Schema Theory-guided Extracurricular Academic Listening Training Based On E-portfolio System

With the increase of the international communication between universities, English academic lecture, which plays a vital role in current higher education, has become a major way for college students to acquire new and advanced knowledge. English academic lecture comprehension is especially important for L2 learners who are engaged in academic tasks. However, many researches have indicated that many L2 learners, even those with high English proficiency still have problems in comprehending English academic lectures. Therefore, it is of practical value to research on how to improve learners'English academic lecture listening ability out of class. After reviewing related researches, the writer found that lack of background information is a factor influencing learners'lecture listening ability. Reading is an interactive process between reading materials and the readers. Similarly, listening is also an interactive process between listening materials and listeners. To get the meaning of the speaker, the listener has to match his schemata to that of the speaker. Therefore, it is an effective way to apply schema theory in improving learners'English academic listening ability. As a result of the current curriculum setting, the learners have few chances to develop their academic listening ability in class. E-portfolio system as a new method assisting students in learning and teacher in teaching breaks the limitation of time and space and provides both students and teachers a good platform to communicate and to learn out of class. And the learners can be guided by the instructors by logging in the E-portfolio system Therefore, the present study made a tentative investigation which aims to improve students'English academic listening ability through the guidance of schema theory in extra-curriculum time by using e-portfolio system.The current study is based on related theories and adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods. The 3-month study was conducted among 66 first year non-English-major students from Chongqing University, and these 66 students were divided into the control group and the experimental group, with 33 students for each group. In the current study, the students from the experimental group received schema theory-guided extra-curricular listening training mode based on E-portfolio system while the control group only received the regular in-class and autonomous listening training. After the 3-month training, SPSS.12.0 was employed to analyze the collected data and the results were used to compare the English academic listening ability of the two groups.The conclusions were arrived by analyzing the data: 1) Schema theory-guided extra-curricular listening training mode based on E-portfolio system can improve students'English academic listening ability. 2) This training mode can remedy for the inadequate English academic lecture training in class, which is resulted from current curriculum setting. 3) This training mode can help students to develop a habit of actively preparing for academic lectures...