An Action Research Of English Listening Teaching Based On Cohesion Theory

The present study attempts to demonstrate that the cohesion theory is applicable to English listening teaching.By means of action research, the present study investigates the application of the cohesion devices in listening comprehension.75sophomores (41girls and34boys), from Nanjing College of Information and Technology majoring in non-English, participated in the research. The study lasts four months, which is from September to December in2011. The study aims to find the answers to the following questions:(1). Does cohesion theory help non-English college students improve listening comprehension?(2).Between lexical cohesion and grammar cohesion, which one is more effective for students to improve the listening comprehension?(3). Are there any differences between males and females concerning the effect of cohesion theory on the listening comprehension?The results of the study show that, through the application of cohesion theory in English listening teaching, the mean score of experiment class in post-test increases by16.7%; the mean score of grammatical cohesion in post-questionnaire is19.1%higher than that of lexical cohesion; and the mean score in the post-questionnaire by females is higher than that by the males. In other words, cohesion theory influences the listening ability of non-English majors in a positive way. The grammatical cohesion tends to effect listening comprehension greatly. And the influence of the cohesion theory for females is more significant than that for males.The finding has two major implications. Professionally speaking, first, teachers should acquire the cohesion theory in a systematic and specific way; second, reflection in each step is crucial, which is important for teachers in the future teaching, third, teachers should always focus on the students’learning state. Pedagogically speaking:first, the research methods of English listening teaching should be developed; second, the meaning of the listening materials should be inferred by using the linguistic knowledge and the non-linguistic knowledge and the texts should be understood as a whole; second, the teaching methods should be enriched; third, the vocabulary should be taught in a systematic way in order to apply the lexical cohesion more effectively.