A Comparative Study Of The Design Of Listening Activities Between Go For It And New Standard English For Junior Middle School Students

The period in junior middle school is pretty significant for students to lay the foundation of English learning.As one of the main means of language input,listening and the cultivation of listening ability can greatly promote language acquisition.While in the practical teaching,the listening part is often ignored and functions as a supplementary part,and quite a few teachers and students use teaching materials passively,which leads to a dilemma of improvement of listening competence.This study selects two representative teaching materials of listening activity design,namely,the PEP’s teaching material and the FLTRP’s teaching material to conduct a comprehensive analysis,adopting internal evaluation,external evaluation,and the Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2011),attempting to figure out the following issues:(1)What is the generality and individuality of listening activity design of the two sets of English teaching materials at the macro level?(2)What is the generality and individuality of listening activity design of the two sets of English teaching materials at the micro level?(3)What are the teachers’ and students’ comments on the design of listening activities of the two sets of English teaching materials?The results of the study show that the two sets of textbooks basically meet the requirements of the Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2011).From the macro level,the guiding ideology of the two editions of textbooks involve the cultivation of language knowledge,skills,students’ interest and cross-cultural communicative competence,while the PEP’s coursebook pays attention to classroom participation,cooperative and autonomous learning.In terms of topics,the two editions basically cover the subject of curriculum standards,the PEP’s focuses more on daily life and communication,and the FLTRP’s pays more attention to modern science and technology,culture,and safety,etc.From the micro level,the PEP’s amount of listening activity is more than that of the FLTRP’s,itsdistribution is more reasonable,and the listening activities of the PEP’s are more conducive to the cultivation of listening skills.There is,of course,some space to improve.According to comments of teachers and students,the listening activities of both versions can arouse students’ interest in learning,they are in accordance with students’ learning level,and contribute to improving students’ listening competence.But the PEP’s design of listening activities are better recognized.With the comparison of these two sets of teaching materials,this paper aims to provide some ideas for teachers to use teaching material creatively,and help students learn better as well.In the meanwhile,it also provides some suggestions for the compilation of teaching material.