The Effects Of English Pronunciation Instruction On Middle School Students’Listening Ability: An Empirical Study

The thesis mainly tries to explore the effects of pronunciation instruction on middle school students’listening ability. Up to now, the studies concerning pronunciation and listening have focused on the pronunciation problems hindering students’listening ability, the status quo of pronunciation and listening learning and teaching, and the countermeasures of improving pronunciation and listening. Yet there are some gaps to bridge. First of all, most of the research participants are English majors or non-English majors rather than the middle school students who are in need of teachers’guidance and instruction in pronunciation. What is more, most of the studies explore the relationship between students’pronunciation level or pronunciation teaching and English comprehensive competence, rather than the relationship between students’pronunciation level and listening ability.Therefore, theoretically based on Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, the Trace Model of Speech Perception, and Anderson’s Three-phase of Listening Comprehension, the thesis intends to explore the effects of pronunciation instruction on students’pronunciation level and listening ability. Two research questions are addressed in this thesis:(1) Is the English pronunciation instruction effective and practical in improving middle students’pronunciation level and listening ability? If so, to what extent?(2) To what extent is students’pronunciation level related to students’listening ability?In order to tackle the questions above, targeting at Grade Seven students in Liuyang Xinwen School, the author carries out the research systematically. First of all, two intact classes of Grade Seven students are chosen at random, one of which serves as the control group and the other as the experimental group. Later, the five-week pronunciation instruction is conducted in the experimental group. The author analyzes the results with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.The data show (1) English pronunciation instruction is conducive to improving students’pronunciation level and listening ability;(2) English pronunciation level and students’listening ability present significant correlation.As the thesis aims to explore and tackle practical teaching problems in elementary stage, to some extent, it is of great significance to conduct the research. However, there are still some limitations in present study. Since the number of participants is limited and the researcher does not use the method of observation, it is a little hard to absolutely convince readers that the sample can exactly represent all members of the whole group.