The Effects Of Task Complexity And Listening Vocabulary On The Listening Scores Of Senior High School Students

This study is intended to to probe into the influence of listening vocabulary and task complexity on high school students’ listening comprehension performance based on the limited attention hypothesis and constructivism learning theory.Test papers have been made to investigate EFL learners’ listening vocabulary and their scores of listening comprehension under task types with varied task complexities.Data of both factors are analyzed to explore the possible effects on the scores of their listening comprehension.In this study,102 students from two parallel classes of Grade 2 in a senior high school of Quanzhou were selected as subjects.The research is to answer the following three questions:1)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ listening vocabulary and listening comprehension scores under different task complexity? 2)Do task complexity and listening vocabulary have an impact on senior high school students’ English listening comprehension scores respectively? 3)Do task complexity and listening vocabulary have a interaction effect on the scores of listening comprehension?Based on the above research questions,the descriptive analyses have been conducted on the listening vocabulary of the subjects and their listening comprehension scores under different task complexity.Then,Two-way ANOVA was carried out to explore the main effect of the two factor variables and their interaction,with task complexity and listening vocabulary as factor variables,and listening scores as dependent variables.The results are shown as follows: 1)The average score of the subjects’ listening vocabulary is 31.87,or 53.12(< 60)on the hundred-point scale,which indicates that the listening vocabulary of the subjects is relatively insufficient.Besides,the listening comprehension score of the subjects accordingly varies with different kinds of task complexity.Specifically,the listening comprehension score under high task complexity(m=9.29)is much lower than that under low task complexity(m=15.37).2)Task complexity(F=18.34,Sig.=0.000)and listening vocabulary(F=28.61,Sig.=0.000)can both affect the listening comprehension scores of high school students,and listening vocabulary has a more significant effect.3)Task complexity and listening vocabulary can jointly affect the listening comprehension scores of high school students,and the interaction is significant(F=4.5,Sig.=0.014).Based on these results,the following suggestions for English teaching from the aspects of task complexity and listening vocabulary are made: 1)In addition to the emphasis on morphology and semantics of words,attentions should be given to the phonics of words teaching.2)Diversified types of task should be added in listening comprehension practices to meet the various needs of English learners.