A Krashen-input-hypothesis Approach To The Teaching Strategies Of English Listening In Junior Middle Schools

Krashen's input hypothesis for second language acquisition is widely used in teaching English as a second language.It has been widely used in universities,and further put into teaching students the ability of English listening.This hypothesis has been tested to help alleviate the burden on university students and improve the efficiency of both teaching and learning of the English listening ability,but it is not yet tried on for the same purpose in middle schools,especially for junior middle school students who are believed to encounter the problems earlier.This essay attempts to evaluate and combine the different understandings and views from scholars towards Krashen's input hypothesis and to apply its significance into teaching English listening in junior middle schools.Meanwhile,the paper tries to find the problems in English listening for junior middle school students,and then look for corresponding strategies.The author of this paper has carried out the experiments in the two classes he has been teaching in a middle school in Shanghai.He tries Krashen's input hypothesis in his teaching for the experimental class while he uses the traditional teaching method for the controlled class.This paper puts forward four questions: 1)What methods may junior middle school students use in listening? 2)What are the listening difficulties that students may encounter in their learning? 3)Can the teaching of listening based on Krashen's input hypothesis improve the test scores of the experimental class? 4)Can the teaching of listening based on Krashen's input hypothesis improve the test scores of both boys and girls and of both the top students and poor students? This research mainly adopts the research methods of questionnaire and tests and analyses the data collected from the pre-test and post-test to see whether there exists the significant difference between the two tests.This paper has found that junior middle school students have a positive attitude towards listening but they have difficulty in understanding the details and key words;students can show their interest in listening and have confidence in understanding the rhythm,pronunciation and word differentiation from the listening materials and keeping their concentration while listening,but they have difficulty in understanding long sentences and paragraphs;the teaching of listening based on Krashen's input hypothesis can improve the test scores as the experimental class made great progress after the experiment while the controlled class did not make any progress in listening and their listening ability remained the same;in addition to that,the investigation of boys,girls,top students and poor students all shows that the students of all groups made rapid progress in their post-test in comparison with their pre-test with the exception of the group of top students,who showed no significance between their pre-test scores and post-test scores.Therefore,the result of post-test suggests that the teaching of listening based on Krashen's input hypothesis can improve the test scores and can have positive influence on the improvement of the students' listening ability.Thus,the teaching of listening based on Krashen's input hypothesis can improve the efficiency much better for teaching listening than the traditional teaching method,and this new teaching method can help to achieve better teaching result.