An Action Research On Improving College Students’ English Listening And Speaking Abilities

The College English Curriculum Requirements（2007:1）points out that the objective of collegeEnglish is to develop students’ ability to use English in a well-rounded way, especially in listening andspeaking, so that in their future studies and careers as well as social interactions they will be able tocommunicate effectively, and at the same time enhance their ability to study independently and improvetheir general cultural awareness so as to meet the needs of China’s social development and internationalexchanges. However, the English listening and speaking abilities of the English major freshmen are not sosatisfying compared with reading and writing. Though achievements have been made by quite a fewteachers who have tried to solve this problem by introducing English movies into English class, Englishanimated movies are seldom studied. Therefore, the author intends to find out if the English animatedmovies can work as an important supplement to the textbook on improving the listening and speakingabilities of the English major freshmen.The data analysis shows that the majority of English major freshmen think the textbook is moredifficult and lack of interest. Krashen (1983) claims that learning will occur when unknown items are onlyjust beyond the learner’s present level. That is to say, if the input only covers what the learner has learnt,the material is of no significance for language acquisition; if the input is too advanced (highly beyond thelearner’s current level) for the learner to understand, acquisition will not take place either(Ellis,1985).Swain (1985) believes that in addition to comprehensible input, comprehensible output is also necessary forL2acquisition.Action research is proved to be an effective and practical way by combining theory and practice. Bymeans of questionnaire, pre-test and interview, the following action research is undertaken among102English major freshmen in Xinxiang University. Based on the input and output hypothesis, the actionresearch consists of seven parts: problem identification, putting forward hypotheses, the first data collection,detailed action plans, the implementation of the action plans, the second data collection and reflections.Major findings of the action research are as follows:(1) through the action research, the students’spoken English has significantly improved；(2) the application of the English animated movies in class is a rather needful supplement to the textbook；(3) the English animated movies affect the students’ Englishlistening and speaking abilities to some extent.In order to find out a better way to improve the students’ listening and speaking abilities, the authorgives the following suggestions for both teachers and students：(1)The teacher should be aware of whatstudents need in terms of English listening and speaking；(2) The teacher should be of great help to thestudents；(3) The teacher should be more creative by constant learning, practicing in class and reflecting onteaching；4) The teacher should try other types of English movies, which are both interesting andinstructive；(5) The students should be encouraged to be more independent on learning.Though this research has achieved certain teaching aims, limitations are unavoidable：（1） theimplementation of the action research is restricted to one teacher and English major freshmen from fourclasses, which may confine the generality of the findings；（2）English animated movies other than othertypes of English movies are applied into the action research；（3）the implementation of the action researchtakes too much time；（4）despite the fact that most of the students are excited to finish all the assignedtasks,some of the students get bored. Owing to the above limitations, the future research will be focused ona better way to improve the listening and speaking abilities of the English major freshmen.