1. Introduction
1.1 Reasons for Choosing This Topic
In China, it’s uncommon for the majority of students to pay much attention to listeningproficiency when they study English in middle schools. To a large extent, this situation isbrought by the fact that the ability of listening comprehension is not demanded in theuniversity entrance exam. So not a small number of college students have poor foundation andability in English listening comprehension, especially the non-English majors. For collegeEnglish teachers, with the four language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writingadjusted with better balance, it has become a big challenge to help improve their students’English listening proficiency. Therefore, more and more scholars and teachers set their handsto solve this problem.In higher education, the importance of listening has also been reflected in examinations.For instance, dictation constitutes an important part in some national English tests in China,such as Test of English Majors (TEM) and College English Test (CET). Meanwhile, it can beobviously seen that the difficulty of this part in the test has gradually increased. For Englishmajors, they have better position to develop different language skills. After choosing Englishas their major, they can exert more efforts on English listening and speaking. And there havebeen many researchers dwelling on the effect of dictogloss for English majors. By contrast,the listening ability of non-English majors calls for more attention from their English teachersand researchers. Therefore, it is possible to find a niche in English listening teaching (ELT) inthe universities, not only because of the learners’ poor basic knowledge, the sluggish learningmotivation in listening class, but also of their teachers’ conventional teaching methods.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
In China, the concept of communicative competence has long been introduced into theforeign language teaching. Influenced by this related theories, English teachers put focus ongrammar teaching in class. However, mastering the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary isonly part of the standard for learners to learn a foreign language. The development of learners’listening ability has become a much more important norm to upgrade their applicationcapabilities in the procedure of ELT.Since 2001, the Ministry of Education has begun to promote the reform of Englishteaching in a wider scope by putting forward several documents. Concerning college ELT, oneof its main features is that the main task has been changed from the original reading andwriting to listening and speaking so that the learners could improve the overall English ability. According to the requirements of the Ministry of Education, the non-English majors need totake CET-4 and CET-6, which are beginning to increase the listening difficulty from theearliest stages of conversations and essays to conversations, long talks, essays and evencompound dictation. In a word, the patterns become more diverse and deeper than before. Itmeans that it is urgent for learners to improve their English listening proficiency. Furthermore,the listening part in CET-4 and CET-6 has accounted for 35% in the English papers in recentyears. By comparing the other patterns of listening part, the compound dictation has becomethe key problem for learners to get higher scores. And the tests will gradually adopt thecomputer-based model. It is expected that the topics of translation and writing will also bebased on the listening mode. That is to say, the listening part makes a larger proportion of thetests than before. Such a change will have a further effect on the contents, the strategies andlearning methods on the national college English. Thus, it has become the most urgent task toimprove the non-English majors’ English listening proficiency in the college English class.Correspondingly, the educators have to explore more efficient teaching methods in the processof teaching practice in college English education.
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2. Literature Review
2.1 Related Theories of Dictation
Dictation is the noun of dictate. It refers to a test in which students write down what isbeing read aloud to them, especially in language lesson (Advanced Learner’s English-ChineseDictionary, 6th Edition). In 2009, Wang Jin defined dictation from Cognitive Psychology. Shestated that dictation training consists of two processes: the input and the output of languageinformation, which associates listening and writing. Listening is actually the process ofre-encoding and outputting the information in Short-Term Memory (STM) by retrievingknowledge in long-term memory (LTM). Until now, there have been many domestic and foreign scholars who have researchedon such aspects on the classification of dictation, in order to avoid monotonous form ofdictation teaching, such as Liu Ruiqing, Zou Shen and so on.Liu Runqing (1999) states that there are four types in total: standard dictation; partialdictation; dictation with interfering noise; dictation and composition and so on. Zou Shen(2005) believes that the dictation can be divided into four kinds by the way: standard dictation;spot dictation; partial dictation; correction dictation.Although many domestic and foreign scholars have proposed a wide range of dictationtypes, there still lacks a uniform standard to classify the dictation. This study generalizes thedictation from the following aspects.
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2.2 Related Theories on Dictogloss
Dictogloss, also known as dicto-comp or grammar dictation, is initially used as a testingdevice to test students’ discourse understanding, namely “natural dictation”. This classicexercise was written up in The English Language Teaching Journal in 1963．In the late 1970s, it became very popular in Australia. It is a type of controlled writing that combines textdictation and text reconstruction. There have been a number of different definitions ofdictogloss in the academic circle.Wajnryb describes dictogloss in exhaustive detail and suggests sixty dictation activities,twenty at each of the three levels pre-intermediate, intermediate and advanced. She defineddictogloss as follows:“Dictogloss is a teaching procedure that involves dictating a short text at normal speedto the learners. As the text is being read, the learners jot down familiar words and phrases.Then working in small groups the learners pool their “battered texts” and strive to reconstructa version of the text from their shared resources. Each group of learners produces their ownreconstructed version, aiming at grammatical accuracy and textual cohesion but not atreplicating the original text. Finally, the whole class Reconvenes and the group’s versions areanalyzed and corrected” (1988:35).
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3. Methodology....21
3.1 Research Questions ......21
3.2 Subjects.....21
3.3 Instruments ....22
3.3.1 Pre-test and post-test.....22
3.3.2 Questionnaires ....22
3.4 Selection of Dictogloss Materials.....23
3.5 Experimental Procedures........25
4. Results and Discussion ....... 29
4.1 Effect of Dictogloss Practice on Listening Proficiency ...... 29
4.2 Effect of Dictogloss Practice on Listening Motivation....... 30
4.3 Summary ....... 33
5. Findings and Implications ...... 35
5.1 Major Findings........ 35
5.2 Implications of the Research....... 37
5.2.1 Implications for practice ........ 37
5.2.2 Caveats ..... 38
5.3 Limitations of the Research ........ 38
5.4 Suggestions for Future Research...... 39
4. Results and Discussion
4.1 Effect of Dictogloss Practice on Listening Proficiency
The testing is conducted in English listening for university non-English majors. 68students are grouped into the EC and CC to participate in the research. At the same time, thepapers of CET-4 are selected as the instrument to measure whether dictogloss practice canhelp students to master the English listening skills and improve their final scores. From table4-2, the p value is .100, which is higher than .05. The result shows that thereis no significant difference in the two tests. In other words, the scores of the CC in thepost-test have not significant difference than the scores in the pre-test. Therefore, thetraditional teaching method has no significant benefit effect for improving the students’listening proficiency.
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Conclusion
From the quantitative analysis and the qualitative data, the research questions could beproved as follows:Firstly, the present study aims at examining whether the dictogloss practice has anyeffect on non-English majors’ listening proficiency. Based on the data from the former chapter,it can be proved that the dictogloss practice has improved the subjects’ listeningcomprehension at the end of semester. There is no doubt that the first research question isanswered exactly. From the Independent Sample T-Test of pre-test, p value is .444 (p>.05). Itshows that there is no significant difference between those two classes in the pre-test.Nevertheless, from the Independent Sample T-Test on the post-test above, there is an obviousgap between the mean of the two groups in the post-test. The mean of the EG is 70.2813while the mean of CG is 63.0278 (p=0.005<0.05). On the other hand, from the Paired SampleT-Test on the pre-test and post-test of EC, it is found that the mean scores increase from60.9688 to 70.2814 (p=.001<0.05), which means that there exists a large difference betweenthe pre-test and the post-test in the EC. By representing these two sets of data above, theresults can be proved easily. In other words, dictogloss practice is an effective teachingpractice for non-English majors to improve their listening proficiency.
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Reference (omitted)