Application Of Situational Approach To English Listening In Senior High School:A Case Study

With the development of economy and culture,the international communication has been increased and more English talents are needed in China.According to the English Curriculum Standards(2011),senior high school students should be able to achieve comprehensive English abilities through the learning process,for example,students should build the capacities of listening,speaking,reading and writing at the same time.Listening,as an important part of comprehensive English abilities is one of the most difficult parts for Chinese students.But for a long time,listening has not been paid enough attention to as it should be in both teaching and learning in English class.According to current situation in English listening teaching,the thesis proposes to apply the situational approach to English listening teaching,so as to arouse students’ learning interest and improve their listening abilities.The situation is the sum of all internal and external conditions in verbal communication.Specifically,the situation refers to the social context in which people uses the form of language to exchange information with others.The situational approach,which is also called the audio-visual approach,lays emphasis on the relationship between language acquisition and context.Learning in the situations created by teachers,students can be immersed in the real context,thus students’ interest can be greatly enhanced and they will also have a deep impression on what they have learned.The constructivism theory suggests that knowledge is not received passively but actively constructed by students based on their prior knowledge,so we should treat students as individuals and teach them to construct knowledge in the corresponding context actively.Based on this theory,the thesis also proposes the way to apply the situational approach to the English listening class in order to make the English listening teaching more vivid and the students’ learning more effective.The research mainly focuses on the following questions:(1)What influences does the situational approach have on senior high school students?(2)How does situational approach enhance senior high school students’ motivation and learning interest in English listening?Based on the constructivism theory,the author carries out an experiment on 78 students from two parallel classes in Grade one in Hugang No.2 Senior High School for about three months.To make the experiment more effective,the author divides the two classes into the experimental class and the control class randomly and tests them at the same time,and collects the data separately before and after the experiment,then compares the results.At last,in order to prove the feasibility of situational approach in English listening teaching,the author interviews several students chosen from different levels in two classes.The results show that after applying the situational approach,the English listening ability of students in the experimental class has increased obviously,while those in the control class have no significant difference.What’s more,the students’ enthusiasm and interest have been improved a lot,which proves that the situational approach is effective and practical to some extent.