A Study Of MAELI From The Perspective Of SLA Theory

Listening is an important language skill. It plays a vital role in the language acquisition process. But to most Chinese English learners, listening comprehension is a big problem in English leaming, because there are many factors affecting listening comprehension, like internal factors and external factors, which are closely tied up with the amount of input, the forms of input, and the quality of input. In recent years, with the development of science and technology, computer technology has been widely used ,which contributes to great achievement in all walks of life, especially to greater improvement in foreign language teaching and learning. Through empirical studies, many foreign language educators, experts and teachers have found that multimedia assisted English teaching, especially multimedia assisted English listening instruction (MAELI) has been taken as an ideal way to facilitate English listening acquisition and improve students' listening comprehension. On the basis of the researches of previous scholars, this thesis has focused on the effects of a multimedia-assisted college English listening teaching program on the development of non-English majors' motivation, affective factors and exposure to language input from the new perspective of Krashen's second language acquisition (SLA) theory, aiming at illustrating the relationship between SLA theory, learner autonomy and multimedia assisted English listening instruction and the positive impact of the theories on English teaching.Quantitative method is employed in the study. This author has first put forward three hypotheses: 1) The multimedia assisted English listening instruction is more effective than the traditional way of listening teaching, and it can greatly motivate students' learning; 2) The greater success rate is attributable to the unique features of multimedia; 3) SLA theory and Learner Autonomy theory play an important role in multimedia assisted English listening instruction. And then an experiment and two surveys are carded out to test the above hypotheses. The subjects in the study were 145 undergraduates from Grade 2004, of a certain College of Science and Engineering in Hunan and 35 teachers from the same college. Besides two surveys on them, this author also conducted an contrastive experiment between control class using traditional-method listening teaching and experimental class using multimedia assisted listening teaching. The experiment has lasted two years. Based on the results of the two surveys and those of the three tests, we have reached the following conclusion:●The multimedia assisted English listening instruction is more effective than the traditional way of listening teaching, and it can greatly motivate students' learning.●Multimedia assisted English listening instruction enriches both learners' forms and content of language input. Its unique features can arouse students' interest and then enhance effectiveness of learning.●Multimedia assisted English listening instruction improves learners' listening abilities.●SLA theory and Learner Autonomy, especially "the Input Hypothesis" and "the Affective Filter Hypothesis" play an important role in multimedia assisted English listening instruction. Meanwhile, the teachers surveyed have a better understanding of the role of the above theories on foreign language teaching.The above findings are consistent with our hypotheses. In addition, the findings of this research have some implications for multimedia assisted English listening teaching: 1) Teachers need to spend much more time training students to well master multimedia and the Internet technology, which may make students understand the advantages of multimedia better; 2) Teachers should enhance their own study on theories, especially on some theories related to foreign language teaching and learning; improve their understanding of roles of theories in foreign language teaching, in order to avoid blindness and empiricism in teaching; 3) Under the guidance of teachers, students can properly use multimedia and the Internet technology to learn English autonomously, to foster and raise their abilities of autonomous learning.