The Impact Of Content Schema On Students’ Listening Comprehension

Listening is a vital factor of English teaching and learning. It is an indispensable way for students to acquire knowledge and improve their English abilities. However, the teaching situation of English listening in China is still unsatisfactory, especially in higher vocational colleges. It has been long ignored by students in second language learning. In higher vocational colleges, the teaching model of listening is often regarded as the way of explaining new words and grammatical knowledge. This teaching model is lack of theoretical research and guidance. Under this mechanical teaching model, the competence of students’listening cannot be improved. Therefore, it needs to reform this low-effective teaching method, and find out an effective teaching model to improve students’proficiency of listening comprehension.In view of these kinds of problems, this thesis focuses on the activation of content schema in teaching English listening. It also explores the possible strategies and activities in listening teaching from schematic perspective. At the same time, it adopts a quantitative and qualitative design, and intends to discover the effect of content schema on listening comprehension for vocational college students. Meanwhile, the thesis tries to find out a suitable teaching model in an attempt to improve students’listening competence. This study puts forward the following questions:1. Which is more effective for improving students’abilities in listening comprehension: content schema-based listening teaching model or traditional teaching model?2. What contribution can content schema-based listening teaching model make to specific listening items (multiple-choice, dialogue, and spot dictation)?This study adopts the listening part of2011PRETCO level B as the sample of pre-test and post-test paper.70students from Ningxia Vocational&Technical College involved in the research; they are divided into two groups:experimental group and control group. Their listening proficiency is very close and nearly at the same level. In order to confirm the accuracy of the data in research, the research applies both qualitative and quantitative method.Qualitative study includes interviews and questionnaire. Four participants are involved in and they are asked to answer about5questions in the interview. All interviews are recorded.Quantitative study consists of pre-test and post-test scores and questionnaire. The results are analyzed by SPSS11.5. The result of experiments shows that content schema-based listening teaching model is more effective than traditional teaching model, and the students could do well in passages and dialogues under the content schema teaching model.It is concluded that Schema theory has much implication for English listening teaching, therefore, it is possible and feasible to apply content schema as the methodological guidance in listening teaching.