The Application Of The Interactive Theory To English Listening Teaching In Senior High School

The teaching research of listening ability in our country has experienced only a short period of time, compared with that of other teachings. It started only from the seventies and the eighties of last century. But at present, in our national-wide entrance examination for higher education, the full marks set for English test paper are 150, of which 30 is taken up by listening ability test, amounting to one fifth (1|5) of its full marks. Apparently, the teaching of listening ability cannot be neglected any more in our English teaching. At present, although both teachers and students begin to pay more attention to listening ability, schools vary in the economic conditions, the teaching resources and the listening facilities, and the traditional ways adopted in listening teaching itself are not efficient, which lead to a difference between the result and the expectation. Though teachers are aware of the reasons why students are poor in listening ability and pass on them many skills and listening strategy, students' listening ability still stays at the low level and the assessment are not satisfactory enough.As the study on foreign language teaching by numbers of psychologists and educationists has gone even further, attention has been shifted from the research of textbooks and teaching methodology to that of ways of listening. They have realized that it is the approaches to learning for students that educators should pay close attention to. So the ideology of "learner-centered" teaching has been put forward. Students will find that it is difficult to enhance their communication ability only by their teacher's lecture in language learning. They must fully digest and absorb what they have learnt themselves before they can express their thoughts and exchange their feelings more properly. These new ideas are identical with that of interactive foreign language teaching.Brown, who based his theory on that of input and output of second language acquisition as well as the recognition theory, puts the interactive theory forward. His theory emphasizes the interaction between teachers and students and the development between the two. Students do not absorb knowledge passively, but construct actively. At the same time, the theory suggests that listening is not a one-way operation, but a two-way action between the speaker and the listener. Also, the context plays very important role in the communication. From the theory we should build up a more realcontext for the learners.According to the principle of interaction and the ideas of teaching clarified in the theory of interaction, the author of the dissertation has made a program about the design of listening class. Throughout the comparisons in some aspects between the interactive foreign language teaching and the traditional foreign language teaching, the advantage of interactive teaching is apparently embodied. These comparisons include: how to treat the relationship between teachers, students, teaching material and media;how to organize the group work;how to arrange the various activities during listening;and whether the teaching pays special attention to the association between the old and the new knowledge;whether there is comprehensible input and output;whether listening is introduced in authentic context, whether the motivation can be stirred by listening.