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Listening Skills

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Listening Skills
English Language Teaching

June, 2008

An Action Research Plan for Developing and Implementing The Students’ Listening Comprehension Skills
Chunpin Luo The School of Foreign Languages, Yunnan Nationalities University No.134, Yieryi Dajie, Kunming 650031, China Tel: 86-871-643-5063 Abstract This is a proposal for an action research plan designed to find out how to improve students’ listening comprehension skills, enhance their performance and help to promote better learning. This plan is focused on the minority students who major in English in our University. Listening comprehension is one of the most difficult courses for them. As their teacher, the author would like to conduct an action research in her classroom teaching in order to make some changes in her teaching, to assist the students to become active listeners, and to improve their overall listening comprehension skills. Keywords: Action research, Listening comprehension, Minority students 1. Introduction Listening is the basic language skill in language learning. However, students always think it is difficult to listen well. To foster the students’ listening comprehension skills and prepare them as active listeners in language learning is a big challenge. Scholars and researchers have done a lot of research to help students to acquire the skills. However, we cannot rely on some methodologies completely. We might see that apart from the methodologies, we also need to know that we face individual student differences: their learning styles, their backgrounds, and their cultures in teaching. In different classrooms, teachers have to adopt different teaching methods to be with their own students. Action research offers an opportunity for classroom teachers to do the research by themselves, improve their teaching, and make adjustments when necessary. This paper intends to propose an action research plan and attempts to inquire into the educational situation, understand the students’ skills and their situation



References: Brouwer, Catherine, E. (2002). Conversation promotes understanding. Sprogforum. Byrnes, H. (1984). The role of listening comprehension: A theoretical base. Foreign Annals, 17, pp. 317-329. Kanu, Stansky. & Carson. (1993). A Student’s Handbook of Action Research. Albert: University of Alberta. Kearsley, Greg. (1999). Theoretical Basis of Teaching L2 Listening Comprehension: Theory to Practice. [Online] Available: www. english listening.com/theory.phtml. Mills, Geoffrey, E. (2003). Action Research: A guide for the teacher researcher (2nd edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey and Columbus, Ohio: Merille Prentice Hall. Ming, Yee, Carissa, Young. (1997). A Serial Ordering of Listening Comprehension Strategies Used by Advanced ESL learners in Hong Kong. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 7, pp.35-53. Nagle, S. J. & Sanders, S. L. (1986). Comprehension theory and second langrage pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 9-26. O’Brien, Rory. (1998). An Overview of the Methodological Approach of Action Research. Toronto: University of Toronto. Wang, Renfu. (2006). Action Research and Teaching of Listening Comprehension. Journal of Huangshang College, 2004 (4). 28

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