Three Ways to Motivate Chinese Students in EFL Listening Classes

classroom assessment, student motivation, and theories and practices of EFL teaching and learning. This paper is a report of an action research project conducted in a listening course for the second-year English majors in one university in China. After finding the existing teaching practice in the listening course not quite interesting and rewarding to my students, a new teaching plan was designed to motivate students in practicing listening. The plan consisted of three parts: providing students with explicit knowledge about the listening process, listening skills and the general process of improving listening skills at the beginning of the course; modifying ways to manage each session so that each session is a purposeful and growing experience for students; adding two ways to assess students’ learning: news report following a strict format and journal writing. Based on the data obtained from classroom observations, students ’ journals, interviews with students, and students ’ response to an open-ended questionnaire at the end of the term, students developed a fairly high degree of motivation towards practicing listening. Key words: action research, EFL listening, student motivation, journal writing Background information of the listening cours