An Exploration of the Relationship between Listening Strategy Use and Listening Comprehension of Undergraduate EFL Students

Listening skill, which gains momentum with the increase of digitalized resources in the globalizing world, puts language learners who can make use of listening strategies one step ahead. This paper sought to investigate the listening strategy use of EFL undergraduate students in relation to their foreign language listening performance. 157 EFL students at a state university, who were aged between 18-23 participated in the study. This descriptive study employed a quantitative approach. Nakatani’s (2006) Oral Communication Strategy Inventory (OCSI) was used for data collection purposes. A listening test was also administrated to the participants in order to measure their listening comprehension. The statistical analyses revealed that the participants mostly employed negotiation for meaning strategy followed by scanning and getting the gist strategies. The results also indicated that only getting the gist strategy was a significant predictor of L2 listening performance. A statistically significant difference between high and low-achieving L2 listeners was also found on negotiation for meaning, getting the gist, scanning, and nonverbal strategies.