An Action Research On Improving Students' Listening Strategies And Classroom Atmosphere

Most of the researchers in the field of foreign language teaching and researching adopt surveys as an approach to a certain topic. But the survey results got after months may be early in the practitioners'mind, and the resulting implications may not provide practical solutions. Action research within the field of education is firmly located in the realm of the practitioners and tied to self-reflection about teaching and learning, serving as a bridge between teaching and researching.The author started this action research in order to change the unpleasant situation in his listening classroom. After preliminary investigation, he put forward the purpose of the research: make the students become successful second language listeners in terms of listening comprehension strategies and make a difference in students'negative interest and confidence in the listening class,thus defrost the freezing classroom atmosphere.Based on research purposes given and preliminary investigation, the author put forth four action strategies: fertile soil (focusing on listening processes with training listening strategies in mind) and abundant water (assigning aural homework) aiming to make the students become successful second language listeners; while plenty of sunshine (giving visual support) and fresh air (making full use of music) trying to make the students become pleasant listeners in the class. The author adopted a research orientation to his own listening classroom and pursues action and research at the same time throughout the twelve-week research project.The study mainly used qualitative approaches. It adopted class observation, interviews, questionnaires and journals to collect data for problem finding in the implementation of action strategies. It also used quantitative approach (two questionnaires) before and after research to see whether or not research purposes of the research were achieved. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for statistical analysis and compared sample T-Test was used to check whether or not there was any significance in the means.Research results at the end of this action research were satisfying because the students'using of listening strategies in pre- and post-listening and their views on their listening comprehension and our listening class have changed to a certain degree in the positive direction. But only three strategies (anxiety, revision and inferencing) among the nine strategies while listening have improved significantly and the students'attitude towards listening and teachers have not changed much after research.The author pointed out that the affective factors like interest, confidence, attitude, and above all, class participation and atmosphere were influenced by a lot of factors, such as the difficulty of listening materials and listening tasks, rate of speech delivery and the students'language levels, etc. The using of strategies may influence each other, for example, improper listening habits may affect attentional resources that are important for the other strategies, like verification and elaboration. At last, the concept of listening comprehension strategies is complicated itself: to be aware of strategies using before listening does not mean to be able to use them while listening; and what does"successful"second language listeners mean? These findings have provided direction for the future study.Finally, the thesis pointed out some limitations of this action research. But in this research project, the practitioner has learned more about himself, his students, and the subject they are learning together.