A Study Of Non-English Majors' Listening Comprehension Barriers And Countermeasures

Listening comprehension is considered to be one of the most difficult skills in English learning. As one of the receptive skills, listening is the foundation to develop other language skills. To improve the ability of listening comprehension has always been the focus of language teaching. So in the process of listening teaching, it is extremely important to make students aware of their barriers in acquiring listening skills and develop their listening ability, which is the key point that I want to include in this thesis.The purpose of the thesis is to analyze and investigate the various non-English majors'existing barriers that students may encounter when engaging in listening comprehension tasks or learning English as a foreign language, and the factors that lead to their failure of listening comprehension. Based upon investigation and research, the thesis tries to provide some available and effective countermeasures to overcome these barriers.The instruments used in this quantitative and qualitative study are two questionnaires with the same questions and two tests in one textbook. Totally, one hundred and seventy-two students are randomly chosen from the first year students of non-English majors of Hua Shang Institute in the city of Tai Yuan. And the data collection is completed from September 2009 to January 2010. The present study is conducted by using quantitative and qualitative research methods for a semester-long period.As far as the structure is concerned, this thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one provides an introduction to the study which is described in the following chapters, which mainly includes the background and content of the study, the purpose and significance of the study, as well as structure of the thesis. Chapter two presents a review of the literature. It can be divided into four sections. Firstly, it describes studies related to listening comprehension both at home and abroad, and then the models of listening comprehension process, and related studies concerning listening comprehension barriers. Finally, the formats of listening lessons are provided at the end of this chapter. Chapter three outlines the methodology, the findings, and analysis of the study. The purpose of this part is to research: what barriers may the students encounter during their process of developing listening comprehension proficiency? And after the research for this question, the findings and analysis about students'existing barriers in listening comprehension will be thoroughly presented. Chapter four is firstly followed by a sample lesson, which consists of teaching procedures and the rationale for lecturing this lesson. Then, it is shown in detail how to cope with listening comprehension barriers and some appropriate solutions in eliminating students'listening comprehension barriers. Finally, the results will be presented and analyzed from the questionnaires and tests. Chapter five summarizes the findings, addresses the limitations of the study, and proposes the possible implications and suggestions for further research.