An Action Research On Encouraging Non-English Major Students’ Participation In EFL Listening Class

It has become a hot topic about how to relate teaching and research more effectively to promote teachers’teaching, therefore, action research, which is a research method involving teachers’ participation, is a good way that combines teaching with research to inspire teachers to find out more practical teaching methods. Meanwhile, it has drawn more and more attention on how to improve students’listening competence, which is an important part in English learning. And especially for non-English majors, most of them devote a great deal of time to their own majors and show little interest in English learning. However, listening competence is very essential for them to pass the CET-4and even CET-6. It is rather difficult for them to make some achievements in listening competence, so they seldom take part in the listening activities in class actively.The present action research makes use of a35-week plan in classroom to find the problems existing in listening class and change the situation so as to promote students’ participation in the listening activities in class. And the following questions will be answered:1. What are the main problems for non-English major students in the English listening class?2. Why do the non-English major students have such problems in the English listening class?3. What can EFL teachers do to improve this situation in the English listening class?The students in the research are from two classes, Economy Management Department1102and Human Resource Management103in Xi’an University of Finance and Economics, and they are taught by me, the same EFL teacher, and they are chosen as the subjects of the action research. The two classes consist of a group of45in one class and41students in the other separately. The35-week action plan involves explaining the importance of English listening, picking out some appropriate listening materials and designing various interesting activities, teaching some useful listening skills and providing some listening tests. And through the feedback from the interviews, observation and tests, students can show some improvements in various aspects, such as their interest in listening, their listening skills and so on. In terms of the teacher, the theories and practice can be related and some practical teaching methods will be obtained.According to the analysis of the data in the present research, the results can be drawn as followings:Firstly, the main problem for non-English major students is the lack of interest in listening, and because of the importance of interest in English learning, the teacher should at first develop students’interest in listening. Secondly, most of the students find that the listening materials are too boring and some are too difficult, so some proper listening materials should be chosen, such as some familiar stories, daily conversations and even some amusing movies and so on. Besides, the activities in class should be various and attractive to students. Thirdly, due to the reason that most of them lack the strategies that can be used in listening process, some practical listening strategies and skills should be taught to students to promote their listening competence, and in this way students’confidence will be built up. Finally, some appropriate listening tests should be organized to get the feedback of students’performance. When students see the improvements by themselves, they will be willing to devote more attention to it.