Research On Listening Training Effectiveness In A Vocational School

Listening comprehension is a basic ability in people's daily communication. It is necessary to do listening strategy training because strategy employment is an effective way to improve students'listening ability.With the development of language acquisition theories, researchers have done lots of researches on English learning strategies at home and abroad. However most of the researches focus not on vocational school students, but on middle school students and undergraduates. Vocational school students have their own features, besides this, the number of vocational school students is increasing fast. It is necessary to do research on strategies and teaching models of vocational schools.The thesis aims to examine the effectiveness of listening strategy instructions and to explore its constructive insights in vocational schools.The training was designed as a quasi-experiment lasting for 16 weeks(2007.3-2007.6). The researcher selected 76 students in Grade One from the Law department of Hebei Vocational School of Politics and Law Science as the subjects. They were divided into two classes, one as the experimental class (EC) and the other as the control class(CC).According to Oxford, learning strategies are classified into two major groups: direct strategies (memory, cognitive and compensation) and indirect strategies (metacognitive, affective and social). A three-stage model (modelling, practice guiding and independent practice) was employed in the classroom training. The listening strategy training was designed accordingly. It consisted of motivation stimulating and strategy training. Strategy training included metacognitive strategies(including self-monitor to select useful information and make plans), training for memory strategies(including attention concentration, note-taking), training for compensation strategies (including inferring and predicting), training for affection strategies (including set up teacher's harmonious relationship and create relaxing classroom environment) and training for social strategies (including cooperating with classmates and teachers)The experiment was done by the following steps: 1. The researcher chose the two classes stated above as the subjects; 2. The researcher employed a pre-questionnaire to check their motivation and actual use of strategies. A pre-test was given to compare the listening proficiency of the two classes; 3. Taking Listening and Speaking Course( Book 2 and 3) (Fudan Press), by Yang Fengzhen as the main materials, the researcher trained the EC listening strategies while the CC was still instructed in the traditional way; 4. Post-questionnaire and post-test were given to examine the training effectiveness; 5. Data were collected and analyzed. Based on the data analysis, conclusion was drawn and implications were made.The findings show that the students who received listening strategy training performed better than those who didn't. It proved that: 1. Listening strategy training based on the three-stage model is effective. 2. The three-stage model can be used as a teaching model in listening classes; 3.Strategies can be taught to acquire.Based on the results of the research the researcher proposes some main tentative pedagogical implications: 1.Strategy training should be conscious to the students. It is important and necessary for the teachers to make the students aware of the value; 2.The three-stage model can be adopted in other English classroom teaching such as reading, writing, etc; 3. Motivation can be stimulated by training. Students'interest and motivation should be placed in an important place.The researcher has only got some initial achievements from the experiment. Further study about listening strategies is still needed.