questionnaire (Table 1) through trial and error. The questionnaire is widely applied in the study
of the relationship between listening
comprehension level and metacognitive
consciousness (Ehrich & Henderson, 2018) (Bivona Ciurli, Barba et al., 2008). Literature review shows that there is a positive correlation
between the listening metacognitive
consciousness and the level of listening
comprehension. The improvement of
metacognitive consciousness is conducive to the improvement of listening comprehension level.
Table 1.
Metacognitive Consciousness Listening Questionnaire
Questionnaire
number Description
1 Before listening, I have plans in my mind about the hearing activities that will be carried out. 2 When I find that listening to content is difficult, I am more focused on listening materials. 3 I find that listening in English is harder than reading, speaking, and writing skills. 4 When I listen to English, I translate in my head.
5 I use known vocabulary to guess the meaning of words that I don't understand. 6 When my mind is distracted, I immediately resume my attention. 7 When I listen, I compare what I hear with what I know about the topic. 8 I feel that English listening is a challenge for me.
9 I know to use my experience and known knowledge to help understand what I’m listening to. 10 Before I listen, I think about similar articles I have heard.
11 When I listen to English, I translate keywords into Chinese in my mind.
12 When I find that my concentration is not concentrated, I try to get myself back to what I hear. 13 When I heard it, I quickly adjusted my understanding when I realized that I didn’t understand it. 14 After listening, I recall the process I listened to and think about how I can improve next time.
15 I don’t feel nervous when I listen to English.
16 When I don't understand, I give up and stop listening. 17 I use the article to help me to infer the meaning of the vocabulary. 18 When I listen to English, I translate word by word in my head.
19 When guessing the meaning of the word, I recall what I heard to judge whether my guess is accurate. 20 When I listen, I ask from time to time whether I am satisfied with the current understanding.
21 I have goals in my mind when I listen.
22 I understand the strengths and weaknesses of my listening comprehension. 23 When listening, I knew very well when I understood something and when I didn’t understand it. 24 I am easy to walk when I find that the content I listen to is simple.
25 When I listen to English, I translate the content I hear sentence by sentence.
Figure 1
.
Information processing in the "top-down" mode of listening
Cognitive schema
Information Encode Decode Reorganization Store
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PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Listening comprehension information
processing mode
There are two main modes of information processing for listening comprehension: “top -down” and bottom-up.
“Top down”
The top-down information processing mode is to analyze and process the listening content based on the learner's own cognitive background knowledge, so as to process low-dimensional and low-complexity listening knowledge with
high-dimensional and high-complexity
information knowledge. As shown in Fig. 1, the information processing process of listening in this mode is carried out under the guidance of the human brain cognitive schema, and the cognitive activity is terminated when the listening information does not conform to the cognitive schema. For example, when "Football match" is heard in listening comprehension, the human brain will activate the schema about the football match, and pay special attention to the time of the match, the result of the match, the number of goals, and so on.
"Bottom-up"
The bottom-up information processing mode takes the most basic unit of listening, such as speech, syllable as the beginning of listening speech recognition, and successively goes forward to lexical item sentence constitutions
phrase structure single sentence multiple sentence texts.
A reasonable listening comprehension
process is not a single “top-down” or “bottom -up” process, but the result of the combination and interaction of the two modes. The improvement of listening comprehension level needs to be improved from two levels of non-language information and non-language information (Aneta, Tomasz, & Elzbieta, 2017).
Listening comprehension psychological process
With the information processing process of listening comprehension, the psychological mechanism also exists in the three psychological cognitive processes of input processing, system change and output processing, as shown in Figure 2.
Attention
Selective attention is the most basic requirement in listening and speech perception activities. In this process, the ability of metacognitive psychology to regulate cognitive behavior can improve learners' attention. After the speech input condition is noticed, there is a condition for absorption and comprehension, and the speech is stored in the learner's working memory (short-term memory). Attention plays a role in the whole process of listening comprehension, and is influenced by external language situations and the second language level of internal learners.
Figure 2
.
Hypothetical cognitive pattern of second language listening comprehension
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Memory
Absorption and reconstruction
Automation
Inf
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Mode of thinking
Language skill
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PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF ENGLISH LEARNERS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION 714
Memory
Memory is the second part in the
psychological process of listening
comprehension. The mental thinking process of listening learners focuses on the switching between long-term memory and working memory. Working memory is a limited-capacity buffer and processor that information enters long-term memory. The selected information is encoded and stored in the working memory. In the process of information processing, the
listener searches and extracts relevant
knowledge from long-term memory to help understand the information just heard. Long-term memory is a information base, which is final information storage area. The richer its storage, the more accurate and rapid the listening comprehension behavior is, the more
favorable for the fluency of listening
comprehension, the more beneficial for the store new information.
Absorption and reconstruction
Absorption and reconstruction are the cognitive process of listening comprehension. The learner decodes, reconstructs, absorbs and comprehends the listening task according to the
psychological cognition model such as
metacognitive theory and schema theory. The process of absorption and reconstruction is the active cognitive process of listening learners, in which metacognitive psychology has a positive adjustment effect on the enthusiasm and interest of listening learners.
Automated processing
Automated processing is the use of listening skills that enable listening learners to spend less time and occupy less working memory to absorb familiar listening content. Therefore, long-term practice of listening and cognitive activities can promote the improvement of the processing
ability of listening psychology, listening
interference immunity, and listening fluency (Grossman, Zurif, Lee et al., 2002).
EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING
COMPREHENSION PROCESS
Experimental process
Experimental object
150 students majoring in English from the second year of a university in Hunan province were selected as empirical research objects,
including 80 girls and70 boys. The subjects passed the CET-6 test (the English learners who chose the level of listening comprehension in the experiment are beneficial to the analysis of psychological activities).
Experimental tools
100 questions were selected from the CET-6 listening library as a listening test sample (total score of 200 points); the MALQ questionnaire was selected to investigate the psychological consciousness of the experimental subjects.
Experimental objectives
(1) Reanalysis of psychological activities of English learners in listening comprehension through questionnaires and interviews
(2) Exploring the predictive relationship between metacognitive consciousness and listening performance
Experimental process
The subjects were firstly grouped to conduct
a listening test, and a psychological
consciousness survey was conducted
immediately after the test. The MALQ table was measured using a 6-level scale and the subjects were asked to answer according to their own conditions. The statistical software SPSS20.0 was used to collect the results of the psychological consciousness survey.
Analysis of experimental results
Statistical results of metacognitive consciousness
Figure 3
.
Metacognitive level of test student
Figure 3 shows the mean and standard deviation of metacognitive consciousness of 150
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subjects. The average value of the metacognitive level of the experimental subjects was 4.3. It can be seen that the metacognitive level of the experimental subjects was relatively high. The standard deviation of the metacognitive levels of the experimental subjects was 0.11, indicating that the individual scores within the group of the experimental subjects deviated less and approached the average score.
Since the English listening level of the subjects is relatively high, their active monitoring and adjusting ability in the listening process is relatively high and metacognitive consciousness plays a role in the listening process.
Statistics of metacognitive consciousness subitems
Figure 4
.
Metacognitive sub option level of
test student
Figure 4 shows the mean values of the five subitems of 150 subjects, where A stands for subjective consciousness, B problem solving, C focused attention, D plan and evaluation, and E psychological translation. It can be seen from the figures that the five sub-items of the meta-cognition level of the experimental subjects are all high, and the difference is not large, indicating that the subjects have higher levels in the subject knowledge, problem solving, focused
attention, plan and evaluation, and
psychological translation.
Predictive effect of metacognitive consciousness level on listening performance
Table 2 shows the average value of the metacognitive level and the statistical value of the listening performance of 15 subjects randomly selected.
It can be seen from the data in the table that although there is no linear relationship between metacognitive level and listening performance, the subjects with high metacognitive level should have good listening performance, indicating the predictive effect of metacognitive level on listening performance.
Analysis of metacognition in the process of listening comprehension
In order to better grasp the psychological process of listening comprehension, 50 subjects were interviewed, and the metacognition was summarized as follows:
(1) Problem solving
This psychological consciousness indicates that the listening learner will actively take measures to solve the problems encountered in the listening process; especially, his own experience and the mastered information were taken as a reference.
(2) Planning and evaluation
Good planning in the listening process can make listening strategies play a role, and positive evaluation after listening can effectively accumulate experience for the next listening.
(3) Psychological translation
Psychological translation consciousness is the embodiment of dependence of mother tongue language. Too many psychological translations hinder the comprehension speed and success degree of listening content.
(4) Subject consciousness and concentrated attention
In the process of listening, the internal emotional fluctuations and consciousness of
Table 2.
Statistical table
Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Metacognitive
level 4.52 4.33 4.17 4.14 4.28 4.22 4.35 4.40 4.63 4.59 4.05 3.98 4.09 4.25 4.38
Listening
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF ENGLISH LEARNERS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION 716
nervousness embodies a lack of inner confidence of the listening learners. Strengthening the subjective consciousness and improving the concentration of attention have a positive effect on the sense of listening confidence.
CONCLUSION
English listening has always been a weak part in English listening learners in China. Even many learners have psychological barriers and nervousness about listening. This paper took Chinese English listening learners as the research object, and analyzed the psychological process of English listening learners in the listening comprehension based on English metacognitive consciousness questionnaire. The main research contents and research conclusions are as follows:
(1) Analyze the information processing process and psychological process of listening comprehension from the perspective of language psychology;
(2) Combined with empirical experiments, analyze the metacognitive level, metacognitive sub-item levels and metacognitive main psychological consciousness generated in the listening process;
(3) Clarify the prediction of metacognition on listening performance.
Acknowledgement
This research has been financed by Cultural Research Project in 2016 of Culture Department of Zhejiang Province “Discourse of World-level Intangible Cultural Heritage in Lishui from the Perspective of Communication” (zw2016095).
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