A Study On Barriers And Strategies Of English Listening For Junior Middle School Students In Jiangxi Rural Area

With the rapid development of our society and economy, the exchange and cooperation between our country and foreign countries has become more and more frequent. English, as an important communicative language in the world, is attracting more and more people’s attention. Now learning English has become an inevitable tendency in the world. Since people are increasingly aware of the importance of listening in the language communication, they think it is necessary for them to attach great importance to English listening in their study, work and daily life. However, in the reality, most teachers usually take grammar-translation teaching method, paying much attention to vocabulary and grammar and ignoring listening and speaking teaching, so that students can not come up to the requirements of the new curriculum standard promulgated by the State Education Ministry for middle school students.Based on the theory of foreign language learning strategy, this research takes 200 junior students and 20 English teachers of No 6 Liantang Middle School as subjects, trying to find out the problems in English listening teaching, the deficiency in the teaching of English listening, the causes of English listening barriers, and the teaching strategies to improve the English listening. Through questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation, the writer has got the first-hand materials. The result shows that:1. The main listening barriers for junior middle school students in Jiangxi rural area include two barriers:language barrier and non-language barrier. The-former contains students’ pronunciation barrier, vocabulary barrier, and grammar barrier; the latter includes psychological barrier, listening strategies and background knowledge.2. The barriers that affect the English listening teaching effectiveness of junior middle school students in Jiangxi rural area are:1) Students have language knowledge problem and bad listening habits. They are lack of listening strategies and listening interest. They are prone to fatigue and anxiety during the listening process; 2) Teachers are lack of appropriate choice of listening materials; and 3) The middle schools in Jiangxi rural area have not enough qualified teachers and their teaching facilities are out of date.The writer thinks that if we want to improve the validity of English listening teaching in Jiangxi rural area, teachers must pay more attention to the cultivation of students’interesting in listening, the training of students’ autonomy in listening comprehension and the teaching of listening strategies. They should urge students to study basic knowledge of English language. In addition, while attaching more importance to listening, junior students should apply listening strategies to the whole process of listening according to the actual situation of their own. What’s more, middle schools in rural area should try their best to improve the qualities of their faculty and teaching facilities.The paper contains six chapters. Chapter I is the introduction, mainly introducing the research background and the research significance. Chapter II is the theoretical basis, describing the language learning strategy theory. Chapter III is the research of the junior middle schools in rural area. It mainly covers-questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation. Chapter IV is the analysis of the barriers affecting the effectiveness of listening. Chapter V is the strategies for improvement. Chapter VI is an experimental study on the training of listening strategy. Chapter VII is the conclusion, including research result, limitation of the research and the possibility for further research.