The Effects Of Dictogloss On Improving Chinese Students’ Listening Comprehension Of English

Dictogloss is an integrated technique for language learning in which studentswork together to create a reconstructed version of a text they hear. Originallydeveloped to draw learners’ attention to grammatical points, dictogloss can also beused as a teaching methodology of ESL listening. This study is to investigate whetherdictogloss can improve Chinese English learners’ listening comprehension moreeffectively than multiple choice.The present study generally comprises an experiment and an interview. Twoclasses of sophomores majoring in International Economics and Foreign Trade inShandong Foreign Trade Vocational College were selected for the experiment, ClassOne of42students serving as the control group receiving multiple choice training andClass Two of42students as the experimental group receiving dictogloss. All theparticipants sat a pre-test at CET4level, an immediate post-test and a delayedpost-test prepared by the researcher himself throughout the study. After beingprocessed by SPSS, the participants’ scores were compared through independentsamples t-test and paired samples t-test. Then, an interview was delivered to theexperimental group for their feedback about the effectiveness of dictogloss.By comparing each group’s scores in the pre-test and the post-test and the twogroups’ scores in the post-tests, it is found that:(1) dictogloss can effectively improvethe participants’ listening comprehension in the experimental group while the effect ofmultiple choice is not that obvious.(2) dictogloss does not present more advantagesover multiple choice in developing English learners’ listening capability.(3) as theytend to have benefited more from it, dictogloss is more embraced by the weak Englishlisteners.This thesis is composed of five parts. First, a general introduction of the background and significance of the study is presented. The second chapter presentsthe definition of dictogloss, its procedures, the theoretical basis of listeningcomprehension and the relevant empirical studies of dictogloss. Chapter three isconcerned with the design of the experiment, which includes the description of theresearch questions, participants, treatment, instruments and procedures of theexperiment. The next chapter presents the results of the experiment together with adiscussion of the results. In the last chapter, the findings, implications and limitationsas well as suggestions for future studies are given.