A Study Of College English Listening Mode Under Web-assisted Self-access Circumstance

For many years, College English education has always been teacher-centered which regards the students as passive learners. In such learning environment, the students are asked to do many drills in classes but what they learn are only isolated, de-contextualized skills and are unable to apply them in real-world situations. The College English Curriculum Requirements advocated and emphasized that the new listening teaching mode should be built on modern information technology, particularly on network technology. The Requirements emphasizes that colleges and universities should design a PC-based or internet-based or campus -network-based multimedia listening teaching mode to meet the needs of reality. The learner-centered online learning, with principles of autonomy, collaborative learning, inquiry and community, injects vitality to the reforms of College English. Therefore, how to design the scientific listening teaching model, which is the major concern in the reform of listening teaching, is the topic that needs to be discussed.After reading some reference, understanding the theory of construction study, the development of language teaching aided by computer and some related theories, I found, in China, the theoretical research of foreign language teaching aided by computer is more while the practical evidence is less. Especially in the common colleges, the research about the computer-human interactive individualized teaching through Internet is indeed little.In order to justify the application of a hybrid of conventional and web-assisted self-access learning from a theoretical point of view, the author first gives a brief introduction to some previous researches and related theories: the development of CALL (computer-assisted language learning) constructivist instructional and learning theories, autonomous learning theory, schema theory and intrinsic learning theory. They provide sufficient theoretic basis for this experimental study.The thesis focuses on the study of"An Experimental Study on Web-assisted Teaching Mode of College English Autonomous Listening". And the author conducts a one-year experiment on the topic.A quasi experiment was conducted in a common college in Tangshan City Hebei Province. The subjects of the study are non-English majors enrolled in Tangshan Teachers'College in 2008. They are divided into two natural classes with 81 each. One was an experimental class, and the other a control class. The experimental class followed the lesson plans designed by the teacher and fulfilled their listening tasks under the integrated mode of conventional listening classroom instruction and web-assisted autonomous learning while the control class followed the conventional mode of listening instruction. Both implemented the experiment in the same language lab and used the same textbook---New Horizon College English Listening and Speaking. The information that forms the core of this study was obtained by means of four instruments: listening tests, questionnaires and interviews and classroom observation. The tests used genuine College English Listening Test Band 4 (CET-4). The listening part in the proficiency tests consisted of three parts: short conversations, short passages and a compound dictation. The subjects'listening scores and their responses to the questionnaires were put into the computer and analyzed by means of the SPSS. The study was guided by the following three questions:1)Can the web-assisted teaching mode of autonomous listening result in improvement of students' listening proficiency?2) Do students take positive attitude towards the new teaching mode?3) Can the students learn to take the responsibility for their English listening effectively when the teacher provides them with a teaching model of autonomous listening?The following findings have been generated from the present study: (1) the web-assisted teaching mode of autonomous listening has significant effect on improving their listening proficiency; (2) students have positive attitude towards the new teaching mode; (3) the teaching mode through proper instruction under multimedia environment has significant effect on promoting students'autonomy in their learning listening.The results of experiment and the analysis of questionnaire and interview have indicated that the web-based autonomous listening teaching and learning mode is more effective than the traditional one for the development of the students'listening proficiency and it can meet the students'learning and psychological needs. We conclude that it is practical and valuable to popularize the web-assisted autonomous listening teaching and learning model at college. That is, in order to help learners to be more autonomous and more proficient in their learning, teachers should take the responsibility of designing a new teaching mode to meet the needs of the students.