Student-Centered Approach To The Teaching Of Listening

The present listening class at college in China is basically teacher-centered. As listening is easily affected by psychological factors, the teacher-centered approach tends to result in students' nervousness and fear of listening to English in class. As a result, students' interest in listening decreases. To remold the existing unitary teacher-centered approach, the author conducted an experiment by revising the teaching methods in one of her listening classes. This paper investigates the effects of student-centered approach to teaching listening on students' development of autonomy, changes of motivation, changes of anxiety, use of listening strategies and listening comprehension ability. Student-centered approach is based on constructivist theory. The major findings of the study can be summarized as follows:(1) Student-centered approach to teaching listening improves learners'autonomy;(2) Student-centered approach to teaching listening enhances learners'motivation and lowers learners' anxiety;(3) Student-centered approach to teaching listening enhances learners' useof listening strategies;(4) Student-centered approach to teaching listening improves learners'listening comprehension ability.