Effects Of Visualization Strategy On Senior High School Students' English Listening Anxiety And Listening Comprehension

Listening is one of the most frequently used and difficult language skills in English language learning.Thus,listening comprehension is of high significance in English instruction.However,the current situation of listening teaching is far from satisfaction.The study attempts to employ visualization strategy which is to assist students' listening process by means of transforming listening contents into visual representation such as pictures and videos as well as to guide learners to develop mind maps to cope with this dilemma.Based on the Audio-Visual Approach,Cognitive Load Theory and Affective Filter Theory,the study aims at investigating the effects of visualization strategy on senior high students' listening anxiety and listening comprehension.This study adopted a pretest-posttest comparison group quasi-experimental design.81 senior high school students participated in this study of which 41 fell into experimental class(EC)while 40 into control class(CC).The research period lasted for 16 weeks from March to June in 2018.All of the participants took part in the pretest in which students filled out the FLLAS and had the listening test.After 15-week visualized listening instruction in EC and straight-forward"listening-checking" instruction in CC,a posttest which consists of the same scale and a test of the same difficulty level was administered.Besides,after the posttest,10 students were randomly chosen from EC to attend the semi-structured interview.The study intends to explore the following questions:1.What is the influence of visualization strategy on students,listening anxiety in senior high school?2.What is the influence of visualization strategy on students'listening comprehension in senior high school?3.What are students5 attitudes and views towards visualization strategy?The main findings of the research are as follows:1.The results of the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale(FLLAS)attest the positive influence of visualization strategy on alleviating students' listening anxiety,especially the anxiety caused by the fear of listening process and results as well as the lack of listening skills.Combined with the information drawn from the interview,the reasons lie in that the relaxing atmosphere and interactive class created by the visualization activities make students less nervous and scared in listening practices.2.The results of the listening tests prove that the visualization strategy is beneficial to enhancing students'listening comprehension.This is because students are motivated internally by colorful listening experiences and equipped with more cultural knowledge and listening skills.3.Students hold positive attitudes towards visualization strategy and voice their opinions about this strategy.For one thing,the relaxing and interesting listening class decreases students' listening anxiety and spark their interest in listening.For another,students succeed in making progress in listening instruction with the skill training involved in visualized listening instruction.Meanwhile,students also point out the deficiencies of this strategy in teaching process.In conclusion,the research justifies the effectiveness of the visualization strategy in lowering students'listening anxiety and improving students'listening comprehension ability.In spite of the advantages of this strategy,problems also exist in its implementation process.Therefore,English teachers should adopt the visualization strategy more often in listening instruction and keep improving this strategy to achieve better listening teaching effects.