Application Of The Three-stage Framework In College English Listening Teaching

According to the current situation of college English learning in China, listening is more difficult for students to acquire than other skills. Listening is fundamental to acquire language. However, nowadays most college students take their listening as the bottleneck in improving their communicative competence which is one of the goals of current English teaching. There are some problems with the method of current college English listening teaching (CELT) in China. Therefore, researchers pay more attention to finding a more effective method in order to improve the present situation of CELT.The method of Three-stage Framework (TSF) is put forward on the basis of Communicative Approach and Task-based Language Teaching. Its pedagogical procedures include three stages: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. At each stage, one clear goal is to be accomplished. Teachers design various interesting activities to motivate students, to make them more involved in the teaching task initiatively and actively, which in turn improves students'communicative abilities. The method of TSF has been generally applied in the study of foreign language teaching. However, in China, not many teachers apply it in practical listening teaching. This study, based on a survey of current CELT, aims to prove three hypotheses as follows:(1) Students are not so satisfied with the current CELT.(2) The method of TSF does make positive effect on CELT.(3) TSF-based listening class can stimulate students'initiative and interest.A survey is conducted to investigate the effectiveness of TSF at college level in English listening class. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in the study. A questionnaire and interview are designed as the data collection instruments. 62 non-English major sophomores from Qingdao University of Science and Technology are involved in the survey. The final data collected are analyzed by SPSS16.0.According to the data analysis, the research concludes the following three findings: firstly, students feel that the listening teaching method is not so effective. Accordingly, they are not satisfied with the current CELT. Secondly, in the TSF-based listening class, students feel relaxed to interact with others. Teachers pay more attention to introducing listening strategies to students, and taking consideration of students'needs and interest. Therefore, the method of TSF does have positive effect on listening teaching. Thirdly, the students, who regard listening as a bottleneck all the time, gradually are more interested in the TSF-based listening class. Therefore, the TSF-based listening teaching can stimulate students'interest and activeness.According to the above findings, some pedagogical implications are presented: teachers should design activities and teaching tasks at each stage carefully and creatively; the three stages should be arranged systematically; the activities at each stage must be relevant, various, helpful and interesting; teachers should introduce listening strategies to students, develop their listening interest and create more chances to improve their communicative competence; teachers can adapt listening materials so as to minimize the listening difficulty and thus make a relaxed atmosphere for students to successfully finish listening tasks.The study has certain significance in improving the current CELT in China.