The Application Of Natural Approach To The English Listening Teaching In Junior Middle School

Listening plays an important role among the four skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing.And for second language learners,listening comprehension is also one of the most significant prerequisites to communicate others.However,in the present English listening teaching in junior middle schools,listening teaching is the most overlooked aspects of English class.In the traditional English listening teaching,the teachers still use the exam-oriented teaching method: listening to the tape and correcting the answers again and again.Maybe it can increase the listening score of students,but whether can really enhance the students' listening ability is not sure.With the implementation of the new curriculum reform,the traditional English listening teaching method can't meet the requirements of current society and examinations on students' listening ability.And it has little effect on improving students' listening ability.The Natural Approach emerged in the 1980 s,which was proposed by a Spanish teacher in California University Terrell,and a linguist Krashen.They suggest that the teacher should try to create a classroom atmosphere which is similar to the non-institutional environment for students,so that students can acquire the language unconsciously instead of learning it consciously.The Natural Approach also emphasizes that teachers should provide enough comprehensive input instead of playing the same listening material again and again.This paper tries to apply the Natural Approach into the English listening teaching in junior middle school,and to find the suitable methods for students to improve their learning efficiency and listening ability.Therefore,this thesis attempts to answer the following two questions:?.What are the effects of Natural Approach in English listening teaching of junior middle school??.How do teachers apply the Natural Approach into junior middle school English listening classes effectively?In this research,the experimental method and questionnaires are used to collect the data of the subjects.And the results of the experiment are analyzed by the software SPSS 20.0.The subjects of this study are 79 students from Grade 3 of No.19 Middle School in Zhengzhou.There are 39 students in class 4,which is regarded as the experimental class.Meanwhile the 40 students from class 5 are in the control class.The experiment lasts for 4 months.Finally,the results of the experiments show that Natural Approach can effectively improve students' listening ability,especially in sentence comprehension,dialogue comprehension and passage comprehension.In addition,through the analysis of the results of the questionnaires,Natural Approach can provide students with a low-anxiety listening environment to arouse the students' interest.Therefore,the students can focus more on the listening materials.The results of the questionnaires also show that under the instruction of the Natural Approach,teachers should provide the background information which is related to the listening materials as much as possible,so as to increase the comprehensive input of students.And in the listening class,some activities should also be designed to reduce students' anxiety.In a word,it is feasible to apply the Natural Approach into the English listening teaching in junior middle school.