A Study On Asynchronous Listening Instruction In The EFL Context

With people's realization of the importance of listening instruction in language teaching, studies on listening instruction are increasing to some extent. Many researchers, both abroad and at home, argue that bottom-up and top-down strategies are both important in listening comprehension. However, among the current research, top-down strategy training has been emphasized but bottom-up strategy training has been underestimated. Some Chinese researchers have pointed out that the current domestic studies emphasize too much on top-down strategies, whereas the activities concerning bottom-up processing are considered as taboos. Although there are a few studies concerning bottom-up processing strategies, they mainly suggest the basic introduction to and mechanical drills in phonetics in listening class instead of taking them as the main strategies penetrating the whole teaching process.This research promotes the instruction model of Asynchronous Listening Instruction (ALI). It emphasizes the fundamental importance of bottom-up training, and at the same time encourages the learners to obtain practical experience of top-down strategies. A pilot study on 52 freshmen indicates that insufficient bottom-up processing ability would undermine the utilization of top-down strategies. In the EFL context, without adequate amount of listening practice in daily life, English learners need to be provided with more chance than the learners in the ESL context to contact the language itself in class.Two specific hypotheses are testified in this research: (1) English learners subjectively accept ALI in the EFL context; (2) ALI is an effective listening instruction model in the EFL context.An empirical study is carried out to testify the two hypotheses. The subjects in this study consist of 130 freshmen who are non-English majors. They form two classes according to their majors. The two classes are randomly put into the control group and the experimental group. At the end of the experiment, a questionnaire is applied to the experimental group to elicit the students' evaluation on ALI in comparison with the traditional listening instruction methodology. This is done to testify the first hypothesis: English learners subjectively accept ALI in the EFL context. A Pretest Posttest experiment is carried out to examine the second hypothesis: ALI is an effective listening instruction model in the EFL context. Both of the data collected from the questionnaire and from the pretest and the posttest are analyzed by means of the software package for social statistics (SPSS).The data collected from the questionnaire show significant difference between the evaluation of ALI and the evaluation of the traditional listening instruction methodology. The average scores for ALI are all significantly higher than those for the traditional teaching methodology.The results of the data analysis of the pretest and the posttest manifest that although at the beginning of the research, both of the control group and the experimental group are at the same level of listening proficiency, after the research, significant difference is found between the two groups. The mean value of the test scores for the experimental group is significantly higher than the mean value for the control group.The research findings suggest that students subjectively welcome ALI and ALI is effective in the EFL context.