Improvement of English Listening Teaching in Junior MiddleSchool Guided by Schema Theory

王敏 王瑞春

一、Introduction

Nowadays， more and more researchers and teachers pay attention to the significance of English listening. Many researchers and teachers have dedicated themselves to English researchers and experiments. Experienced pioneers discuss English listening teaching from two aspects. The first one is schema theory and the other is the improvements of English listening teaching based on schema theory. However， the current listening teaching modes remain unsatisfactory. Teachers pay more attention to the listening results than to the process of listening.

二、Literature review

In this part， a literature review will be stated. It includes schema theory， basic problems about English listening teaching， classification of the schema theory in listening teaching and researches of the schema theory in listening teaching abroad and at home.

三、 Research methods

Two former parts show that students background information is a very important factor in listening comprehension. Therefore， teacher should guide students form a schema theory and activate the schema which exists in the students mind.

As is shown in Table 1， questions one to five are for an investigation and analysis about whether students like English or not. Question one indicates 7.8% students are not interested in English. 46.8% students just like English. Question two and three indicate 48.1% students think English is important for them and 58.4% students think that practicing English is only to pass the examination. Question four and question five indicate 33.8% students think listening English is boring and 50.6% students think that they are not satisfied with their listening teacher， so they are not satisfied with their English listening teaching.

According to Table 2， question six indicates 49.4% students are afraid that they cant understand the teachers instructions. Question seven and eight indicate 57.1% students are not fully prepared before listening and 61.0% students can not know the requirements before listening. Question nine indicates 37.7% students are worried while listening because they know little background information. Question ten indicates 48.1% students become in blank in their mind because of fast speed of the tape.

By analyzing the data in Table 3， 66.2% students become worried when they come across the new words while listening. 45.5% students become bored because of noisy tapes. 46.8% students have no confidence to complete all the subjects when they hear strange words or a difficult sentence. It is concluded that most students have no confidence to complete all the listening materials because of the new words.

四、Playing the roles of schema theory fully in listening comprehension

According to the definition and classification of schema theory， it is found that they can play at least two roles in listening teaching. If these roles can be fully played， the students ability will be improved a lot.

五、Conclusion

Many researchers have conducted extensive researches on English listening teaching at home and abroad. A large number of researchers have conducted in-depth research on the teaching model of English listening in junior middle schools. This paper is finished based on the supporting ideas of these researches. By analyzing the present situation of traditional listening teaching mode， schema theory is put forward as an effective method to improve English listening teaching.