On The Effect Of Suspending Listening Test In College Entrance Examination On English Teaching In Middle Schools

For a language learner, the essential purpose of learning is to communicate with the language."Listening"has become a key criterion for measuring a learner's capability of mastering a language. In the 1980s, English teachers began to emphasize the importance of both structuralist theory and functional theories instead of paying attention to the former only. The main features in the reform of English teaching are the improvements in teaching resources, teaching methods and teaching theories.As a result, the testing system of English changes along with the reform. Particular stresses are laid on listening test. Unfortunately, the operation of listening test encountered unpredicted difficulties. Therefore, some provinces and municipalities decided to suspend the testing of listening skills in College Entrance Exam or do not include the score of listening comprehension to the total score, but only as a reference for colleges during recruitment. This so-called reform caused a ripple effect in the English language teaching in middle schools. In the consequence, students may have been affected by the change of teaching scheme. If students'listening skills are negatively affected by the reform of test, the result can be adverse.Facts manifest themselves. In this thesis, I will give a deep analysis on the relationship of listening test and English teaching based on theories concerning English language teaching, learning strategies and language testing. Meanwhile, I have done questionnaires to 66 teachers of middle and high schools from five provinces and municipalities. After collecting the data, I've made a systematic analysis and gave a real reflection of their comments on the reform of listening test, current teaching situation and worries.In the first chapter, the author gave an overview of the development of listening teaching over the past decades, an introduction of input and output theory and analyzed the factors influencing listening teaching. In the second chapter, more details are provided about the importance of listening skills and the relationship between listening skills and other skills in language learning. In the third chapter, the author gave a thorough introduction of listening testing. The fourth chapter is the research body. Firstly, the author summarized the changes of policies about listening testing in College Entrance Examination and relevant comments about the changes. Later, the questionnaire was carefully introduced and analyzed. In the fifth chapter, the author sorted out the problems raised from the analysis of the questionnaires in the last chapter and gave an in-depth analysis in this regard. In the last chapter, suggestions were proposed in three aspects: proposals to official department of examinations for resuming listening testing, advice on eliminating the influencing factors of listening testing and suggestions on improving listening teaching.