Research On The Effectiveness Of Call For Listening And Speaking In Fostering College Students' Motivation To Learn English

This research was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) for listening and speaking from the angle of motivation fostering. College English Curriculum Requirements implemented in 2004 has proposed a new CALL model to improve the listening and speaking proficiency of college students. In order to determine its effectiveness, 180 colleges and universities participated in a pilot experiment. Under this background, this research was to explore if CALL could foster students'motivation of English learning.The basis for this research was a two-year (four-semester) experiment in China University of Geosciences (CUG), one of the 180 colleges that participated in the pilot experiment. The experiment started in Sept. 2004. The subjects of this research were students from four classes—two that used CALL, two that didn't.The whole research fell into four steps. At first, the listening and speaking proficiency of two groups were compared. Then more survey instruments were developed to collect data on students'motivation, the strengths and weaknesses of CALL. The raw data obtained from the survey were assessed with the help of SPSS software.Findings indicated that there were no significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in students'language achievement test scores as well as their motivation intensity. However, the results indicated that though CALL didn't improve students'proficiency, it kept students'language proficiency stable. Besides, CALL had subtle potential to motivate students since students who used CALL were more desirable to learn English and made more efforts.This research also found that CALL's effectiveness was achieved because of its capability of relieving students from anxiety and making students feel natural and unstrained. Its flexibility fostered autonomous learning. Meanwhile some weaknesses were found. The present CALL model lacked interactive communication, feedback, pressure, and learning methods guidance. All these weaknesses may demotivate students.The findings provide college English teaching in China with useful implications. An integrative model which integrates FTF with CALL for listening and speaking teaching is suggested. In addition, some measures to cope with its weaknesses, like acquiring high-quality hardware and software, enhancing training, changing teachers'roles, and so on, are proposed in order to motivate students to the largest extent.