1.4 Aims of the Study
1.4 aims of the study
though the chinese education ministry's college english curriculum requirements places a strong emphasis on instruction in listening in university level courses, there is, to date, still a gap between the requirements for listening and the actual teaching of listening in china. to be more specific, instruction in the use of listening strategies has only begun in the last two decades and that instruction was mainly confined to the teaching of some very concrete and easy-to-learn cognitive strategies such as listening for the main idea, paying attention to such details as numbers and names, etc. strategies for developing metacognitive awareness, despite their crucial role in facilitating listening, have been largely neglected. the effects of metacognitive listening strategy training on chinese efl learners' listening comprehension have been scarcely studied and little is known about the relationship between the chinese university efl learners' metacognitive listening awareness and their listening comprehension. this study aims to fill these gaps in the research.
as a major component of listening input, vocabulary is of primary importance to chinese efl learners' listening comprehension, and incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening is a promising source of new vocabulary. however, incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening has received little attention. in fact, to the best of the author's knowledge, there are no previous studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening by chinese learners, nor has the relationship between chinese university efl learners' vocabulary acquisition and their metacognitive awareness been studied. this is another aim of the study.
in summary, the main aim of the study is to try to fill the above research gaps by investigating the relationships between chinese university efl learners' listening comprehension, metacognitive awareness and incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening tasks.
though the chinese education ministry's college english curriculum requirements places a strong emphasis on instruction in listening in university level courses, there is, to date, still a gap between the requirements for listening and the actual teaching of listening in china. to be more specific, instruction in the use of listening strategies has only begun in the last two decades and that instruction was mainly confined to the teaching of some very concrete and easy-to-learn cognitive strategies such as listening for the main idea, paying attention to such details as numbers and names, etc. strategies for developing metacognitive awareness, despite their crucial role in facilitating listening, have been largely neglected. the effects of metacognitive listening strategy training on chinese efl learners' listening comprehension have been scarcely studied and little is known about the relationship between the chinese university efl learners' metacognitive listening awareness and their listening comprehension. this study aims to fill these gaps in the research.
as a major component of listening input, vocabulary is of primary importance to chinese efl learners' listening comprehension, and incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening is a promising source of new vocabulary. however, incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening has received little attention. in fact, to the best of the author's knowledge, there are no previous studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening by chinese learners, nor has the relationship between chinese university efl learners' vocabulary acquisition and their metacognitive awareness been studied. this is another aim of the study.
in summary, the main aim of the study is to try to fill the above research gaps by investigating the relationships between chinese university efl learners' listening comprehension, metacognitive awareness and incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening tasks.