Research On English Listening Barriers For Junior High School Students

English is the most widely used language all over the world. In order to know the world, and also to let the people of the world know China, we need to study English. Nowadays, we all realize the importance of English. In many cities of China, for example, when the students are in primary school, they begin to study English. However, there is a worrying tendency that the teaching of English in middle schools is mainly exam-oriented. They think the most important thing of learning English is to master the grammar and the vocabulary. So English teachers usually ignore the importance of listening comprehension. As a result of this, students are only good at written tests, but they don't do well in listening. However, among the four skills --- "listening, speaking, reading and writing", the first and the most important thing is listening. Only with good listening can one communicate with others smoothly. Luckily, with the further implementation of the new curriculum for junior high school, the importance of listening has become more prominent, since people have come to realize that only with adequate grammatical knowledge and vocabulary one can communicate with other people successfully, and good listening comprehension is a Must for students. So now, to improve the level of junior high school students in English listening is imperative. The thesis aims to investigate and analyze the listening barriers faced by junior high school students, and then put forward strategies to overcome them. To carry out the work, questionnaires and interviews are used. Altogether, a total of 497 questionnaires were distributed among students in the first grade and third grade ( 21 classes), and 490 valid questionnaires were collected. Then, the author analyzed the data in order to find out the obstacles encountered by junior high school students in listening comprehension. Besides, interview with English teachers was also carried out so as to find practical solutions to these problems. This research is meaningful in the following aspects. First of all, it can help to find out the problems existing with junior high school students in listening, thus proposing corresponding strategies to tackle them in order to help students improve their English listening proficiency. Secondly, it also enables English teachers in junior high school to get some idea of what obstacles their students have, and how to use relevant theoretical knowledge to organize their English listening class. To make the study more reliable, Second Language Acquisition is the basis of the study. To be more exact, theoretically, the study is mainly based on The Acquisition—Learning Hypothesis and the Affective Filter Hypothesis. All in all, it is believed that the study not only has some practical value but also may be of some theoretical significance to the teaching of English listening in junior high schools.