A Study Of The Effects Of Genre Knowledge On English Majors’ Listening Comprehension

Listening, as one of the basic skills among listening, speaking, reading, and writing, hasbeen a focus of second language teaching for many years in China. However, listening isusually regarded as a passive skill, which is difficult to make progress. Thus, many scholarshave continually made great effort in exploring an effective teaching method. In mid-1980s,there appeared Genre-Based Teaching Approach, a pedagogy based on genre theory and genreanalysis, providing a new perspective for English instruction and research. In the recent20years, more and more scholars put their focus on genre theory and apply it to English teachingpractice, and have obtained significant achievements in English writing and reading instruction.However, very few researches have been done in the field of listening instruction, especially forEnglish majors. Accordingly, it is highly necessary to apply genre knowledge to listeninginstruction of English majors, so as to investigate its effects on listening comprehension.The teaching experiment lasted for12weeks, and the subjects were57students of twoparallel sophomore classes chosen from a local key university in Shandong province. Duringthe experiment, the two classes were randomly assigned to two groups according to the types ofteaching method. The experimental group adopted the Genre-Based Teaching Approach, whilethe control group was still taught with the traditional method. Statistical data were collectedfrom the pre-test, intermediate test and post-test for both groups, and the oral interview of fivesubjects from the experimental group. Qualitative and quantitative analysis were employed inthis study. With the help of the software SPSS17.0, quantitative analysis was done to comparethe variations and progress between experimental group and control group in three listeningtests, and qualitative analysis was used to examine experimental group’s attitude towards thethree tested genres and the application of genre knowledge in listening class.The final research results are as follows:(1) English majors have different listeningcomprehension on different genres of listening materials. Generally speaking, they have thebest performance on conversation, and the next is on statement, and the last is on news. Thisresult can help teachers and students to better arrange their time, and spend more time onpracticing statements and news.(2) Familiarity to the genre structure and content, languagefeatures and the question types are three main factors leading to the different listeningcomprehension on different genres. It is beneficial for teachers to figure out these factors, forthe purpose of helping improve their students’ listening ability more effectively.(3) Genreknowledge is of great effectiveness on improving English majors’ listening comprehension.After the teaching experiment, most students in experimental group have the greatest improvement on news, and the next is on conversation, but there is no obvious improvement onstatement. Meanwhile, most students in control group have no significant progress on thesethree tested genres.Of course, this study has its own limitations, such as a relatively small size of sample, ashort period of teaching experiment, and the reliability of the listening tests needs to be furthertested. Nevertheless, this study basically achieved the expected goals, which proves that theapplication of genre knowledge is of great practicality and significance to English listening, andit also presents several pedagogical suggestions for both teachers and students in furtherlistening teaching and learning.