A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Dictogloss On Promoting Non-English Majors’ Listening Comprehension

Listening is the first step in language acquisition, and it constitutes nearly half of the proportion in daily conversation. The College English Curriculum Requirements issued in2007emphasizes the requirement of listening ability. In College English Test Band4(CET4) and College English Test Band6(CET6), the listening proportion has been constantly raised. For Chinese non-English majors, listening comprehension is a difficult skill to improve. In view of the current situation that college listening teaching is inefficient and the reality that students’ listening ability is generally low, it is necessary to reform the inefficient teaching methods and research and to explore a scientific and efficient mode of English listening instruction.Different from traditional dictation, dictogloss is a text-based, meaning-driven, student-centered and task-based teaching procedure. In recent years, many researchers have done many experiments on the effect of dictogloss on foreign language teaching. However, most of the researches focus on the effectiveness of dictogloss in promoting English grammar and writing teaching, few empirical researches have been carried out on the effectiveness of dictogloss on promoting English listening comprehension, and even fewer empirical researches have been conducted on the effectiveness of dictogloss on promoting non-English majors’ listening comprehension.The present study reviews and summarizes the relevant researches abroad and at home. Based on the input and output theory, as well as cooperative learning theory, combined with the actual teaching situation, the author designs a dictogloss classroom teaching program and applies this task-based teaching procedure in specific teaching practice. Through the contrast experiment, data analysis, questionnaire survey and interviews, this study discusses two questions:First, does dictogloss have any effect on Chinese college non-English majors’ listening comprehension? Second, do students of the experiment group think dictogloss is effective in improving their listening comprehension? The present study aims to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of dictogloss on promoting non-English majors’ listening ability, and to provide reference for college English listening instruction. The70subjects are sophomores chosen from two natural classes of the School of Food and Medicine, Anhui Science and Technology University. Class1(35students) is chosen as the Control Class. Class2(35students) is chosen as the Experiment Class. The control class takes the normal English listening and speaking class, whereas the experiment class gets involved in a15-week dictogloss teaching procedure. Before the experiment, a pre-test of English listening is held for the purpose of ensuring that there is no significant difference in the English listening competence between the control group and the experiment group. After the experiment, a post-test is done to the two groups. The statistical tools Independent Samples T-test and Paired Samples T-test by SPSS17.0are employed for the quantitative data analysis. Meanwhile, questionnaires before and after the experiment, interviews during and after the experiment are made and analyzed within the EG to find out the effect of dictogloss on the students’ listening comprehension and their attitudes towards the dictogloss practice, and to collect data for future qualitative analysis as well.After the analysis of those data and information quantitatively and qualitatively, the research results conclude that:(1) The practice of dictogloss can help non-English majors improve their listening proficiency;(2) the attitude of the students toward the dictogloss in the EG is positive. In addition, based on the research, the author also gave some suggestions:(1) Dictogloss should be a good combination of meaningful input and output;(2) various materials should be chosen, which are interesting, rich in content and with proper difficulty level;(3) the teacher plays an important role of organization and guidance in the group interaction;(4) dictogloss could also be used as a self-learning approach by students out of class. Finally the thesis briefly points out the limitations of a small scale, short experiment time and unitary subjects and further plan of this research.By means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study confirms the effectiveness of dictogloss in promoting non-English majors’ listening comprehension, thus providing guidance for the teaching of college English listening.