Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Language is a tool of communication. Among the language skills of listening, speaking,reading, writing and translating, listening ranks the first place. Listening is an important partof linguistic competence, and the indispensable means for people to communicate. Accordingto the statistic gathered by American scholar Professor Paul Pankin, 75% of the informationgained by people in social activities is accomplished by listening and speaking, and more than45% is by listening. This shows that listening is the important channel of language input inEnglish learning. At present the number and education scale of China's secondary vocationalschools is expanding constantly while the English teaching quality still lags behind. Sincelistening teaching is an important part in English language teaching, and also one of thedifficult points in teaching, therefore to improve students’ English listening level effectivelyhas become a prominent part in English teaching. Currently there are still many problems inEnglish listening teaching in secondary vocational school. They are as follows： Teaching materials are out of dateMost English listening materials in the current textbooks of secondary vocational schoolsare usually out of date and cut-and-dried.
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1.2 Significance and Aim of the Research
This thesis intends to demonstrate and prove the advantages of English listening teachingwith VOA Special English as auxiliary materials by comparing the teaching effects oftraditional listening teaching and listening teaching with VOA Special English as auxiliarymaterials. And the thesis also puts forward feasible suggestions for VOA special Englishteaching applied to English listening teaching in the secondary vocational schools. This studytries to provide some teaching strategies for reference for domestic secondary vocationalEnglish listening teaching and related English language teaching to improve English listeningteaching. This thesis is divided into six parts: the first part is the general overview and analysis ofcurrent situation of English listening teaching in secondary vocational schools. The secondpart mainly focuses on the definition of listening comprehension and English news listening,and then briefly introduces the theoretical basis on which this study is based on themetacognitive theory and schema theory. It also gives a brief introduction of VOA and VOASpecial English and generalizes the characteristics of VOA Special English. The third part isthe methodology, including research questions, subjects, instruments and procedures. Thefourth part gives the description of the empirical study, comparing the effects of the traditionalEnglish listening teaching and the English listening teaching with VOA Special English asmaterial auxiliary in secondary vocational school. The fifth part discusses the results ofexperiment, and puts forward the corresponding teaching methods and learning strategies. Thesixth part summarizes the study, points out the limitations of the study and proposessuggestions for further study.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 English Listening Comprehension
Listening comprehension refers to that people use the listening skills and languageknowledge to process information, this process of the human brain is active conscious activity.Vandergrift thought that "listening comprehension is active and complicated, in this processthe listener must pay attention to the meaning of pronunciation and intonation, master thegrammar and vocabulary, understand the content in a particular social context. The processcalls for listeners’ mental labor" (Fang Shenping 2000:24). Listening comprehension shouldnot just listen but with the adequate amount of understanding of the information, usingvarious means and methods to master listening content.
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2.2 English News Listening
English news listening teaching is to use English news as listening materials in Englishlistening class to train English learners to acquire the ability to comprehend English. Theevents broadcasted through English news are usually current happenings and have great valueand impact, spreading extensively by western news media. Some of the news may not berecent events but may have profound significance for the progress of human civilization. VOA─ Voice of America, one of the world's largest news broadcasting agencies, has ahuge and far-reaching impact on political and cultural life of the world. Just like a livingtextbook, its English programs can not only help people grasp the development trend of the modern English, cultivate accurate and authentic language sense and learn the nativeAmerican English, but also help people get to know about the world, especially thebackground of American history, social life, social customs, cultural practices, andgeographical features, and to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding of thepeople all over the world. According to the broadcasting speed and the degree of ease, VOA news program isdivided into VOA Special English and VOA Standard English.VOA Special English program is divided into two categories: one is the news program,each about ten minutes long, with the world politics, economy, military and diplomaticmatters, international relations, religion, weather and all kinds of on-going events of the world.Each of the news reported one minute, but occasionally up to two minutes. In addition to theheadlines, every piece of news by a guiding headline, such structure is suitable for beginnerslearning English. About 70% of the content of Special English is the same as the NormalEnglish news, only broadcasted with order change. Every time the news’ beginning andending are the same, but the format is fixed.
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Chapter Three Methodology......... 15
3.1. Research Questions.........15
3.2 Research Subjects......15
3.3 Research Instruments.......16
3.4 Research Procedures........17
Chapter Four Data Collection and Analysis......... 22
4.1 Data Collection and Analysis of the Pre-test ........22
4.2 Data Collection and Analysis of the Post-test.......23
4.3 Data Collection and Analysis of the Questionnaire.....24
4.4 Data Collection and Analysis of the Students’ Performance....31
Chapter Five Strategies and Methods…….. 35
5.1 Optimization of Listening Classroom.......35
5.2 Construction of English News Schema ....40
5.3 Cultivating the Application of Listening Strategy.......48
5.4 Summary .......50
Chapter Five Strategies and Methods in VOA Special English Listening Teaching
5.1 Optimization of Listening Classroom
The purpose of VOA special English listening teaching is to improve the students'language learning and application ability to English news, the author of this article holds thatVOA Special English listening teaching should be focused on the students' ability of languageacquisition and output. As a teaching place of VOA Special English, listening classroom playsa very important part in the English news listening teaching. Therefore, to improve the levelof secondary vocational English listening teaching is to improve the teaching methods andskills of the English news listening teaching in class. The proper English listening teachingmust correspond to the students' language learning habits and the development law, tostimulate the enthusiasm of the students for language learning and to improvelanguage-acquiring ability. According to the teaching practice, the writer summarized thefollowing methods to improve the teaching effect of English news in listening class:1. To create a good classroom atmosphere, and relieve students' anxietyWhen listening to VOA special English, most of the students will be obsessed withanxiety because the listening materials of English news cover a variety of topics of westernsociety, like economy, politics, culture and military. Students lack the schema related to thesematerials so it is difficult for them to comprehend the English news.
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Conclusion
The purpose of the thesis is to find out whether using VOA Special English as auxiliarymaterials has effects on English listening teaching in secondary vocational school. The authorchose two classes in the research and pre-test and post-test are held in both classes. Based onthe results and the analysis of the tests, questionnaires, the author had the following majorfindings:First, according to the data analysis of post-test, the listening scores of students inexperimental class have improved after using VOA Special English which based on schemaand metacognition theory. So this teaching mode is recommended as an effective way toimprove students’ listening ability.Second, the students from experimental class acquired some strategies to comprehendthe news report. Before the experiment, most students did not receive systematic training oflistening comprehension. When they attended the experimental class, they received listeningcomprehension training. They can listen to VOA Special English which is more suitable totheir English level and it can arouse their interest in English listening. Everyone is familiarwith the listening strategies which based on schema and metacognition theory. The studentsfelt the news report such as VOA Special English was not too hard to understand after somelistening strategy training.
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Reference (omitted)