Teaching English Listening To Secondary Vocational School Students

Listening is an important component of the language competence, and listening teachingoccupies an important position in teaching a foreign language. In the background of thetest-oriented teaching of English as a foreign language in China, English listening teachinghas not received enough attention in the English teaching programs of middle schools ingeneral and in the secondary vocational schools in particular. In recent years, luckily, moreand more scholars and English teachers advocate more importance should be attached toEnglish listening teaching. However, owning to lack in efficient models and methodsapplicable to English listening teaching in secondary schools, the teaching results aregenerally not satisfactory. On the basis of an analysis of the general status quo of the Englishlistening teaching to the non-English majors in secondary vocational schools, the studyattempts to construct a task-based English listening teaching model oriented to such studentsand through empirical research method, testify its efficiency, which is expected to improve theperformance of teaching English listening to the students.The research questions of the study include1) How to design and construct an effectivetask-based English listening teaching model oriented to the students in secondary vocationalschools on the basis of relevant theories, the objects of teaching and the teaching conditions?2) Is the model positive in stimulating the students’ learning interest, enhancing theirself-confidence, and arousing their learning initiative, and ultimately improving their learningresults? The object of study is the two classes under the author’s instruction with110studentsin Weihai City Health School, a secondary vocational school. Literature method is employedfor the theoretical analysis and construction of the model and test, interview and questionnairemethods, for empirical research of the feasibility of the model.Firstly, the study designs and constructs a task-based English listening teaching modeloriented to the students in secondary vocational schools on the basis of relevant theories, theobjects of teaching and the teaching conditions, and then testifies its performance andefficiency, through empirical means, mainly involving a14week teaching experiment with apre-test and a post-test. As shown by the data obtained in the post-test, the percentage oftestees passing the test and that of testees achieving excellent grades in the experiment classare significantly higher than those in the control class. The experiment results prove that themodel can improve the students’ achievements in learning English listening, and that themodel is positive to some extent for solving some problems the students meet in their learning, and for arousing their interest and initiative in learning, and enabling them to learn knowledgeof English and undergo English listening training in a more effective way under impetus ofaccomplishing the task. Globally judging, applying the model can bring about betterperformance in teaching English listening.The study follows on the whole the procedure of theoretical analysis and empiricalinvestigation, and the choice of the object of study, of the research tools and methods, andcollection and analysis of the obtained data, as well as interpretation of the research results,meet the basic requirements for a scientific study project, which ensures the reliability of theresearch conclusion. However, due to limitations of subjective and objective conditions, thestudy has still a lot to be desired, for example, the number of samples is not big enough,which reduces somewhat the external validity, and the tests used in the research are, in spiteof modification, two from the listening test papers for the national PETS grade one, whosereliability and validity are not very clear to the author. In future research, the author will makeefforts to improve the teaching model and study its various aspects through empiricalmethods.