Intervening in Tertiary Students' Strategic Listening in Japanese as a Foreign Language

Abstract

This is an exploratory study from a cognitive psychology perspective. It investigates the listening strategies used by tertiary-level learners of Japanese as a foreign language in non-interactional listening tasks. The study addrresses four research questions: (1) What are the listening strategies used by native speakers of Japanese (L1) and by above-average proficiency (AAP) and below-average proficiency (BAP) tertiary-level learners of Japanese as a foreign language who are Australian-English speakers, in audiovisual (AV) and audio-only (A) listening conrexts?; (2) How does the voice medium in different genres (television news broadcasts and television family dramas) influence these speakers' listening strategies in AV and A listening contexts?; (3) What are the similarities and differences in strategy use in AV and A listening contexts between the L1 group and the AAP and BAP L2 subgroups?; what are the effective strategies used by these speakers?; and what types of strategies should be included in an instructional package for an effective intervention program? (4) Does the listening strategy intervention program developed in this study result in more strategic listening in Japanese?