An Empirical Study Of College English Listening Teaching Based On Schema Theory

Listening is a language skill frequently used in daily life. At the mean time, as the basis of the four linguistic skills—listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is an important part in language teaching and learning. However, in the field of College English teaching,listening is a very weak link, which becomes a bottleneck in the development of students' communicative competence. At present, many problems exist in the college English listening teaching, and the students' performance in listening at independent colleges is not satisfactory.In the traditional model of English listening teaching, teachers tend to be the center of the classroom, ignoring the main status of the students. In the process of listening, students are often treated as passive recipients of information, unable to take the initiative to participate in listening activities. Thus, the students' listening level has not been greatly improved.To solve the problems, the study attempts to apply schema theory into the English listening teaching in independent college. By analyzing the current state of the college English listening teaching and reviewing the related theories, the thesis probes into the feasibility and effectiveness of the application of schema theory into the college English listening teaching, in order to find an effective way to improve the listening teaching of the non-English majors in the independent college. According to schema theory, listener's background knowledge plays an important role in the process of listening comprehension.Therefore, activating students' related schema and helping students to create a new schema can enhance their listening comprehension.The study explores a way to improve the English listening teaching in independent colleges, mainly focusing on the following two questions:1. Is the teaching model based on schema theory more effective than the traditional approach in improving students' listening comprehension level? 2. Can students' learning autonomy be promoted under the listening teaching model based on schema theory?In order to solve the questions above, the author carried out a teaching experiment by using both qualitative research and quantitative research methods. The author selected two natural classes in the University of Geosciences Great Wall College as the experimental class and the control class, and the teaching experiment lasted for 14 weeks. In the experimental class, the listening teaching model based on schema theory was adopted, and the traditionallistening teaching model was adopted in the control class. By analyzing the results of the pre-test and post-test, and that of the questionnaires and interview, the author draws the conclusion that the teaching model based on the schema theory is more in line with the psychological characteristics of the students, which can arouse the students' learning interest.And the teaching model based on schema theory is more effective than the traditional one in improving students' listening ability. At the same time, the teaching model based on schema theory can strengthen student's meta-cognitve awareness and promote their learning autonomy.All in all, the results confirmed the importance of schema theory in English listening teaching, showing its significance of applying it to a broader field in language teaching. Thus,the study enriches the listening teaching approaches, pushes the reform in English listening teaching and leads the teaching purposes to focus on the improvement of students' interest and communicative competence.