On The Application Of Theme-based CBI In English Listening Teaching Of Non-English Majors

A natural way to learn a language is through listening.Comprehensive listening a prerequisite for communication.It is of essential importance to foster learners' listening ability in second language learning.Much research has been done,among which Content-based Instruction(CBI)has been received great concern in language teaching.Theme-based CBI has been considered as a suitable way for college English teaching.However,a great number of studies have mainly explored the effects of reading and writing instead of listening and speaking.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the effects of Theme-based CBI on listening teaching of non-English majors.Focusing on the following two questions:1)Does Theme-based CBI have effects on non-English majors' listening comprehension?2)Does Theme-based CBI have different effects on students of different language levels?If so,is there a positive correlation between their language levels and the progress they make in listening ?The study was carried out in a university in Hunan Province.80 freshmen were divided into two groups,40 in each group;one as the Experimental Group(EG)and the other class as the Control Group(CG).Both of the classes were taught by the author,but different methods wereused: Theme-based CBI in the EG and the traditional way in CG.A pretest and an interview were carried out before the experiment,and after the experiment,a posttest and another interview were completed.Students' behavior was recorded via class observation during the experiment.All the data collected were analyzed by means of SPSS 19.0.The study turns out that students in the experiment group have made significant improvement in listening tests under the guidance of Theme-based CBI.Based on students' language levels in the EG,the students are divided into four groups: Excellent Group,Good Group,Pass Group and Fail Group.All the groups have made progress.The most significant progress is made by Pass Group and then followed by Good Group.Compared with Good Group,the progress made in Excellent Group is a bit lower.Pretty minor progress is made in Fail Group.In addition,no positive correlation can be detected between the language levels and the progress that the students made in listening.The research indicates that Theme-based CBI has proactive effects on cultivating non-English majors' listening abilities and deserves to be applied in College English listening instruction.