A Study Of Higher Vocational Students’ English Listening Comprehension Within The Framework Of Relevance Theory

Listening comprehension plays a crucial and necessary part in people’s dailycommunication and SLA. It is an important way to communicate with others; also it is thefoundation of mastering a foreign language. However, the higher vocational students usuallylack the background information about the listening materials and seldom know how to makeinferences according to the specific contexts. This study tries to apply Relevance Theory tolistening comprehension and guide listening comprehension learning within the framework ofRelevance Theory to finally improve higher vocational students’ ability of listeningcomprehension. Specifically, this thesis studies the following three questions:1) DoesRelevance Theory have influence on improving higher vocational students’ ability in listeningcomprehension?2) Does Relevance Theory affect students at different levels, especially thoselow-leveled ones?3) What are the effective learning methods based on Relevance Theory forthe students to improve their ability in listening comprehension?To provide answers to these questions, an empirical study lasting one semester wasconducted in Higher Vocational College of Dahongying University. The subjects were72students majoring in marketing from two parallel classes. One was the control class and theother was the experimental class, both of which were taught by the author in person. Datacollected from two questionnaires and two tests were analyzed by the SPSS19.0software. Theresults of the experiment are as follows:1) The relevance-theoretic approach is proved to beeffective in listening comprehension and students’ achievements in listening exercises can beimproved greatly.2) Relevance Theory is closely related to the listeners’ practical English level.Students who are low-leveled in English can not make correct inference because they fail tofind adequate relevance. The more information listeners can store or accumulate, the faster theycan build a reserve of key words and expressions to find relevance and make inference.3)Students hold a positive attitude towards the new learning model and show great interest inlistening comprehension. Finally, the author puts forward some applicable suggestions, mentions some limitationsfrom the study and makes some prospects for further study. There can be some drawbacks inthe research design and analysis. The author hopes the thesis can be beneficial for the highervocational students to improve their listening comprehension competence.