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icy and the internationalization of China,more and more job opportunities are available and accessible to the college students.According to writer’s survey on job hunting (finished by Feb. 20th2010), 81.2% of collegestudents prefer to work in foreign companies and joint ventures. The reasons most peoplechose are satisfactory pay (71.8%) and humane management (54.8%), fair play (52.1%), andgood welfare (44.6%). As for their disadvantage to compete with other job hunters (86.4%)chose “my English proficiency need to be improved”.Many scholars and experts have noticed the problems of this kind of education system. Wehave generations of so-called “dumb English writers & readers” and “deaf English writers &readers”, which mean they are good at examining, and a fairly good score can be get, but theycan’t speak any words or understand as long as it is said. What they can do is read andunderstands the words written on the paper. Some Chinese overseas students were reported asEnglish illiterates once they leave their motherland.The author has been teaching College English Listening and Speaking Course for 6 years,and in the real teaching practice, various problems existed in teaching and learning listening andspeaking. Therefore, from the perspective of better learning and more effective teaching, theauthor does an action research on teaching listening and speaking.This action research is composed of two parts, pre-research and research. In pre-researchprocess, the author selects some pre-research subjects to do a pilot questionnaire. The authordesigns the research based on the results of data analysis. Then a research design based onneeds analysis comes out.The research subjects are the students from 2009 combined degree class (There are 60students in this class, and 33 are from Class II and the rest 27 come from Class I ). Firstly, I dida pre-test to know the overall English proficiency in order to make research plans based ontheir needs. The author revises the detailed action in teaching schedule. After doing theexperiment in a semester, an interview and 4 post-tests are conducted to see whether this actionresearch is rewarding or working. The answer is positive.Firstly, the author makes a clear introduction to Action Research (AR) and the majortheories of it. Action research began in the USA during the 1940s through the work of KurtLewin, a social scientist. Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term “actionresearch” in about 1944. It actually began in other places as well, but Lewin’s work is generallytaken as the starting point. It was popular in the USA for a time, but then went into declinebecause of cultural, political and economic changes. It emerged in the 1970s in Britain throughseveral influences. One major influence was the work of Lawrence Stenhouse ho directed theHumanities Curriculum Project. He believed that the curriculum ought to be organized in schoolsso that it was meaningful and relevant to students’ experience, and they should be encouraged totake on the responsibility of their own learning. He also promoted the idea of ‘teacher asresearcher’.Action research was developed mainly by academics in higher education. Researchersbegan studying and clarifying the steps involved, and also the principles underpinning actionresearch, such as the need for democratic practices, care and respect for the individual, and theneed for disciplined enquiry. Action research is today prominent not only in teacherprofess