The Empirical Study On The Application Of Context In High Vocational College English Listening Classes

As an important communicative medium in daily life and an important content inEnglish teaching, listening has already been receiving more and more attention. However,many teachers are confused to find that students can only understand some words or sentencesinstead of a meaningful passage even after years of training. In order to solve the aboveproblems, the author tries to employ a new teaching method based on context and hopes toconfirm the following hypotheses:1) the new teaching method helps students increase theconsciousness of contexts in listening;2）the application of contexts facilitates students’understanding of inference and overview questions;3) the application of contexts improvesstudents’ overall performance in listening comprehension exercises;4) the new methodincreases students’ interest in listening.Context refers to language environment and it is the cornerstone of communication. In1923, B.Malinowski first proposed the concept of context. From then on, many other scholarsbegin to probe into this field from different angles, such as Hymes, Lyons, Firth and Leech.Up to now, many linguists agree to classify context into traditional context and dynamiccontext. Before the1990s, the linguists usually studied the context from the perspective of astatic view. After that, more importance is gradually attached to the dynamics of context.Based on these studies, the author first divides context into linguistic context andnon-linguistic context and then brings forward some teaching strategies according to theclassifications and dynamics of context.The teaching strategies are put into practice from the aspects of linguistic context,non-linguistic context and contextualization cues. The strategies based on linguistic contextare to help students consolidate the knowledge about suprasegmental features; recognizelexical, grammatical and textual contexts to determine the meanings of words and sentencesand predict following contents. The strategies based on non-linguistic context coverprediction based on situational context, inference based on cognitive context and expansion ofbackground knowledge based on cultural context. The last is to guide students to keep theireyes on the changes of key words, the appearances of adversative conjunctions and thedifferent styles of language to find out the changes of contexts. The one hundred freshmen of English majors at the Institute for Nationalities are thesubjects to test the efficiency of the teaching strategies. Empirical approach is used in thisthesis. A pre-test which was extracted from CET-4was given firstly and it contains25multiple-choice questions. After that, the basic information about the subjects was understoodand the investigation of their obstacles in English listening was carried out throughquestionnaire I. Then they were divided into two classes at random: experimental class andcontrol class. In the experimental class, the new teaching method based on context was usedthrough three steps: the activities organized before listening, in listening and after listening.The purpose is to strengthen students’ concept of context and encourage them to use it inpractice frequently. After12weeks teaching practice, the teaching effects were comparedthrough a post-test which was also extracted form CET4. The question types are the same andthe degree of difficulty is similar with the pre-test. And the data collected were calculated andanalyzed quantitatively by the software of EXCEL and SPSS16.0. The result shows that thedifference between experimental class and control class is significant. And then questionnaireII was given to students to help teachers find out the subjects’ states in listening process andtheir expectations to teachers. Meanwhile, the hypothesis is proved to be true:1) students’consciousness of contexts has been increased in listening;2) the application of contexts hasfacilitated students’ understanding of inference and overview questions;3) the application ofcontexts has improved students overall performance in listening comprehension exercises;4)students’ interest in listening learning has been increased.