The Effects Of Two Types Of Advance Organizer On Junior High School Students’ Listening Comprehension: Background Knowledge Pre-instruction And Vocabulary Pre-teaching

The present study tends to investigate the relative effects of two types ofadvance organizer in the instruction of English listening, pre-listening vocabularyinstruction and background knowledge provision. Based on the theory of advanceorganizer, an experiment was conducted, which was designed to answer thefollowing research questions:(1) Does background knowledge pre-instructionfacilitate participants’ listening comprehension?(2) Does vocabulary pre-teachingfacilitate participants’ listening comprehension?(3) On the whole, which type ofpre-listening support is more helpful? Background knowledge pre-instruction orvocabulary pre-teaching?(4) What are participants’ affective reactions and attitudestoward different types of pre-listening supports?131Chinese EFL high school students were divided into three groups, controlgroup, background group and vocabulary group and tested the effect of the differentpre-listening supports on their listening comprehension.The data obtained were analyzed on computer by SPSS17.0. The statisticalresults revealed that (1) both vocabulary and background instruction are significantlyhelpful supports for listening comprehension.(2) No significant difference is foundwhen these two pre-listening activities are compared.(3) Participants generally showpositive attitude toward those two pre-listening supports (background group74%and vocabulary group90%), whose purposes and advantages of application areadequately illustrated in the questionnaire responses.