An Empirical Study On English Listening Strategies Training In Junior High Schools

As a primary means of language input, listening plays a key role in the perception and learning of language. Listening is regarded as the most important skill among the four basic skills. Studies show that of the time in one's daily life communication approximately 9% is devoted to writing,16% to reading,30% to speaking, and 45% to listening. However, the teaching of listening in most junior high schools still remains in the primitive stay of "playing the tape and checking the answers" and teachers pay attention to the results rather than process. The teaching effect is not very good and how to develop the listening ability of students has become a main task faced with teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the guidance of listening strategy for students to improve their listening ability.Based on the findings from relevant studies, this research chooses three classes of students in a foreign language school in Nanjing as the subject sample, altogether 102 students with 34 in each class. This research mainly adopts questionnaire survey, listening tests and interview as the research instruments. This research aims to explore which kind of listening strategy training is more proper for junior high students. With the help of statistical method, this research compares the scores of the tests and analyzes the data from the questionnaires. This research aims to validate two hypotheses:First, listening strategy training can effectively improve student's listening comprehension ability and strategy awareness. Second, direct strategy training is more efficient than embedded strategy training in improving students' listening comprehension ability.The results indicate that, compared with traditional listening teaching method, listening strategy training can effectively improve students' listening ability and their self-awareness of using strategies. The direct strategy training method is more efficient than embedded training in improving students' listening ability and it can reduce the gap between higher-level students and lower-level students.According to the results, implication of the findings for listening teaching in junior high schools is suggested:teachers should help students to build up the awareness of using strategy and encourage them to adopt different strategies to comprehend the listening materials; when organizing strategy training, teachers need to choose proper procedures; teachers should create enough opportunities for students to practice strategies and help students build up confidence.