Preliminary Inquiry into the Successful and Unsuccessful Listening Strategies of Beginning College Japanese Students

摘要

The main purpose this investigation is to identify listening strategies of first-year Japanese-language students when presented with a listening comprehension task commonly utilized in the foreign-language classroom. If successful listening strategies can be identified and categorized, perhaps, they can be shared and taught to those students who do poorly on listening exercises. Before the main problem on listening strategies can be researched, however, three other prerequisites must be resolved. The solution of each of the three prerequisites will lead to the main objective of this study. The first prerequisite is to determine through interviews whether or not foreign-language learners (college-level) can verbalize about the listening strategies they use on a listening comprehension task. The second prerequisite is to develop an interview procedure as well as retrospective, contemplative, and experiential questions to elicit students listening strategies on a listening comprehension task. The third prerequisite is to produce and utilize a questionnaire on listening strategies that will assist in identifying factors involved in listening comprehension.