基于克拉申输入假说的中学生的听力理解能力研究

漳州师范学院

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姓名：（四号宋体）

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1统一填写“外国语言文学系”

2师范类学生填“英语教育”，其他填“英语”

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封面，英文摘要，中文摘要，目录，正文，参考文献，致谢

Abstract

Krashen’s Input Hypothesis has drawn a lot of attention since it appeared and many scholars have carried on many researches to its application to the language teaching. Listening, speaking, reading and writing, regareded as the four basic skills of language, are complementary each other in language learning and communication. Listening ranks first in these four basic skills because most of the information human beings gain in daily communication is through listening. At present, the Input Hypothesis is frequently applied to the instruction of college listening, reading, speaking and writing but its application to English listening teaching in senior high schools is scarce. So this paper tried to apply the Input Hypothesis to English listening teaching in senior high schools and changed the traditional input method in order to make an explortive attempt on the model of English listening teaching in senior high schools to improve student s’ listening comprehension competence. On the basis of the ananlysis of a questionnaire for present situation of the listening teaching in two classes in No.3 Middle School in Zhangzhou, the paper changed the traditional input method from the aspect according to the Input Hypothesis: increasing comprehensive input. In order to confirm the validity of this method, the writer made a ten-week experiment to the Class 1 and Class 2 in Grade Three in No.3 Middle School in Zhangzhou. The research results indicated the significant differences between the two classes and the method according to the Input Hypothesis is effective in improving senior students’ listening comprehension competence.

Key words:the Input Hypothesis; listening teaching; the senior; application

摘要

克拉申的输入假说理论一产生就备受关注，许多学者对其在语言教学中的应用方面进行了许多研究。听，说，读，写这四项语言技能在语言学习和交际中是相辅相成，相互促进的。在四项语言技能中，听居于首位, 因为在日常交流中，人类大部分的信息都是来自于听。目前，输入假说比较常用于指导高校英语的听力、阅读、口语、写作，较少应用于高中英语教学。本研究试图将克拉申的输入假说理论应用于高中英语听力教学，改变传统的输入方式，对高中英语听力教学模式做一些探索性的尝试以提高学生的听力理解水平。本研究在对漳州市第三中学高三两个班听力教学现状进行了问卷调查和分析的基础上，根据克拉申的输入假说，从增加可理解性输入这个方面，改变了传统的输入方式。为证明此听力教学方法的有效性，笔者对漳州市第三中学高三（1）班和（2）班进行了为期十周的教学实验。实验结果表明，以克拉申输入假说理论为基础的输入方式对提高高中学生的听力理解能力是有效的。

关键词：输入假说；听力教学；高中；应用

Contents Abstract........................................................................... I 1. Introduction (1)

1.1 The main basis of the study (1)

1.2 The purpose and significance of the study.................................. (1)

2. Literature review (3)

2.1About the Input Hypothesis (3)

2.2 About listening (5)

2.3The Input Hypothesis research at home and abroad (5)

3. Applicatiaon of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis in Senior High School Listening11 3.1 The background of listening in senior high schools (3)

3.2 Research design (3)

3.3 Data collection and analysis (3)

4. Research Findings and Discussion (3)

4.1 About two tests (3)

4.2 About teaching suggestions (3)

5. Conclusion (3)

References (12)

Appendix (12)

Acknowledgements (13)

1.Introduction

1.1The main basis of the study

Listening, speaking, reading and writing, regareded as the four basic skills of language, are complementary each other in language learning and communication.

Listening ranks first in these four basic skills because most of the information human beings gain in daily communication is through listening. Thus, listening is quite important in language learning. The reform of the new curriculum in the middle schools has put forward higher requriement for the listening teaching of the senior high schools. However, the present situation of listening teaching in senior high schools is not satisfactory and there is little chance for students to listen. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, as a comparatively comprehensive theory in Second Language Acquisition research, has drawn a lot of attention since it appeared and many scholars have carried on many researches to its application to the language teaching. At present, the Input Hypothesis is frequently applied to the instruction of college listening, reading, speaking and writing but its application to English listening teaching in senior high schools is scarce.

1.2 The purpose and significance of the study

This paper tried to apply the Input Hypothesis to English listening teaching in senior high schools and changed the traditional input method to make an explortive attempt on the model of English listening teaching in senior high schools so as to offer some enlightenment to change the present situation of the senior English listening teaching in senior high schools and improve student s’listening comprehension competence.

2. Literature review

2.1 About the Input Hypothesis

“I+1”theory is the core of “The Input Hypothesis”which put forward in the theory of Second Language Acquisition by Krashen, an American famous linguist in the early 1980s. According to Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, language acquisition must be completed by receiving “comprehensive input”. “I”refers to a learner’s current level of language and the next stage that is the learner’s motivation for learning. “i+1”indicates the next stage in the learner’s language development along the natural order. If the learn er’s current level of language is “i”, the input must be neither too difficult to understand nor too easy. That is to say, the difficulty of language input materials should be “i+1”that is a litte bit beyond the learner’s current level of language. In order to comprehend the new language input materials, the learner will adopt previous

knowledge and experience or use context to judge. After that, he comprehend the less-well understood elements in the language input materials and make progress in language acquisition. Therefore, comprehensible input is neither “i+0” that is lower than or close to the learner’s current level of language, nor “i+2” that far exceeds his current level of language. Only by understanding “i+1” language input materials well can the learner acquire language. Krashen believes that ideal input should have four features. Firstly, comprehension. Language input must be understandable. Language input is the first condition to activate Language Acquisition Device in the brain. Unintelligible language input is void. Secondy, sufficient quantity. It will only be successfully in acquiring a new language through quantity accumulation in the premise of comprehensible input. Thirdly, interesting and relevant. Attention should be paid to the affective filter of the learner’s emotion. The more interesting the language is, the more his interest is motivated; the more relevant the language materials is, the more his learning quality is improved. Fourthly, no grammatically sequenced. Krashen claims that language input should be accepted in the context of situation rather than learn the grammar alone. Grammar should be placed in its proper placement.

2.2 About listening

2.2.1 The definition of listening comprehension

Douglas Brown (1994) defines listening comprehension as not only the process of sending and receiving sounds, but also as the interactive and conscious process to send and transmit the message to the brain which will influence in the process of communication. Listening comprehension is a complex active process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language and memorizing, generalizing language flows and at the same time understand the social and cultural background. In listening, what the listener wants to achieve is an adequate understanding of what the speaker means (Brown,1990). William littlewoods (1981) states that learner should be encouraged to engage in an active process of listening for meanings, using not only the linguistic clues but also his nonlinguistic knowledge.

2.2.2 The listening processes

Listening process refers to how listeners interpret input in terms of what they know, or identify what they don’t know ( Rubin, 1994:199). There are two views of listening in language pedagogy for more than two decades: bottom-up process and top-down process.

(i) The bottom-up listening process

The bottom-up processing model refers to the use of incoming data as a source of information about the meaning of a message. That is to say, the bottom-up listening process is a process of decoding sounds, the meaning of words from the smallest

phonemes to complete texts in a linear way. Anderson and Lynch (1988) call this the listener as tape-recorder view of listening because it assumes that the listener takes in and stores messages in the same way as a tape-recorder, sequentially, one sound, word, phrase, and utterance at a time.

(ii) The top-down listening process

The top-down listening process is a process involves activation of listeners’schematic knowledge and contextual clues to analyse listening materials. During the process, listeners construct the original meanings of the linstening materials using incoming sounds as clues. In this reconstruction process, the listener uses his prior knowledge of the context and situation with which to make sense of what he hears. 2.2.3 Three listening stages

Mary Underwood summed up the format of today’s listening lessons. She divided it into three parts: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening(Underwood, 1990).

(i) Pre-listening stage

Pre-listening stage mainly a preparatory stage. The objective of the pre-listening stage is to activate the listener’s learned background knowledge and language knowledge to guess the contents of listening materials. Rivers (1981) claimed that teachers should activate learners’ prior knowledge through preparatory discussion on related topics and by making sure that key words are known and have been recently brought to conscious awareness. Lance (1995) states that predication not only increases learner’s listening comprehension but also increases their motivation.

(ii) While-listening stage

While-listening stage is the most important stage of the listening process. Rivers (1983) claims that “In well-organized integrated listening lessons, while-listening stage should be a stage at which listening is accompanied by carefully designed activities and listeners experience the pleasure of success.”In the while-listening stage, teachers should prepare different tasks to help learners understand listening materials and development their listening skills, rather than just testing their memory. And learners are required to pay attention to and process information attentively. It is an interactive process and the previous guesses made in the pre-listening stage are proved or dispoved here.

(iii)Post- listening stage

Post- listening stage is necessary in the whole listening process. It consists of a lot of activities carried out after listening, including checking the answers, group discussion, different tasks integrating listening with the practice of other language skills like speaking and writing, teachers’ explaination of the difficult words, phrases and sentences. These activities provide opportunies for learners to have a better

understanding of what they listen. Teachers should offer necessary feed back so that learners can make a reflection about the listening materials and make progress in the next exercise.

2.3 The Input Hypothesis research at home and abroad

Krashen (1982) and Asher (1982) found that comprehensible input is an essential factor in second language acquisition, and that a comprehension-before-production approach can facilitate language acquisition, particularly in the early stages. And at home and abroad, many researchers have doen researches about the application of the Input Hypothesis to classroom teaching and achieved different findings.

2.3.1 Reading and the Input Hypothesis research

Davies(1983) who was working with Swedish high school students did a research that compared the approach on the basis of oral production with the approach on the basis of aural input and wirtten input and found that the aural input and written input attained greater production in foreign language skills.

Xiao Liming(1995) had done a research about improving college students’second language reading competence for four years by using written input whose grade is different in terms of quality and quantity. He drew a positive conclusion that large quantity of language exposure to the students leads to greater improvement of reading competence.

Luo Dongmei (2006) did an experiment implemented among 60 grade one non-English major college students who were at the same reading proficiency. The students are divided into three groups to read passages at three syntactic complexity levels(namely:9W/T, 12W/T,16W/T). There are two ways of testing: multiple-choice tests and writing their recall the text they read. After analysing the data, she found that the modification of inputs does affect students’comprehension and the syntactic complexity has a more significant correlation between students’performance in written recall than that between their performances in multiple-choice test.

2.3.2 Listening and the Input Hypothesis research

Spada(1990) reported on an investigation demonstrating the effectiveness of structuring the listening for learners by providing a set of predictive exercises to complete while carrying out the listening. The predictive work, plus the opportunity for students to stop the tape during the course of the listening exercise to ask questions led to greater gains in listening than in classes where the teacher launched directly into the listening without any schema-building activities, and students were not provided with the opportunity of seeking clarification during the course of the listening. Therefore, Spada drew the conclusion that “students who were given schema-building tasks outperformed those who were confronted with listening texts without being prepared for listening.”

Meng Wanjing (2003) did an ten-week experiment implemented among 60 grade one non-English major college students who were at the same listening proficiency. The students are divided into two groups of 30 students. The students of the experimental group were taught using the Input Hypothesis and the students of the control group were taught uisng the traditional method. And the teaching time of these two groups were same. And after analysing the data of the tests these students did after ten weeks, she drew the conclusion that using the Input Hypothesis to improve the teaching method is effective in improving students’ listening capacity.

2.3.3 Speaking and the Input Hypothesis research

Guo hong (2009) and Qi Deshan (2009) conducted a research aiming at increasing the learners’speaking ability and a new teaching model-improving speaking ability through the strengthening of listening was carried out. Their research implemented among 253 freshmen of Harbin University of Science and Technology. 253 students were in the eight classes: 4 experimental classes and 4 control classes. The students in the experimental classes were taught in a new teaching model which is improving speaking ability through the strengthening of listening. The students in the control classes were taught in the traditional way. Their relative statistics showed the speaking ability of the experimental class increases by 15%, 5% higher than that of the control class, which proved the efficiency of the new teachingmodel in helping to turn knowledge into skills.

These researches concerning the Input Hypothesis not only give us a better understanding that this theory has quite a diective function in improving language teaching method to increase teaching efficiency and developming learner s’ different language skills. but also testified its feasibility.

The Input Hypothesis has drawn a lot of attention since it appeared and many scholars have carried on many researches to its application to the language teaching. At present, the Input Hypothesis is frequently applied to the instruction of college listening, reading, speaking and writing but its application to English listening teaching in senior high schools is scarce. The senior is an important period for learning English well because students are faced with college entrance examination. However, senior high school students’listening comprehension competence is not optimistic. There is urgent need to make some changes to the traditional teaching methods. So this paper tried to apply the Input Hypothesis to English listening teaching in senior high schools and changed the traditional input method in order to make an explortive attempt on the model of English listening teaching in senior high schools to improve student s’ listening comprehension competence.

3.Applicatiaon of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis in Senior High School Listening 3.1 The background of listening in senior high schools

3.1.1 The questionnaire analysis

The questionnaire was designed to investigate if students like the present English listening classes and the present listening situation. It was distributed to the both the experimental class and the control class before the experiment. There are ten questions in all. They were mainly divided into three aspects: the present English listening situation, students’ English listening materials out of class and their hope for English listening teaching.

When asked whether the students like to have English listening classes in Question 1, ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class chose “just so-so”and ( ) chose “a little.” When asked about the present English materials in Question 3, ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class, which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively, chose the answer B or C, think the present English materials are a little difficult. Only ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class think the materials are too difficult. There are also few students, ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class, think the materials are easy. When asked about their current level of English listening in Question 2, ( ) students chose the answer ( ), with the proportion of ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. And according to the investigation results of Question 4, only ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class can get the scores between 16 and 20. And ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) of the control class get the scores from 12 to 15. ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) of the control class get the score from 9 to 11. And the scores lower than 9 are ( ) and ( ) respectively in the experimental class and the control class. From the investigation, it was not difficult to draw the conclusion that the present English listening situation is not good.

Different kinds of English listening materials and a variety of access to English listening materials play an important role in improving their English listening comprehension. Some questions are designed about them. When asked whether they listen to a lot of English listening matertials in Question 5, most of the students chose the answer B (some) or C (few), with the proportion of ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class chose D(none), which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively in the experimental class and the control class. Only ( ) students chose A(many). The result shows that students don’t get enough English listening materials in their daily life. Question 6 is concerned about whether they have other accesses to get English listening materials which are not just from textbooks. The question is that if they often get some English listening materials or do some English listening exercises from some famous English learning websites like UNSV, Putclub and Hujiang. ( )

students chose A(usually) that accounts for ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class, which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively, chose the answer B(often) or C(sometimes). Only ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class chose D(never). Question 7 was designed to investigate if students’English listening materials are extensive. There are several English movies and American TV series: Harry Porter, Go with the Wind, Kung Fu Panda, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, Friends, Lion King, Avatar, Ice Age. Question 8 was designed for students to choose the words Po’s father said to him that help Po to beat Tai Lung. ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class chose A(Where there is a will, there is a way). ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class chose B(All things are difficult before they are easy.) ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class chose C( You are never too old to learn.) Only ( ) students in the experimental class and ( ) students in the control class chose D( There is no secret ingredient.), with the proportion of ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. From the results of these four questions, we can see that students’ access to English listening materials and very limited and so is the variety of their English listening materials.

According to Question 9, students like these kinds of English listening materials: movies, stories, jokes, and songs. And these four chocies almost take the same proportion. Some students even add other kinds of English listening material they like, such as tong twisters and American TV series.

The results of Question 10 shows that the most students mentioned is to hope the teachers to find something interesting to listen. And some student also advise adding some other activities in their listening class, not just listening, finishing the exercises and checking the answers.

3.1.2 The present situation through the questionnaire

The results of the questionnaire show that the present English listening class isn’t satisfactory and is in need of improving teaching and learning. As we know, input is very important for improving student s’ listening comprehension. No input, no output. However, the students, except the listening materials in the textbooks, don’t get enough English listening materials from the outside world. And their access to English listening materials and very limited and so is the variety of their English listening materials.

3.2 Research design

3.2.1 Subjects and content

Class One and Class Two of Grade Three in the No. 3 Middle School in Zhangzhou were chosen as the experimental subjects. Class One is the experimental

class and Class Two is the control class. The number of the students of the two classes were the same. There are ( ) students, ( ) boys and ( ) girls in Class One and ( ) students , ( ) boys and ( ) girls in Class Six. Their average age (the experimental class is ( ) and the control class ( )) is nearly the same. In the examination of the last month, the mean scores of the two classes are not significant different. Class One is ( ) and Class Two is ( ).

3.2.2 Instruments

The instruments used in the research include one questionnaire and two listening tests: pre-test and post-test.

(i)The questionnaire

The questionnaire (See Appendix Ⅰ) was distributed before the teaching experiment. Its main aim is to find out what the students think about the present English listening teaching. The questions were designed from three aspects: the present English listening situation, students’English listening materials out of class and their hope for English listening teaching. The questions about the present English listening situation include Question 1(Do they like English listening class?), Question 2(How do they think of their current level of English listening?), Question 3(Do they feel difficult about the English listening materials?), Question 4( How many scores can they get in general?). The questions about students’ English listening materials out of class include Question 5( Do they have a lot of English listening materials except the English listening exercises in class?), Question 6(Do they often they often get some English listening materials or do some English listening exercises from some famous English learning websites like UNSV, Putclub and Hujiang?), Question 7( Have they seen the following movies and TV series?), Question 8(In the movie Kung Fu Panda, Which sentence Po’s father said to him helps Po beat Tai Lung in the end?, and Question 9(What kind of English listening material do they like most, English movies, songs, stories or others?) The question is concerned about their hope for English listening teaching is Question 10(What do they hope for English listening teaching)

(ii)The pre-text

The pre-text(See Appendix Ⅱ) was given to both the experimental class and the control class before the experiment. It was designed to find out whether there were any significant differences between the two classes. This pre-test paper came from the listening part in the examination paper last month in Grade Three. The pre-test was composed of two tasks. Task one requires students to listen to five short conversations and at the end of each conversation one question will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, students must read the four choices marked

(A), (B), (C), and (D), and decide which is the best answer. Task two are composed of five conversations or monologues. Several questions based on each conversation or monologue require students to answer. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken twice. After each conversation or monologue there will be a pause. During the pause, students must read the four choices marked (A), (B), (C), and (D), and decide which is the best answer. The total score of the pre-test was twenty. The whole students are required to finish the listening test in half an hour.

The post-test(See AppendixⅢ) was conducted after the experiment with the purpose of finding out if there were any significant differences between the experimental class and the control class in listening performance. The post-test paper contained two tasks which is the same as the pre-test. Task one requires students to listen to five short conversations and at the end of each conversation one question will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, students must read the four choices marked (A), (B), (C), and (D), and decide which is the best answer. Task two are composed of five conversations or monologues. Several questions based on each conversation or monologue require students to answer. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken twice. After each conversation or monologue there will be a pause. During the pause, students must read the four choices marked (A), (B), (C), and (D), and decide which is the best answer. The full score of the post-test was twenty. The whole students are required to finish the listening test in half an hour. With the hope of ensuring the reliability of the test results, the difficulty of the two tests were similar.

3.2.3 Procedures

Both the experimental class and the control class had one listening class per week. The control class was taught as usual: Firstly, explain some new words and phrases before doing the English listening test; secondly, play the tape; thirdly, finish the listening tasks on their own and check the answers. The English listening materials the control class used were only the their English listening exercises book for the Grade Three of the senior. There were no additional English listening materials.

The experimental class had the listening class in a different way. The teaching process was also composed of three stages: pre-listening stage, while-listening stage and post-listening stage. But in these three stages, the teacher did different things and students were also required to finish different tasks.

Before doing the English listening materials, the teacher was to explain some background knowledge that had something to do with the English listening materials, which made the English listening materials more comprehensible for the students..

The difficult words and phrases and phrases were presented at the same time. Then some pictures that fit the text were displayed to help aid students’listening comprehension. After that, most of the students had a general idea about the English listening materials they were going to hear.

The while-listening stage was more difficult for the teacher to control. The reason is that the stage was where the students needed to pay attention to the English listening materials and process the information contained in the mateirals attentively. In this stage, the students were required to listen to the English listening materials three times, each for a different purpose. For the first time, an easy task was given to the students and made sure that the students would get the correct answer. Usually, the questions in this task were like this: Where does / did this conversation probably take place? What's the relationship between the two speakers? Who is the man(woman)most probably speaking to? What is the man(woman)? What is the man's (woman's)job/occupation/profession? These questions were designed in order to help the students have a general idea of the listening materials. For the second time, the students were asked to get more detailed information from the English listening materials. The questions were ususally like this: What does the man(woman) mean? What do we learn from the conversation? Why is the woman so happy? What does the man (woman) imply? What can be inferred from the conversation? These questions were a little difficult because they required the students to infer speakers’attitudes according to their intonation, tone and the content of the conversations. At last, the tape was played again in order for the students to check the answers.

The post-listening stage is where the teacher can determine how well the students have understood the English listening materials. Prior to this experiment, the teacher may just simply checked the answers and explained a bit of difficult language points to make sure that the students could really comprehend the English listening materials. But this time the teaching method was changed. Some other forms of questions rather than just multiple-choice were required the students to finish. Questions about speakers’ attitudes and some inference questions were displayed. Another kind of taks in the post-listening stage was to listen to something different from the traditional English listening materials out of class. The chosen English listening materials were mainly some movie clips, stories, jokes and so on. It lasted about ten minutes in each English listening class. According to different types of English listening materials, different tasks were given to the students to do. It aims to give the students more opportunities to listen to different kinds of English listening materials, especially from the real life, increase extensive English listening input and increase their interest in listening English materials.

3.3 Data collections and analysis

Both the experimental class and the control class were asked to fill in the questionnaire before the teaching experiment. In order to ensure the reliability of the test results, some explaination was made clear at the beginning so that the students could choose the answers in accordance with their real thoughts. And after that, a English listening pre-test was conducted to both the experimental class and the control class. After the experimental class was taught in a different method for about ten weeks, a post-test was doen to both of the experimental class and the control class to find out whether the new method of English listening teaching based on the Input Hypothesis was of great help to improve the students’ English listening performance. In both the pre-test and the post-test, the experimental class and the control class were asked to finish the English listening test in half an hour. The total score of these two tests is twenty. The scores attained were analysed by means of SPSS11.0 in terms of same T test.

4. Research Findings and Discussion

4.1 About two tests

4.1.1 Pre-test score and analysis

The pre-test was conducted before the experiment for both the experimental class and the control class. The results were displayed as follows:

This pre-test paper came from the listening part in the examination paper in September in Grade Three. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 16 and 20 which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 12 and 15 with the proportion of ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 9 and 11 that accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score under 9, which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. The following are the analysis data of the attained scores got from SPSS11.0 in terms of same T test.

Table 4-1 Comparison of listening pre-test

From Table 4-1, we can see that the mean comparison of the pre-test between the experimental class and the control class indicated that there was no significant difference between the two classes. That is to say, the students of the experimental class and those of the control class were of similar English listening comprehension competence before the experiment was conducted.

4.1.2 Pre-test score and analysis

The post-test was conducted after the experimental class was taught in a different method for about ten weeks. Both the experimental class and the control class took this English listening test. The results were displayed as follows:

This pre-test paper came from the listening part in the examination paper in November in Grade Three. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 16 and 20 which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 12 and 15 with the proportion of ( ) in the experimental class and ( ) in the control class. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score between 9 and 11 that accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. ( ) students in Class One and ( ) students in Class Two got the score under 9, which accounts for ( ) and ( ) respectively. The following are the analysis data of the attained scores got from SPSS11.0 in terms of same T test.

Table 4-2 Comparison of listening pre-test

From Table 4-2, we can draw the conclusion that after using the new method of English listening teaching based on the Input Hypothesis, there was a significant difference between the English listening scores of the experimental class and the English listening scores of the control class. In other words, the students of the experimental class get better grade in the post-test than the students of the control class. The result indicates that explaining some background knowledge that has something to do with the English listening materials, increasing the input by listening for tasks and extensive listening are of great help to improve the students’English listening comprehension competence.

It is not difficult to interpret the reason for the high English listening scores in the experimental class. In different listening stages, the experimental class did

different things compared with the control class. In the pre-listening stage, the experimental class were told some background knowledge related to the English listening materials they were going to hear apart from some a few new words and phrases. But the control class were just told about the words and phrases. In the while-listening stage, listening for tasks and extensive listening were prepared for the students in the experimental class. It aims to give the students more opportunities to listen to different kinds of English listening materials, especially from the real life, increase extensive English listening input and increase their interest in listening English materials. But the students of the control class were arranged to listen the materials again and check the answer and no more listening materials were presented. The extensive English listening input is of great help in improving student s’comprehensible content of the English listening materials, that is to say, their English listening comprehension competence.

4.2 About teaching suggestions

4.2.1 Improving the quantities of English listening input

Sufficient quantity of English listening materials is very important in improving English listening competence. It will only be successful through quantity accumulation in the premise of sufficient input. That senior high school students lack sufficient English listening input is a big problem and only listen in English class is their main input way. So increasing the English listening input in English class is quite important for improving students’ English listening comprehension competence.

4.2.2 Improving the quality of English listening input

Krashen believes that language input should be comprehensible. That is to say, comprehensible input is neither “i+0” that is lower than or close to students’ current level of English listening competence, nor “i+2” that far exceeds their current level of English listening competence. Only by understanding “i+1”English listenign input materials well can students improve their English listening competence. Sometimes, students will not always undersand the background knowledge of the listening materials. Teachers should impart necessary knowledge to them before listening so the listening materials will become more comprehensible for students.

4.2.3 Increasing the varieties of English listening materials

The variety of English listening materials is also very important in English listening teaching. Different varieties of English listening materials in English listening teaching can increase different kinds of English listening input. English listening test in the college entrance examination is also of various types so students

should increase more types of English listening input to increase their English listening competence.

5. Conclusion

From the experiment, we can draw a conclusion that the new method of English listening teaching based on the Input Hypothesis is of great help to improve senior high school students’ English listening comprehension competence. The experimental class that was taught in the the new method of English listening teaching based on the Input Hypothesis did better than the control class that was taught by using the traditional teaching method. And according to the T-test, we can see that the new method functioned pretty well in improving students’ English listening performance.

According to Krashen, comprehensible input plays an important role in second language acquisition. The input must be neither too difficult to understand nor too easy. That is to say, the difficulty of language input materials should be “i+1” that are a little bit beyond the students’ current level of language. In order to comprehend the new language input materials, students will adopt previous knowledge and experience or use context to judge. But students’background knowledge which can facilitate listening comprehension is very limited so teachers should impart enough background knowledge of English listening materials to students is very important. Besides, getting sufficient and various English listening materials is also indispensible. Only by accumulating enough input can students make progress in acquiring listening comprehension.

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