An Empirical Study On Movie-aided Motivation Enhancement In College English Listening Comprehension Training

In daily communication, listening, among the four basic skills of using alanguage (listening, speaking, reading and writing), is used for the most of the time.English listening comprehension training therefore has become a most important partof the college English teaching. However, the demerits of the traditional trainingmaterial and training method affect, to a certain extent, students’ motivation inlistening comprehension training, which inevitably leads to students’ low achievementin this respect. To find out a solution to this problem, the author conducted anempirical study.The empirical study is based on the theories of language learning motivation andKrashen’s input hypothesis. The author finds the possibility of the movie as asuccessful listening comprehension training material in view of the input hypothesis,and also finds that the movie-aided training method, according to the motivationtheory, meets the three measurements of motivation enhancement: arousing interest,boosting self-efficacy, and relieving a high level of anxiety.In addition to the theoretical study, the author conducted an experiment toascertain the feasibility of the movie-aided listening comprehension training inmotivation enhancement. The experiment was carried out in two classes of80freshmen in Tianhua College of Shanghai Normal University. One class was theexperimental one and the other was the control one. The experimental class receivedthe movie-aided training which was designed with various movie-aided listeningcomprehension activities, while the control class received the traditional trainingwhich basically followed “recording-playing question-and-answer check language-point-explanation” procedure. The experiment lasted for nine weeks.The data of the experiment is analyzed based on the questionnaires, the classobservations, the interviews, and the listening comprehension tests. The results of theexperiment show that the experimental class overwhelms the control class in terms of motivation enhancement (arousing interest, boosting self-efficacy, and relieving ahigh level of anxiety). Moreover, the experimental class shows a bigger jump in theimprovement of English listening competence. At the same time some enlighteningimplications are harvested from this experiment, e.g. the choice of movies, subtitles ofmovies, and the teacher’s guidance.