Effects Of Reading Aloud On English Listening Competence Of Junior Middle School Students

Listening is very important in second language acquisition.It plays an irreplaceable role in helping students(especially those at the junior middle level)to master foreign language and cultivate a comprehensive English language ability.Junior middle school stage is the critical period of the development of students' English ability,improving students' good listening competence is the important goal and the task of junior middle school English teaching.However,it is regrettable that listening is still the weak point for Chinese students to learn English,and it is the most troublesome difficulty in their exams.Though some researchers have realized that reading aloud plays an important role in improving students' listening competence,there are few empirical researches on this subject.This study is based on this point.The present study is to explore the influence of reading aloud on English listening competence of junior middle school students,with the help of the analysis of previous literature,based on schema theory,theory of memory and voluntary attention hypothesis theory,using the method of questionnaire and experiment teaching.The research is to focus on the following three questions: What is the current situation of junior middle school students' English reading aloud? What is the current situation of junior middle school students' English listening competence? What are the main effects of reading aloud on English listening competence of junior middle school?The research subjects are the students of two classes in Grade Three in an Middle School in Jining city,one class is regarded as the experimental class,while the other is the control class.From each of the two classes,20 students were selected as the experimental group and the control group.Before the experiment,students took the reading aloud questionnaire test and pre-listening test.The reading aloud questionnaire test is to investigate the current situation of English reading aloud of junior middle school students.The pre-listening test not is not only to investigate the current situation of English listening of junior middle school students but also explore whether the level of students' listening competence in the two groups is the same.After proving that the two groups of students were comparable,the students in experimental class took ten weeks to do reading-aloud training during the morning reading.The two classes had the same language materials,however,students in the experimental class got trained by reading aloud,while students in the control class got trained by reading silently.After the reading-aloud experiment teaching,the two groups had a post listening test.Meanwhile,students had a word dictation test.The research shows that: The overall reading aloud level of students in junior middle schools is not very good.Their motivation for reading aloud is not strong.Both teachers and students have not realized the importance of reading aloud;the students in junior middle schools have a low level in English listening competence.Although most of the students have acquired the ability of recognizing sentences and the pictures,their listening comprehensive competence in discourse is not so good;reading aloud has a great effect on students' English listening competence of Junior middle school.Specifically speaking,it can improve students' listening comprehensive competence in sentences and discourse and listening competence on the sound recognition of words.