Schema Theory And English Listening Teaching In Higher Vocational College

As basic language skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing are known as the four facets in language learning. Traditionally, reading and writing have been receiving direct instructional attention, while listening is still in a subordinate position and neglected for rather a long time. Besides, teachers often expect students to develop their listening skill by osmosis and without help (Mendelsohn, 1984; Oxford, 1993). The fact that listening has been neglected or poorly taught may have stemmed from the belief that it is a passive skill and that merely exposing students to the spoken language provides adequate instruction in listening comprehension (Call, 1985). Fortunately, a number of scholars have recognized the crucial role listening plays in language acquisition. (Asjer, 1969; Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Byres, 1984; Rost, 1990, 2000, 2002). However, in terms of listening teaching, little exploration has been made both theoretically and practically. In higher vocational schools, English listening teaching is particularly unsatisfactory. It is usually the case that teachers are apt to handle their listening teaching in the form of testing, while scientific instructions and special training of listening skills are often neglected. Thus, the students are quite at a loss and greatly frustrated when they come across listening obstacles. As a result, many learners' listening ability remains at a low level even after a long period of learning.In view of the above situation, and based on schema theory and listening theory, this study attempts to probe into the relationship between schema theory and listening comprehension and search for effective ways so as to improve English listening teaching in vocational schools and help the students become better listeners.The notion of schema can be traced back to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1787), but the origin of modern schema theory is usually identified in the work of the psychologist Bartlett in his book Remembering in 1932. Bartlett found evidence that perception, understanding and memory are shaped by the expectations that people form on the basis of their prior knowledge. He used the term 'schema' to refer to the basic unit in the organization of prior knowledge. "The role of background knowledge in language comprehension has been formalized as schema theory" (Bartlett, 1932; Rumelhart, 1980). Later some other scholars such as Rumelhart, Anderson, Abelson, Minsky, etc. developed this theory by giving different definitions and elaborated the theory from different perspectives. And this theory has also been applied to foreign language learning and teaching, but "most of the research which investigated the effects of schemata on comprehension was concerned with L1 listening and L2 reading" (Long, 1989)In order to justify the role schema plays in EFL listening and explore effective ways to improve students' English listening ability, the author conducts a listening test and a questionnaire survey in this research. The participants of the research are from Shandong Silk Textile Vocational College. T hey are 30 students majoring in fashion design.In the research the author adopts two instruments: one is a listening test, and the other is a questionnaire survey. After the test, a questionnaire survey is done to investigate the subjects' listening strategies and the frequency of schemata application.The results of the study reveal that listening teaching shouldn't be focused only on the decoding of linguistic knowledge (vocabulary, grammar rules, syntactic structures, etc.) The lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language may also present an obstacle to listening comprehension. What can not be denied is that the supplement of related background knowledge (construction of schemata) or the possession of related background knowledge (activation of schemata) can actively facilitate listening comprehension. Another finding is that poor listening strategies, the lack of pre-listening preparation and listeners' weak learning motivation, etc. are also factors affecting the learners' listening performance.Some pedagogical implications for listening teaching are drawn through the above research and discussion. In order to achieve successful listening, the teachers should emphasize pre-listening preparation, including: teaching new words, providing relative background knowledge, trying to activate the students' prior knowledge, constructing non-existed schemata, stimulating students' motivation for listening, etc. In teaching practice, teachers should consciously cultivate the students' listening strategies and foster the students' learning autonomy, etc. Besides, in order to accumulate the learners' storage of world knowledge (or schemata), the teachers should also emphasize large quantities of comprehensible input. It is hoped that this study will shed light on English listening teaching in vocational colleges.