background knowledge such as knowledge about co-text, information about speaker, knowledge of topic and so on”(82).
To conclude from the above-mentioned opinions, people often listen to information content with a purpose. They not only listen to the single word or sentence, but also listen to and understand the meanings contained in speech.
American linguist Widdowson, H. G. once presented his opinion that “listening comprehension includes two implications: one is to
understand the grammar structure of speaking. But this understanding is only confined to literal meaning; the other is to understand functions and influence of speaking” (36). In other words,
listening comprehension needs listeners to understand literal meaning, it also needs listeners to comprehend communicative function of discourse.
To achieve real understanding, background knowledge is of the essence. Just as Wu Yian says that“the listening in actual life and tests is impossible not to involve background knowledge”(128).
2.3 Relationship Between Schema Theory and Listening Comprehension Schema produces an effect on and runs through the information processing of listening comprehension. We can make use of schema
theory to explain process of listening comprehension and describe it in terms of three propagation modes.
The first mode is called “bottom-up process”. Carrell& Eisterhold pointed out this mode was a way to comprehend listening material according to information of material itself. In this way, the
beginning of this comprehension starts from the minimum linguistic unit such as phoneme and morpheme. In traditional teaching process, many teachers are affected by this mode. They generally think students can easily understand the listening material without
difficulties of language knowledge. However, it’s very normal that some students still can’t comprehend although they master the points of language knowledge. Therefore, it’s obviously not enough to only use the “bottom-up process” in English listening teaching.
The second pattern is called “top-down process”. Compared with the first mode, this pattern is relatively complicated. This strategy analyzes accepted information(vocabulary and sentences) by existing knowledge. Therefore, “top-down process” is actually a process from the totality to part. Specifically speaking, this mode activates
background knowledge firstly by some afferent information. Later these activated background knowledge can put schema of next level in motion.
A large number of researches have proved that efficient and right listening comprehension can’t only depend on “bottom-up process” or “top- down process”. Many teachers have realized that these two patterns should be cross used in English listening teaching in order to improve students’ ability. This newly formed pattern is interactive mode.
Celce-Murcia, M. used the following diagram to present relationships between “bottom-up process” and “top-down process” clearly. From this flow chart it can be seen that in the interactive mode, the complicated treating processes of background knowledge(the same as schemata), content information and language information urge the understanding and explanation to a given speech segment. Therefore, listeners need to remove the stored knowledge in brain to cognize and inference dynamically to comprehend what the speakers want to express. 3. Research Methodology
It’s obvious of the role of schema played in listening comprehension. In this part, Questionnaire I and Test I are used firstly to discover existed problems in listening teaching. In order to solve these problems, experimental lessons based on schema theory for ten weeks are designed. At last, Questionnaire II and Test II are used to
verify the impacts taken to junior English listening teaching by the application of schema theory. 3.1 Instruments
Quantitative and qualitative methods are used together in the present study because of their respective advantages and disadvantages. Two questionnaires, two tests and experimental lessons for 10 weeks are carried out. Questionnaires are carried out in Chinese to guarantee validity of students’ understanding to the content.
There are two questionnaires in this study. Questionnaire I (see Appendix I) is handed out to students at first to realize their feelings and situations about current listening learning. There are 10 questions in Questionnaire I. Questionnaire II (see Appendix II) is sent to students after 10 weeks’ experimental lessons to realize their different ideas about new learning mode and their feedback.
There are another 8 questions in Questionnaire II. Both
questionnaires adopt anonymous survey.
As same as questionnaires, there are two tests in this study. One is before experimental lessons to see students’ practical level of English listening. The other one is after 10 weeks’ lessons to see students’ current level of English listening. The complexity of
these two tests is similar and these two tests meet the criterion of junior high school.
Experimental lessons are designed on the basis of schema theory for students in Grade7, Class4 for ten weeks.
By the analysis of Questionnaire I and Test I, existed problems in listening teaching can be easily discovered. To solve these problems, experimental lessons on the basis of schema theory are designed. Then by comparing data and results of two questionnaires and two tests, the effect of application of schema theory can be seen clearly and deeply.
3.2 Research Questions
Listening always occupies a great position in every English test. In addition, listening is the fundamental skill of other English language skills. Only one master the listening skill well, can he apply English into actual communication or tests flexibly. However, it’s a reality that students even can’t understand what teacher says in class.
Questionnaire I and Test I are designed to find existed problems in listening teaching. The results of Questionnaire I can be shown as the following chart. 题号/选项 A B C D 1 25% 20% 45% 10% 2 40% 32.5% 12.5% 15% 3 7.5% 22.5% 45% 25% 4 57.5% 42.5% / / 5 10% 25% 32.5% 32.5% 6 5% 47.5% 47.5% /
7 22.5% 32.5% 32.5% 20% 8 22.5% 52.5% 25% / 9 72.5% 12.5% 15% / 10 Multiple Choice
The results of Test I are following. The highest score is 38, the lowest score is 3 and the average score is 27.1. There are 6 students whose score is above 35, 22 students whose score is between 25 and 34, 9 students whose score is between 15 and 24, 3 students whose score is below 15.
According to the analysis of Questionnaire I and Test I’s data, it’s clear to see that how to train students’ learning ways and improve their ability of listening comprehension are extremely urgent problems need to solve. Therefore, how to apply schema theory to junior English listening teaching according to teaching goals of junior high school is the following emphasis of this paper.
3.3 Subjects and Teaching Materials
Students in Mayu middle school, Grade7, Class4 will be chosen as the subjects of this study. Students in grade7 just step into junior high school for a short time. Their knowledge systems of a new language (refers to English) are not mature and perfect. But their cognition to English can be more easily remoulded than other older teenagers due to their immaturity of knowledge systems. For teenagers in this age, they can accept a new learning mode more lightly and apply it into further study. Therefore, this study selects 40 students in Grade7, Class4 as experimental subjects.
Experimental lessons are designed under the application of schema theory for these students for 10 weeks. English for Grade7 published in Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press are used as the teaching material. There are 12 modules in this book and the first part in every module is the listening part. In 10 weeks, every listening part from module1 to module5 is to be learnt. 3.4 Teaching Procedures of One Experimental Lesson
Unit1: What can I do for you? in module 5 are used as an example to show concrete teaching procedures under schema theory according to the above-mentioned three stages.
Step 1 is pre-listening. There are four tasks in this procedure. The first task is to introduce background knowledge of shopping ways to students by the teacher. This step is to help students set up a fundamental cognition of conversation in shopping. Meanwhile, the presentation of background knowledge can motivate students’
interests and remove their initiative which will make them be curious to following contents. The second task is to help students finish or
perfect their vocabulary map. The teacher lets students take out pre-prepared vocabulary map which may be not perfect. The map should conclude information about shopping place and the sellings which students can think of. If students can’t figure out correlative words, the teacher can help them to perfect their vocabulary map. This way can help students preview new words to avoid feeling nervous when they meet strange words in listening. The following graph can be as an example of vocabulary map.
The third task is that the teacher asks students some prepared
questions. These questions should be related with listening material. For example, the teacher asks students “What do you want to buy” or “How much would you like?” and so on. In process of questioning , students can learn the basic sentence patterns and conversational modes in shopping which will help them listen more clearly in while-listening. The last task is to let students discuss in a group of four. They can use what they have learned to talk about what they want to do in shopping place. Students can be more active by discussing.
According to four tasks in pre-listening, students have general cognition to shopping and they can guess what will happen in
listening material. They also master some sentence patterns which can be used in shopping place.
After pre-listening, the teacher begins teaching of while-listening. In this part, listening exercise will be divided into intensive listening and extensive listening. In extensive listening, students should listen to the main idea of content. Take the dialogue in module5 as an example, students should understand what happened in the shop worker and the customer after extensive listening. Listening material can be played for two times. In intensive listening,
students should take the following questions to listen. The teacher comes up with these questions to students before intensive listening: 1. What is Lingling going to buy for her mother? 2. What is Betty going to make for her mother? 3. What does Betty want to buy?
4. When are they going to the shops?
Students will pay more attention to related information in listening with there questions. Then, students should answer these questions after listening. The other task is to complete the following tables.
The Application of Schema Theory to Junior English Listening Teaching
