The Effects Of Reading-aloud Training Under Teachers' Guidance On Students' English Listening Performance In Junior High Schools

From the overall point of view,English listening is one of the weak areas of the four basic English skills for junior middle school students in China.Currently some researchers have recognized the important role of reading-aloud training in improving students' English listening performance.However,most of the foregoing researchers centered around theoretical analysis,and the number of empirical studies is quite scant.On the basis of schema theory and language input&output theory,the study attempts to explore the possible influence of reading-aloud training on junior high school EFL learners' listening performance.The research questions addressed in this thesis are:(1)How does reading-aloud training influence junior high school students' English listening performance?(2)Does reading-aloud training produce different effects on students with different English listening proficiency levels?(3)What are the causes underlying the effect of reading-aloud training on students' English listening performance?The research includes teaching experiment,pre-test and post-test of listening performance and questionnaire survey.Participants were 60 students in two classes of Grade 8.One was the experimental class,and the other was the control class.Before the experiment,two classes of students were tested for their English listening performance.The results showed that the listening performance of the two classes was roughly the same.In the teaching experiment,the contents of the two classes are the same and the two classes were taught by the same teacher.The experimental class carried out intensive reading-aloud training in early reading periods and classroom,During the morning reading period,students are trained in reading skills such as intonation and continuous reading under the guidance of teachers.In the classroom,individual reading,cooperative reading and other reading methods are used to carry out teaching activities while the control class mainly adopted free reading or silent reading in the same link.After 15 weeks' teaching experiment,the post-tests were carried out at the end of the semester.The results of pre-tests and post-tests were analyzed by SPSS 16.0 software.After the teaching experiment,the questionnaire survey was conducted and the participants were 60 students in the experimental class and the control class.The questionnaire consisted of 12 questions,which mainly focused on students' cognition of reading,effectiveness of reading-aloud training and students' attitudeResults show that reading-aloud training exerted positive effects on the improvement of junior middle school students' English listening performance.First,through systematic reading-aloud training,the listening performance of junior high school students was improved.They improved their ability to understand dialogues and short passages in listening.Second,the influence of reading-aloud training on students with different proficiency levels(high,middle and low groups)varied and low achievers could greatly improve their English listening through reading-aloud training.The primary reason underlying the differences was that low achievers improved their language ability,self-confidence and overcome inferiority through reading-aloud training.In addition,anxiety and impatience were also alleviated when they did the listening.Comparatively speaking,the improvement of high achievers was relatively insignificant,for they had a solid language foundation and a good habit of reading aloud all the time.Several implications for English teaching can be drawn from this study.In English teaching,teachers should properly increase reading-aloud training to improve students' listening performance and pay attention to adding the training of reading skills.Teachers should also give proper guidance to junior high school students with poor English performance,strengthen students'awareness of reading-aloud training,help students master self-training methods and overcome psychological barriers in English listening.With the improvement of reading ability,students' listening performance will also be improve.