A Study On Improving English Listening Competence Through Increasing Aural Input

The purpose of learning English is to gain communicative competence that includes abilities of listening, speaking , reading and writing. As is known to all, communication makes no sense if the speakers fail to understand what they have heard. However, most of the high school students in China are poor in listening competence. In fact, listening is recognized as difficult for learners in the theories of second language acquisition.In order to help students with their listening and improve their language competence, the researcher started an experiment in which she used the listening materials of the English learning magazine Studio Classroom with a class of Chinese high school students to discover whether it could affect their English listening competence and language proficiency in general.The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of adding aural input on English learning of Chinese high school students. It attempted to answer the following questions:1. Can the increase of listening input lead to the growth of students' listening competence? If so, in what aspects does it affect students' listening competence?2. Can the increase of listening input affect students' overall language proficiency? If so, in what aspects can it affect students' overall language proficiency?3. In what aspects does the supplementary listening material Studio Classroom help students with the improvement in their language proficiency?The research was conducted among 46 Chinese high school students enrolled in Huiwen High School between September 2000 and June 2003. They were first introduced to Studio Classroom listening materials in the first week of school in Senior One year. Then they kept using Studio Classroom materials as listening input...