The Application Of Schema Theory To College English Listening Teaching

Listening is important in foreign language teaching and learning. The procedure of listening comprehension has traditionally been regarded as a passive one-way comprehensive process.In college English listening class, such as Qingdao Ocean Shipping Mariners College, the teaching of listening is often conducted in the form of explaining new words, playing tapes and checking answers with students. In the listening process, listeners are only viewed as passive receivers without any necessary hints. This way of teaching severely frustrates students' prediction and the further comprehension. Their communicative competence couldn't be improved effectively which is opposite to the ultimate goal of college English teaching.Whereas the listening comprehension is found to be an interactive process of two-way communication, during which listeners' background knowledge plays an important role. Schema theory lays theoretical foundation for listening prediction and decoding process. It claims that background knowledge plays a significant role in listening comprehension process which is an interactive process between listeners' linguistic knowledge, social knowledge, cultural background knowledge, common sense and the upcoming information. The previously acquired knowledge structure is called schema. Schematic knowledge is thought to be three types: linguistic schema, content schema and formal schema. According to schema theory, listening comprehension is an interactive model, including bottom-up and top-down models. Listeners use both bottom-up and top-down approaches to interpret listening message. In listening comprehension process, listeners should make their background knowledge active and use them to interpret the new oral passage. The listeners' schemata determine what he comprehends, how well he comprehends and whether he can make an adequate comprehension.The activation of the schematic knowledge is key important in the process of successful listening comprehension. Focusing on the schema activation, two experiments are conducted. During the experiment, the listening activities which aim to activate the schema before listening, instantiate the schema while listening and consolidate the schema after listening are organized. The data of the final tests prove that activating the schema could turn the passive listeners to active ones, the focus's shift from teaching what to teaching how could stimulate students' interests, abundant background knowledge and utilization of listening strategies consciously could improve the listening comprehension effectively, the interactive listening comprehension teaching model based on the schema theory could improve the students' listening ability in reciprocal listening, these schema activating teaching activities are effective in improving listening comprehension no matter the activated schema is relevant or augmented, the instructional methods should be alternative according to different listening material and different students.Based on the theory and research, some discussions according to the schema theory and listening comprehension teaching is organized and some suggestions on the pedagogical principles are put forward to instruct the listening teaching in college, such as the roles of teacher and student, the aim of listening comprehension course, the relationship between the listening ability and reading ability, listening strategies and how to promote the reciprocal listening ability in the process of non-reciprocal listening.The conclusion part summarizes the findings of this thesis and proposes the limitations of the study and the broader research needs to be further studied.