Papers by Author: Chun Mei Wu

Abstract: In classroom, students do more listening than reading. Listening competence is “larger” than speaking. The significance of listening in second language acquisition can never be overestimated. Listening comprehension has been a focus for college English learning for years in China. With the information obtained from listening, learners build up their own linguistic system and are ready to retrieve whatever they want when they speak and write. There are many factors that affect listening, among which materials play a key role in facilitating listening comprehension. In order to achieve the final goal of promoting listening competence, teacher must realize that listening materials should be tailored to the needs of individuals. Based on the exploration of the nature of listening comprehension, this paper verifies the elements hindering learners’ listening competence on the basis of the need analysis and Krashen’s input hypothesis. With a questionnaire conducted at Wuhan Polytechnic University ，and the author accordingly concludes that a feasible materials should meet the learners’ requirements so that the enhancement of listening comprehension can be achievd.

Abstract: With the deepening reform of college English teaching in China, many self-access centers(SAC) have been established in universities to promote students’ antonomy and cultivate their leanring ability. Based on the theories of constructivism, humanistic psychology and cognitive psychology, the self-access language learning ( SALL), with its new emphasis on speaking and llistening , is a very good supplement to traditional classroom teaching ，whose focus is only on reading and writing. This paper intends to probe into the effectiveness of students’ SALL in SAC of Wuhan Polytechnic Universtiy through an empirical study. After analyzing the findings qualitatively and quantitatively, the results show that that learners’ autonomy, by and large, can be achieved. SAC and SALL is sure to be very helpful to arouse learners’ learning interest, foster their independence, improve their problem–solvling ability and facilitate their four-skilled abilities.