Study of Factors Affecting Chinese International Students’ Lecture-listening Comprehension at Thai Universities, Their Coping Strategies and Self-efficacy

Due to the influence of English as a global language, an increasing number of universities in non-English speaking countries has adopted English as language medium in academic settings. Lecture listening comprehension in a second/foreign language place high demands on listeners and is of crucial importance to a student's academic success. This study investigated the factors affecting Chinese international students’ lecture-listening comprehension at Thai universities, their according strategies for improvement and their status-quo of self-efficacy. The results indicate that learner factor, culture and background factor and teacher factor all exert influence on students’ lecture listening. Insufficient vocabulary was reported as the biggest obstacle which hinders effective listening. Students in the present study tend to use more cognitive strategies to resolve their listening problems than social-affective strategies, meta-cognitive strategies and memory strategies. Students are found to be good at skipping unfamiliar words and focusing on important points while listening. Besides, students’ self-efficacy in lecture-listening comprehension is in the medium level, and those with relatively higher self-efficacy tend to use more memory strategies to enlarge their vocabulary and less influenced by learner and teacher factors.