The Call Environment And Individual Learner Factors In Listening

With the widespread popularity of educational technology in contemporary education, computer assisted language learning (CALL) has won a wide support for its unique features to facilitate language learning. However, many current researches on CALL in China have confirmed its positive teaching effect by examining learners' language achievements or testing the practicality of language instruction or learning software and courseware, and only few studies concern the learners' individual factors------ anxiety, motivation, and learner beliefs, which serve as 'the filter' to impede orfacilitate language learning. On the other hand, since CALL has been widely promoted in English instruction in China, it inevitably results in some changes in learners' individual factorsIn order to provide a proof of the real effect of CALL, this paper tries to examine the changes in learners' individual factors in CALL environment in listening class, because listening class is firstly and heavily influenced by adopting CALL in China. This paper presents some theories related to listening, learner individual differences and CALL, studies the effect of CALL in the light of individual learner factors, such as motivation, anxiety, and beliefs, and puts forward some suggestions to English teachers. Two questionnaires were adopted from authorities and revised to inspire the differences of anxiety, motivation and learner beliefs and the frequency of adopting listening strategies by comparison of the two groups of learners learning respectively in a self-access way under the CALL environment and with a traditional teaching method. Quantitative research method is used in the study to provide statistics for analyzing and discussing. It turns out that the adoption of CALL in listening class has achieved comparatively satisfactory outcomes, and it has confirmed the effectiveness of multi-media computer technology in assisting language teaching.