The Impact Of Dual Coding On Listening Comprehension Of Different Perceptual Learning Style Students

Listening is the most valuable skill in language learning. During the latest several decades, researchers have been arduously working on the formation of theoretical models which can explain the listening process. Thus, listening theories such as bottom-up theory, top-down theory and schema theory appeared. However, they can only partly explain the listening process. All these theories explain much more on linguistic factors in the listening process and ignore the nonverbal factors, which are equally important in the listening process. Dual coding theory (DCT) is a relatively new theory, which is initiated by Allan Paivio. According to DCT, cognition involves the activities of two distinct subsystems, a verbal system specialized for dealing with language, such as phoneme, word pronunciation, rhyme, stress and intonation and so on, arid a nonverbal system specialized for dealing directly with nonlinguistic objects and events, such as mental image, affective response, and so on. The two subsystems can work independently, in parallel, or in integrated way (Paivio,1971). There were many investigations applying DCT to listening teaching, but they always ignored the individual differences.Perceptual learning style describes the differences among learners using one or more channels of senses to comprehend, organize and retain information (Reid,1987). In general, it is categorized into visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile. And sometimes kinesthetic and tactile can be combined together. Learner responds to the same stimuli differently (Kinsella, 2002). To promote the development of individual listening, the writer pays more attention to the input and output of nonverbal information as well as the verbal drills. This research aims to investigate the impact of two dual coding on listening of students with different perceptual learning styles. The research questions are as follows:1) Does dual coding promote the listening proficiency of visual students?2) Does dual coding promote the listening proficiency of kinesthetic students?3) Does dual coding promote the listening proficiency of auditory students?4) What impacts does the dual coding teaching have on the listening motivation, anxiety and strategies use?The subjects of this study are from No.14 Middle School in Anyang. They come from two parallel classes in Grade Eight. There are forty students in the experimental class and forty in the control class. Before the experiment, learning perceptual preference questionnaire (Oxford,1993) is used to survey perceptual learning style (visual, kinesthetic and auditory) of the subjects. The same Perceptual Learning Style (PLS) students' listening proficiency between the two classes at the beginning of the semester has no significant difference, analyzed from the final examination test of Grade Seven, which is regarded as the pre-test. And then in order to investigate motivation, anxiety and strategies in listening process, the writer makes a survey through a questionnaire before and after the experiment. During the experiment, the control class adopts the traditional model and the experimental class pays more attention to the dual coding methods such as mental imagery training, static visual aids, dynamic visual aids and so on. The final examination results of this semester, and the data of the questionnaire are collected as the post-test data. Analyzing the Data by SPSS (11.5), the writer draws the following conclusions:1) The effect of dual coding on visual students' listening proficiency is significant.2) The effect of dual coding on kinesthetic students'listening proficiency is not significant.3) The effect of dual coding on auditory students' listening proficiency is not significant.4) Dual coding enhances students'motivation, lowers students'anxiety and improves students' use of listening strategies. According to the above findings, dual coding has some positive impacts on listening teaching and it also has some limitations. The future studies need to make a further study on designing activities for different perceptual learning style learners, especially for auditory and kinesthetic learners.