Effects Of English Movies On Teaching College English Listening

It is commonly acknowledged that listening plays an important role in language learning.Researchers at home and abroad have been diligently pursuing various approaches on teachinglistening to improve students’ listening proficiency. Among them, teaching English listeningthrough movies is regarded as one of the effective ways to fulfill the need. However, most ofthe studies on teaching listening through English movies are theory recounting. What’s more,researchers just consider the change of listening achievement in their experimental studies,almost pay no attention to anxiety and motivation, which are believed to be two importantdeterminants of second language learning achievement.The present study explored the effects of utilizing English movies on teaching collegeEnglish listening with considering anxiety, motivation and achievement. Three specificresearch questions were proposed:1) Compared with traditional ways of teaching collegeEnglish listening, to what extent can teaching listening through movies reduce listeninganxiety?2) Compared with traditional ways of teaching college English listening, to whatextent can teaching listening through movies promote listening motivation?3) Compared withtraditional ways of teaching college English listening, to what extent can teaching listeningthrough movies improve students’ achievement? To answer the three questions, threeinstruments were used: Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS), Motivation forEnglish Listening Questionnaire (MELQ) and Listening Comprehension of College EnglishTest (Band Four)(CET4). Ninety sophomores of non-English majors participated in theone-semester study, the data of all the questionnaires and tests were processed by the softwareSPSS17.0(Statistics Package for Social Science).The study made the following major findings:1) Compared with traditional ways ofteaching college English listening, teaching listening through movies cannot reduce listeninganxiety to a better degree;2) Compared with traditional ways of teaching college Englishlistening, teaching listening through movies cannot promote listening motivation to a betterdegree;3) Compared with traditional ways of teaching college English listening, teachinglistening through movies cannot improve students’ achievement to a better degree.Statistics and analysis showed that, after one semester’s teaching, the result of theexperimental class was almost the same with the control class: their ability in listeningimproved significantly but with a significant decrease of motivation and a minor increase ofanxiety. The experimental class got a major improvement of achievement in posttest, but isnot statistically significant. At last, the author points out the limitations of the current study and presents theimplications for teaching college English listening.