The Application Of Differentiated Instruction In High School English Listening

Differentiated instruction has caused great concern among the researchers and educators.There are many researches on the teaching organizations and evaluations in the application of differentiated instruction in the English Reading class.Similar research has rarely been found in the existing literature in relation to the application of differentiated instruction in the English listening class,and even more scarcely to probe into the problems during the implementation of such a kind of method in high school English teaching.Therefore,this paper is undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of differentiated instruction in High School English Listening and the problems existing in the implementation process,and aims to improve the students' listening comprehension by designing different activities,seeking different teaching organizations and using various evaluations.The research questions addressed in this thesis are:(1)Will differentiated instruction effectively improve high school students' listening?(2)If so,what are the reasons accounting for the effectiveness?(3)What are the problems existing in the process of the implementation of differentiated instruction?The theoretical framework adopted in this study was based on the theory of Multiple Intelligence,theory of Zone of Proximal Development and Krashen's monitor theory.The study employed the mixed design of quantitative and qualitative approaches.The quantitative research mainly involves a self-designed questionnaire.Two intact classes were grouped into control class and experimental class.100 students from the two classes took part in the research.What's more,they received two pretests(in written forms)and two posttests(in written forms).Then they were asked to finish the questionnaires on their own.96 of the questionnaires were found valid.Then the data was processed by SPSS 21.The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview with 6 students being selected from those whose questionnaires are considered valid.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research yields the following findings:Firstly,compared with the traditional teaching,differentiated instruction will help to improve the students' listening ability effectively.Data shows that,before the experiment there is no significant difference in the students' listening comprehension in EC and CC.After the experiment,the score of EC is obviously higher than CC.More importantly,for students of different proficiency levels in the experimental class,medium-level students have made the most significant improvement.Secondly,the application of differentiated instruction in the listening class can cultivate the students' learning interest and raise their awareness of using listening strategies.The questionnaire survey data and the interview results show that,after the application of differentiated instruction,most students in EC show great interest,and become more independent in English learning.More importantly,their listening ability improves a lot by practicing listening skills and using listening strategies in the listening comprehension.What's more,their ability of cooperative learning has been greatly improved during the process of group activities.Thirdly,according to the interview and the researcher's own teaching experience,there are some problems met in the process of implementing differentiated instruction.Three factors are taken into consideration,namely teachers,students and teaching environment.(1)Teachers pay too much attention to the students' intellectual differences and lack a full understanding of their learning styles,methods and habits;(2)Some students do dot take an active part in the group activities;(3)In the implementation of differentiated instruction,the listening materials are mainly standardized audios while video data are less available;(4)The training method of listening practice is just limited to do some multiple choices related exercises.In light of the findings,this paper makes some pedagogical implications both for teachers and students.For teachers,in order to teach listening effectively,they should pay more attention to the listening teaching and spare no effort to find various listening materials,employ listening skills and strategies to meet students' different learning needs.For students,they must enlarge their vocabulary;improve the awareness of strategy use and antonymous learning.