An Investigation On Non-English Major Freshmen’s Learning Of English Listening And Its Implications To Teaching Strategies

Listening, as one of the important channels of language input, is the foundation of developing learners’ reading and writing skills. In2007, College English Curriculum Requirements was issued in China by the Ministry of Education which clearly specified the objective of college English would be to cultivate the students’ comprehensive ability in applying English especially skills in listening and speaking so as to be capable of communicating with others in English after graduation. Besides, in the reformed CET4, the proportion of listening comprehension part was increased from20%to35%. In view of the great reform on college English teaching, the method of promoting college students’listening competence is becoming more and more important. However, for a long time, English listening teaching especially non-English major students’English listening teaching is the weakness for college English teaching. From2005, listening comprehension part was not included in the English test of the entrance exam to college or the score of it was not calculated into total score in Sichuan, Liaoning, Shanxi and so on. Consequently, it caused chain reactions. Students have negative attitude on English listening learning which lead to the decline of students’ English listening competence and communicative ability. All of these in turn cause the difficulty of college English teaching for non-English major freshmen. While the premise of promoting non-English major freshmen’s English listening competence is to make an investigation and analysis of the present situations for their English listening learning and teaching. Through the comprehensive analysis of the data, we can find out the major problems in the students’ learning and teaching of English listening and then we can work out corresponding English listening teaching strategies for non-English major freshmen.Two instruments are adopted in this thesis:final exam paper and questionnaire. The final exam is the first and second semester final English exam of grade2010non-English major students in UESTC. The exam is mainly used to learn about the present situation of non-English major freshmen’s English listening level. SPSS is used to assist in analysing students’ level in listening. The questionnaires are distributed to both students and teachers in order to make an extensive investigation on the present situation of college non-English major freshmen’s English listening learning and teaching. The subjects of the survey are267non-English major students from grade2010and teachers who teach them English. Their majors include Communication Engineering, Electronic Information Engineering and so on. The main purpose of designing the questionnaires is to figure out the real situations of the college non-English major freshmen’s listening learning and teaching and find out the main problems in students’ English listening learning. The main findings are as follows.(1) The general level of the students’ listening comprehension competence is low and the individual difference is significant.(2) The main problems in the English listening learning for non-English major freshmen are:lack of interest; lack of enough input in English class and enough practice after class; weak English proficiency in phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and cultural background knowledge; lack of proper listening strategies.In view of the problems, the author provides some suggestions for teaching of English listening for non-English major freshmen:inspire students’interest in listening learning; open an English listening course; cultivate students’listening learning autonomy; enhance students’ English proficiency in phonetics, vocabulary and cultural background knowledge;give more explanations and training on English listening comprehension strategies.