A Study On Teaching English Listening With The Aid Of English Movies In Senior High Schools

Listening comprehension is an important part for English learning.Researchers who are at home and abroad are in search of effective listening teaching methods.Many researches prove that movies are available to teach English listening effectively,and they are useful in developing audio-visual materials and college autonomous learning class at college level.Nevertheless,listening comprehension have not been given as much attention as reading and writing abilities in high school English class.With easy access to the Internet,a fair amount of movie resources are available for English learning.Therefore,this study,based on the findings of previous researches,set out to explore the following two questions:(1)To what extent is students' listening comprehension improved and influencedthrough watching English movies in listening class?(2)What are students' attitudes towards this listening teaching tool?This study used Memory Theory,Schema Theory,Krashen's Input Hypothesis and the Zone of Proximal Development Theory as a base.The author carried out the experimental teaching with 53 students from S class in the second grade of Chencang Senior High School in Baoji City.The study was conducted over sixteen weeks(from September,2018 to January,2019).The American movies An American Girl,Dead Poets Society and Modern Family(season seven),an TV shows,were adopted for this study.Before the experiment,in order to collect data of the present listening situation of subjects,the author conducted a survey of questionnaire and pretest in this study.After the experiment,the author conducted post-test and a survey of questionnaire.Meanwhile the author analyzed achievements in both tests using non-parametric test(Wilcoxon Test).Result presented in this study showed that there was no significant difference after applying English movies to listening class in the senior high school.The subjects did not make noticeable progress on listening achievements in the study(Z=-1.028;p=.304>.05).The average post-test score(M=21.28;SD=3.77)was slightly higher than the mean pretest scores(M=20.74;SD=4.77).The effect size(r=.0998?.1)was point one approximately,according to the standard of Cohen(1988),the effect size was very small,the result indicated that there was not significance difference.Besides,the five-point Likert scale of questionnaire aimed at the questions what extent were students' listening comprehension influenced through watching movies in listening class and what were students' attitudes towards this listening teaching tool.The result of questionnaire showed that subtitles could help them to improve their listening skills.In addition,the subjects suggested that they needed more time to learn listening and the more guidance from the teacher.A majority of them improved on their listening skills,acquired more vocabulary,idioms and native spoken expressions.They did understand some kind of foreign cultures.Watching movies made listening English more fun in class.In the study,although the subjects did not make significant progress of listening achievements after applying movies to listening class,their passive attitudes were changed,and they have more confidence in expressing themselves in English in class.Meanwhile their accuracy of using words was promoted in certain situation.In the study,the author is inexperience for classroom management and teaching.The factors affect the result of the study.Meanwhile,the study offers the valuable lessons for author's future study and teaching.