An Empirical Study On Activity-based Approach In College English Listening Teaching

With the development of international communication, an increasing number of people pay attention to English listening and speaking abilities. College English listening teaching methods are gaining people’s attention. However, many teachers still use the traditional exam-oriented teaching method and students’ level of listening comprehension can’t be improved effectively. This paper attempts to probe and prove the effectiveness of college English listening learning by studying and analyzing the activity-based approach.One hundred and six students of two classes in Grade One in NUAA Jincheng College of Nanjing, Jiangsu province were chosen as the experimental subjects. The English listening teaching experiment was carried out in these two classes for a period of one semester. Results of this experiment are as follows:First of all, students from the experimental class improve their listening scores more significantly than students from the control class. By comparing the differences between the pre-test and post-test of these two classes, great differences show that activity-based approach can more efficiently improve college students’ English listening comprehension performance than traditional exam-oriented teaching method.Secondly, by making a comparison between pre-questionnaire and postquestionnaire about students’ use of listening comprehension strategies, we can conclude activity-based approach has a great impact on the use of listening comprehension strategies. In addition, the interviews prove that there are differences among different students in the use of different listening comprehension strategies.Finally, top 25% and bottom 25% of students in the experimental class are chosen as the high and low score group respectively according to scores of the pre-test. Scores of the post-test show that low score group improved listening scores more quickly while high score group improved listening scores more steadily.Meanwhile, this paper elaborates the inspiration and implications of activity-based approach on college English listening teaching. Activities should be regarded as the center of the listening class and multimedia should be used properly to help students learn English listening better. In addition, extracurricular listening activities should be carried out appropriately. Only in this way, can teachers stimulate students’ study enthusiasm and gradually help students improve their English listening comprehension efficiency and ability.