寄宿制学校学生听力水平产生差异因素分析

论文总字数：30063字

摘 要

本文主要对寄宿制学校学生听力水平产生差异的因素进行分析，以淮安外国语学校的初二学生为研究对象。论文主要包括四个方面。第一，当前寄宿制学校初中英语教学中对于听力教学的实施方法，从课堂上教师听力教学的方法和课后学生听力练习的方法两个角度进行阐述。第二，影响学生听力水平的因素。影响学生听力水平的因素主要有五个方面：学生的英语基本技能，对英语国家的文化习俗了解程度，听力时的专心程度，听力计划的制定以及教师的听力教学水平。第三，从多个角度分析学生与学生之间，班级与班级之间听力水平产生差异的原因。第四，找出当前寄宿制中学英语听力教学水平不高的原因，并提出切实可行的建议克服寄宿制学生无法接触网络资源学习的弊端。

关键词：中学英语；听力教学；新课改；归因分析

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 The advantages and disadvantages of boarding school education 1

2.2 The requirements of listening in English course standards 2

3. Current Listening Training Methods in Boarding Schools 3

3.1Methods of in-class exercises 3

3.2 Methods of after-class exercise 4

4. Factors of Difference in Students’ Listening Level in Boarding Schools 4

4.1 Factors arising from students 6

4.2 Factors arising from teachers 7

4.3 Factors arising from school 8

4.4 Factors arising from family members 9

5.Practical Suggestions on how to Improve Students’ Listening Level in Boarding Schools 9

5.1 Suggestions should be taken by students 9

5.2 Suggestions should be taken by teachers 10

5.3 Suggestions should be taken by schools 11

5.4 Suggestions should be taken by family members 12

6.Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

According to the standards listed in new curriculum, listening teaching has become the most thorny and most important part of English teaching in middle school. People spend 45 percent of their time speaking, 30 percent of time speaking, 16 percent of time reading and 9 percent of time writing. (Jin, 243) We can easily see that listening is important in our daily life. When we are faced with one same English sentence, we can understand it quickly through reading. However, it will take us a little more time to understand it through listening. Why listening is more difficult than reading? Because the information gained from listening is more distract. In present high school entrance examinations, English makes up 150 marks while listening part shares one-sixth. However, students in boarding school receive nearly fully-closed regulations and have limited access to Internet resources, so they cannot receive effective and timely listening information. Some students even reject listening out of dissimilarity. They just choose the “correct” answer according to their feelings while listening, which will cause their low scores. Meanwhile, it’s common practice that one teacher teaches English for two different classes. But the gap of listening level between students can be big in just one month. So, it’s necessary that we should investigate the relevant factors preventing the improvement of students’ listening. Only by searching the factors of difference in students’ listening level can we help students overcome their fear and become interested in listening.

1. Literature review

2.1 The advantages and disadvantages of boarding school education

The development and popularization of boarding middle school has a positive effect on further integrating middle school English education resources, optimizing layout and improving teaching conditions, especially on the additional time for teachers and students to learn English. English additional time refers to the extracurricular time for English subjects in additional to the regular class schedule. (Huang, 33) It generally includes the morning study time, the afternoon self-study, the extracurricular reading activity class and the evening self-study. The English learning time in boarding schools is carried out by the students under the instruction of the teacher, so students can improve their study efficiency and quality. On one hand, the existence and flourishment of boarding schools has remarkably promoted the overall quality of subject teaching to some degree. However, on the other hand, the drawbacks of boarding school deprive students of access to the media. Surrounded by all-day regulations, students know little about the outside world.

2.2 The requirements of listening in English course standards

The English New Curriculum Standard adopts an internationally accepted approach. According to students’ ability levels, these standards divide the English course objectives to nine levels. The designed principle of New Curriculum Standard follows both the law of language learning and the characteristics and needs of psychological development of students at all ages. It also takes into account the China’s diverse ethnic groups, vast territory and unbalanced economic and educational development, aiming to reflect the overall national English curriculum standards: wholeness, flexibility and openness. The National English Program requires English courses starting in the third grade. In terms of English proficiency level, students should reach the second level at the end of the sixth grade, reach the fifth level when they finish the English study of junior high school and reach the eighth level before their high school graduation. As to the third level, fourth level, sixth level and seventh level , all of them are transitional levels among the second, fifth and eighth levels. The transition level setting is not only helpful for guiding all levels of teaching, but also provides a basis for flexibility and openness of the course.

2.2.1The course objectives of listening

From the requirements of fifth level, we should know students will fulfill their own learning needs and goals and show strong self-confidence in English learning before they entering high school. Secondly, students will be qualified for understanding dialogues and small stories in the daily communications. Thirdly, students will have the ability to finish learning tasks on time and explore suitable learning strategies actively. Last, in their daily communication, students will be able to notice the difference between Chinese and foreign cultures.

2.2.2 The content standards of listening

We classify English course standards into five parts: language knowledge, language skills, emotional attitudes, learning strategy and cultural awareness. Listening belongs to language skills. Middle school students in Grade 8 should reach following four aims. The first requirement is to understand the English language at normal speed, be familiar with topic, identify the topic and obtain the main information. The second requirement is to understand the plot and development of simple stories and form their own opinion about main characters and events. The third requirement is the ability to complete the teaching task according to continuous instructions and the fourth requirement is to understand the primary English educational programs in radio and television.

3. Current listening training methods in boarding schools

All the students in this survey are in a boarding school so they receive synchronous listening training and have no access to online resources at school. When they go home for a two-day break every two weeks, they are busy with homework so they also won’t spend time studying more. Their listening training mainly depends on in-class and after-class exercises.

3.1Methods of in-class exercises

The English book they use is composed of eight units and each unit includes six parts respectively: welcome to the unit part, reading part, grammar part, integrated skills part, task part and study skills part. Their listening training material in class mainly comes from welcome to the unit, reading and integrated skills. On one hand, during the study of welcome to the unit and reading, teachers will broadcast the audio of the text so they have the chance to listen exercises. However, they tend to look at the text while listening, which makes nearly no improvement on their listening. On the other hand, their so-called listening lesson is the learning of multiple skills. In other words, they will listen to the material and then fill in the blanks. But the content of the listening material is connected to the theme of the unit, which means students have known well about the possible answers in the blanks. Students also will not make much improvement in their listening level through the exercise of multiple skills.

3.2 Methods of after-class exercises

Students will have twenty-minute’s listening exercises on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The twenty-minute listening exercise is during class interval. They will listen to the audio and do the multiple-choice question which is fully in accordance with the examination types. However, teachers will not tour the classroom at that time. Students sit on their own seats and do the listening exercises. Students also can refuse to complete listening exercises as long as they keep silent. Upon the listening is over, the class leader will write the answer on the blackboard. Students check their answers but they don’t know why it’s true or false because they have no chance to listen the material again. Teachers will not know whether someone is absent-minded. In a word, after-school exercises will not bring much improvement if teachers don’t explain the reasons of their mistakes for the multiple-choice questions.

4. Factors of Difference in Students’ Listening Level in Boarding Schools

During the writer’s practice teaching, the writer conducted a research about which factors could have effects on students’ listening levels. The finding is based on the research of students from four classes. Miss Xiao imparts English for students from class 1 and class 5 while Mr. Li imparts English for students from class 3 and class 6.

Now, the writer would like to give the detailed analysis of the table above: The listening average score of class 1 has increased from 18.02 to 19.4, which has grown by 1.38. The listening average score of class 3 has improved from 18.14 to 19.2, which has grown by 1.06. The listening average score of class 5 has risen from 18.1 to 19.2, which has grown by 1.1. The listening average score of class 6 has increased from 17.94 to 19.4, which has grown by 1.46. The total average score of class 1 has grown from 109.7 to 112.7, which has increased by 3. The total average score of class 3 has grown from 111 to 112.1, which has increased by 1.1. The total average score of class 5 has grown from 109.9 to 112.5, which has increased by 2.6. The total average score of class 6 has grown from 108.3 to 111.4, which has increase by 1.46.

According to the table above, we can conclude that listening can get improved in one month and the increase of listening is the key to the improvement of the total score.

For further study, the writer made a questionnaire and asked students from class 1 and class 3 to finish these questionnaires. In this survey, the writer asked about the extent to which their parents know about English and whether they are willing to listen to English songs or watch English movies. On the basis of the results abstracted from the survey, the writer concludes some factors that may have effects on the listening levels of students. These factors can be divided into five parts largely: the first kind of factor reveals students’ fundamental ability and skills, which includes the vocabulary, grammar, intonation and pronunciation of listeners. The second part contains the access to western culture and customs, meaning how much they know about English-speaking countries’ social conditions. The third aspect is the degree to which students can focus on during their listening. During their listening exercises time, no one knows whether he or she is focusing on listening except for himself or herself. The fourth element is mainly about if they have made a detailed listening training plan. Because they are boarding school students they receive the same listening training plan. And the last one is about the teacher’s teaching ability. Teachers’ teaching abilities indeed vary from one to another, but the abilities are eligible for students’ learning. According to the questionnaire finding from students, the first kind of factor has the largest effect on their listening level and the fifth one has the smallest effect on their listening level.

4.1 Factors arising from students

4.1.1 Pronunciation and intonation

Middle school students need to master five basic abilities, namely, listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. They have started to read words directly without learning phonetic symbol since they started to learn English in the elementary schools, so they didn’t grasp the correct pronunciation and can’t pronounce exactly. Therefore they can’t comprehend the content they hear no less understanding. Not knowing the changes in the pronunciation of a word, such as continuous reading, assimilation, weakening, incomplete blasting, etc. (Cao, 167) All of them will hinder the improvement of listening ability. Especially, students with bad pronunciation tend to do a bad job on their listening.

4.1.2 Language basic knowledge

Listening problem may also result from the lack of basic language knowledge. In most cases, there are two factors related to basic language knowledge which may have an impact on students’ listening level. The first element is vocabulary and the other one is grammar. If a listener doesn’t have a rich vocabulary, in that way he or she will not be able to understand the material very well. Even if he or she has heard some words, he still cannot understand because of poor vocabulary. Meanwhile, if the key words of the listening material are new words to the listener, he or she may be at a loss about the main idea. In some other cases, students can hear many single words, but they cannot understand the exact meaning of the whole sentence due to poor grammar. Thus, if students don’t know much vocabulary and grammar, they will not succeed in listening.

4.1.3 Cultural backgrounds

Most middle school students in boarding school are quite unfamiliar with western conditions and customs. Because they seldom connect to Internet and have no chance to become acquainted with the outside world. They just acquire knowledge about western culture occasionally from their teachers at class. There is no systematic knowledge in their mind. The lack of background information substantially weaken the understanding of listening material. When they hear one conversation between two Americans, students would feel strange due to their lack of knowledge of western culture and customs. Knowing well about English-speaking countries’ social customs and natural conditions can help us gasp the background information better.

4.1.4 Mentality

Because of the special test form of listening, students can’t help feeling nervous. They finish one exercise, but they just know the correct answer without knowing why. In this process, they don’t make progress. So when they take listening test next time, they will continue to feel nervous. During the listening test, students will hear 15 sentences and one long conversation. The conversation will be broadcast only once, so many students may get stressed during listening. Once they missed the former question, it’ll be harder for them to focus on the next part. They tend to think over about the missed one. For the fact that they seldom receive listening test in simulated circumstances, it’s unlikely for them to achieve high marks in the listening examinations.

4.1.5 Listening skills

The process of listening test is made up of pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. Students are unable to predict content according to related information before listening, to grasp the key sentences during listening and select information after listening. The terrible listening greatly affected the latter judgement and reaction. Students should keep in mind what they need to catch and write down throughout the listening process.

4.2 Factors arising from teachers

4.2.1 Single teaching method

Affected by the high school entrance examinations, present listening teaching in middle school is examination-oriented. To improve students’ listening scores, teachers prefer to choose simulation test as material to do listening exercises. During this process, teachers only broadcast the audio and announce the correct answer without explanation. Students may improve their scores a little in short time, but students will not develop and improve their listening abilities fundamentally in the listen-and-check way. This leaves a misguided impression on teachers. Teachers will not reach the training objectives and it’s impossible to keep pace with the reform of new curriculum.

4.2.2 Inappropriate listening material

Most teachers choose the listening material with the aim of improving students’ listening scores while they seldom think whether the chosen material can meet the requirement of the training. Some listening materials are adapted from cloze test or reading comprehension, these materials are not colloquial, so these materials are not suitable for listening teaching. Some other teachers choose updated listening materials, but these materials are filled with much vogue word. These new information may include politics or economy, but students may not have prior knowledge. Lack of access to Internet makes students feel puzzled about catchword. The inappropriate listening materials are hard for students to understand and bring difficulty to students’ exercises, causing a bad effect on listening results.

4.2.3 Insufficient reading instruction

Reading instruction is an essential part in the listening teaching process. However, in the process of listening teaching, teachers unduly pursue the teaching pace and ignored students’ study process and study results. Besides, when students become resistant to the listening learning, teachers seldom have emotional communications with students and hardly make positive guidance on students’ negative behaviors. Lack of teachers’ attention will greatly affected teaching results. Teachers should teach lessons in English to help students get rid of the effects brought by mother tongue.

4.3 Factors arising from school

Students hear the listening material by broadcast machine installed on the wall. Some classrooms enjoy favorable broadcast while some other classrooms have to bear noises from the old-fashioned broadcast machine. Those who have bad broadcast machine will not get effective training. The noise brought by occasional construction and grass cutter may also waken listening training effects.

4.4 Factors arising from family members

When students go home for their weekends, they want to use the Internet after finishing homework. However, parents or other family members may ask them to read books instead of using the computer. Even students say that they want to study on the computer, parents will not believe it.

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