An Application Of The Input Hypothesis To English Listening Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

Listening, the main language input channel and one of the four basic language skills, plays a significant role in English language learning. It is the predominant way of receiving information in the process of language learning. Thus, it is obvious that listening is extremely important in English teaching and it has been attached great importance recently. In most English classes, it is common that teachers adopt the listening method: playing the tape and checking students’ answers. Such listening teaching method did a little help to enhance students’ listening competence. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis held the view that learners’ listening abilities can be improved by a gradual internalization of language rules through contacting with an amount of input.The Input Hypothesis have already been applied to college English listening teaching by some researchers and received surprisingly satisfactory results. Therefore, this thesis tried to apply the Input Hypothesis to English listening teaching in junior middle schools in order to explore the effective solutions to improve English listening teaching.The author distributed the questionnaires to the two classes in Shangnan Junior Middle School in Pudong District. According to the analysis of questionnaires, a modified listening teaching method was designed on the basis of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis. The modified method consisted of background introduction before listening, group discussion while listening and extensive listening after listening task.With the purpose of proving the effectiveness of the modified method, the author made a two-month experiment in these two classes. The research results were analyzed by SPSS 16.0. The conclusion can be made based on the results that the modified listening teaching method was effective in improving the listening competence of junior middle school students. Hence, this method is worth to be further popularized.