Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the shadowing exercise, usually used in interpretation to train one’s short-term memory, on.junior high school students’ listening comprehension. A total of 96 Grade One students from a junior high school in Hangzhou participated in the study. The students were assigned into two groups to receive different treatments. Both groups repeated the recordings in post-listening activity. The difference between these groups was that students in Experimental Group did the shadowing exercise in which they could not read the listening material while repeating, while students in Control Group could read the listening material. The results of the three post-tests revealed that the shadowing exercise had a significant effect on students’ listening comprehension and those who did the shadowing exercise outperformed the other group. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that the shadowing exercise could be helpful in enhancing students’ listening comprehension.

Keywords: listening comprehension; shadowing exercise; short-term memory

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-3

2.1 Background Information of Listening Comprehension-3

2.2 The Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension-3

2.2.1 Linguistic Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension-3

2.2.2 Non-linguistic Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension-3

2.2.2.1 Short-term Memory Affecting Listening Comprehension-4

2.3 General Ways of Improving Listening Comprehension-4

2.3.1 Learning Strategies For Improving Listening Comprehension-4

2.3.2 Teaching Activities for Improving Listening Comprehension-4

2.4 A Specific Way of Improving Listening Comprehension ---- Shadowing Exercise-5

2.4.1 An Overview of Shadowing Exercise-5

2.4.2 Shadowing Exercise and Listening Comprehension-5

3. Methodology-7

3.1 Participants-7

3.2 Research Design-7

3.3 Instruments-7

3.4 Procedure-8

3.4.1 Group Assignment-8

3.4.2 Experiment-8

3.4.3 Interviews-8

4. Findings-9

5. Analysis-12

5.1 Effect of Shadowing Exercise on Listening Comprehension-12

5.2 Impact of Shadowing Exercise on Oral Speaking-12

5.3 Difficulties in Doing Shadowing Exercise-12

6. Conclusion and Recommendation-13

References-15