【正文】 r: Jang Guobo A Thesis Presented to The Department of Foreign Languages Ankang University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Bachelor of Arts Ankang, China June, 20xx i Investigation and Research on the College students’ English Listening Ability —— Taking Ankang University as an Example Luo Zhengjie Abstract: Language is the basic tool for human beings to municate with each other, and the fundamental reasons for human beings to learn language is to exchange information. English learning is a kind of synthetically ability improvement。 the studying of English listening。 為了找到造成這些問題的原因及 解決建議 ，筆者通過問卷與訪談的形式對(duì)安康學(xué) 院的 15 名 老師與 500 名 非英語專業(yè) 學(xué)生進(jìn)行了調(diào)查。 explanations of sequential phases in listening。 but in all of these the data is parable, the questions are the same and the format is identical. 5 Selfpletion questionnaires allow access to outside contexts so information can be gathered from students in other departments. Since this study is aiming at gathering information about nonEnglish majors’ understanding on listening and listening learning, a questionnaire is the best and easiest way to get the data on a wide scale. The survey background The study was carried out in Ankang University. The participants were English teachers and nonEnglish majors. Of the 15 teachers, 7 were male and 8 were female. Of the 500 students, 267 were male and 243 were female. Guided by some established questionnaires used in previous relevant studies as well as the author’s research aim and main research questions, the author designed the questionnaire on its own. When designing the questions, the author have some principles to take into consideration: not to raise too simple or too plicate questions for participants。 and the words are usually written by the editors or teachers instead of ing from the authentic and natural language in real life, which is unfavorable to improving students’ listening ability. It cannot be denied that there is a certain amount of spontaneous teachertalk in class, much of which provides incidental listening practice. Although the students in Ankang University do much such listening practice, they relying on such type of exercises are likely to have great difficulties in understanding native speech in natural municative situations. Nevertheless, “it is not enough to base classroom exercises only on an imitation of 9 reality. We must also take into account the specific difficulties faced by the foreigner in learning to deal with heard English speech.”(Ur, 1984： 312) Problems in teaching methods According to the theory of taskbased listening “A task is an activity that requires learners to use the target language, with meaning at the core, to achieve an objective.” The author has no experience of teaching college English listening. In order to find the problems in teaching method, the author interviewed 15 English teachers in Ankang University and consulted to other educators’ achievements on college English listening teaching. By summarizing their opinions, the author gets the following results: Traditional listening teaching method Through the interview, the author finds that majority of the teachers in Ankang University still use the traditional method to teach listening. The traditional method is to play a tape several times for the students, then involve them in the relative exercises—answer prehension questions or make multiplechoice. The main task of the teacher is to check the answers and explain the difficult issues. This kind of teaching method focuses on the result, that is, to decide whether the students’ answers are right or wrong. In this way, what the students learn has little differences from what they get from reading class. Their listening prehension ability has only made minimal improvement. What should be mentioned is that many classroom exercises for listening prehension demand no response until the end of fairly long stretches of speech, so that when they e, these responses are very largely a test of memory rather than of prehension. It is helpless to improve students’ listening ability. Less interactive activities in the Class On one hand, in a listening class, the teachers in Ankang University usually play a role as to simply play the tape recorder and check the students’ answers. Few teachers design enough interactive activities for students to practice their listening ability. Therefore, most students in Ankang University bee passive even bored listeners because of the lack of participation in the process of listening. Gradually they lose motivation and interest or have a socalled panic feeling when listening. On the other hand, students in Ankang University seldom cooperate with their peers. Perhaps that is because most students hold the view that other classmates will go beyond them if they have learned about their learning methods. Therefore, the teachers in Ankang University should help the students set up friendly and cooperative atmosphere in the 10 learning process and let them know the significance of cooperation in the real world. Through investigation, the author finds in Ankang University there are about 64 English teachers in the Department of Foreign Language, and some teachers don’t teach. Those who can teach English are about 50, but there are about 10000 students in Ankang University. Each teacher needs to teach 200 students on average, they do not have enough time and energy to design all kinds of interesting activities. If teachers in Ankang University can well design most of the activities according to students’ characteristics, and the students in Ankang University can well cooperate with each other, the results must be better. Problems concerning students in listening learning In aug