On Teaching Listening Through Authentic Videos For Non-English Majors

With the rapid development of economy and IT industry, popular culture has exerted a highly significant influence on college students. Many language teachers try to use authentic videos to stimulate students'motivation for language learning activities. This thesis is a research on one semester's study of the effects of teaching listening via authentic videos, in the hope that it may be of some value to college English teaching in listening which focuses more on fostering students'communicative competence.In the thesis, the author first reviews the studies of some language experts on teaching foreign languages through videos home and abroad, including the history and the benefits of video teaching, followed by theories of motivation, schemata and dual coding which support the application of authentic videos to the language classroom and presents the advantages of authentic videos as the main carrier of language materials for listening. In order to study the motivating role of authentic videos as the main carrier of language materials and effects of teaching listening via authentic videos, the researcher conducted a teaching experiment in 2007. The experiment done among the non-English majors in East China Institute of Technology lasted almost one semester. Two groups of 60 college students were chosen as subjects of the study, 30 in the experimental group and 30 in the control group. The experimental group had the listening class employing videos as the main vehicle of language materials, while the control group used the traditional textbook-based language materials. Due to the advantages of videos as the carrier of language materials, various activities for the experimental group were designed to get students involved in the listening process. For the control group, the language learning activities listed in the textbook were conducted in the classroom.The data were collected through questionnaires, listening pretest, posttest and students'self-reports. With results from the survey and experimental study, tentative conclusions are reached that authentic videos as the vehicle of listening materials can better motivate students in the language classroom than the traditional textbook-based language materials. Students instructed with language materials from videos performed better in the listening posttest and more students in the experimental group got deeper understanding in listening task. Moreover, most students in the experimental group held positive attitudes towards teaching listening through videos. The thesis ends by pointing out the limitation of the study. Suggestions are made from the perspectives that more subjects should be involved in the further study and a more scientific instructional procedure should be designed for the practical listening teaching.