The Ways of Improving Students’ Ability in College English Listening Teaching 大学英语听力提高对策初探.doc

大学英语听力提高对策初探The Ways of Improving Students Ability in College English Listening TeachingAbstractA number of people have frequently made the point that the total time and individual engage in communication; approximately 9% of which is devoted to writing, 16%to reading, 30%to speaking, and 45%to listening. It is therefore undoubtedly the case that listening should be given more attention in language teaching. But in the foreign languages learning process, the people generally feel that it is difficult to foster and improve ones listening ability. But the author thinks that these are closely relative to the complication of listening itself, the language knowledge and skill of the listeners and Chinese traditional teaching model. But from the investigation the author can see that listeners difficulties mainly present in following aspects: 1). The listener cannot follow the speed of the speakers, 2). The listeners cannot get the main ideas of the material, 3). The listeners are lack of certain memory techniques, 4). The listeners understanding is beyond the material. Therefore take this as the topic to make to solve these problems, the author proposes some listening skills in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, background knowledge, note and so on, and the goal is to provide some methods of English listening teaching for English teachers and to help the listeners to improve their listening comprehension.Key Words: English listening; problems; solutions摘 要据统计，听，说，读，写在人们的语言使用中各占的时间比重一般是听45%，说30%，读16%，写9%。由此可见听力的重要性。然而，在外语的学习过程中，人们又普遍感觉听力培养和提高的艰难性，作者认为这与听力本身所涉及因素的复杂性，听者所掌握的语言知识和所具备的技能及我国传统的外语教学模式密切相关。而由调查所知，听者的困难主要体现在跟不上速度；抓不住要点；缺乏连贯的记忆能力；听不进等几方面，因此以此为题加以研究，试图从听力与语音、语法、词汇、背景知识、笔记等几方面探讨，目的是提供一些办法给英语教师和帮助听者提高他们的听力理解能力。关键词: 英语听力; 问题; 对策 IntroductionWith the numerous countries entry into WTO, the future world economy will realize the integration, and this also requests the language integration, namely in the worldwide scale, so an international language is needed, and English is such a kind of language. It is hard to improve ones English listening comprehension, though according to the foreign language study, 45% information is obtained from listening, 30% from speaking, 16% from reading, and 9% from writing. These data show that English listening plays an important role in English learning. Moreover, the author knows from the investigation and study that many people already begin to use modern teaching device such as the broadcast, television, radio, cassette player, VCD, computer and other multimedia tools to train their listening ability. It is difficult to learn English listening for many students. When they begin to listen to English, they will get muddled as soon as they look at the transcription. Therefore, some people feel worried about it, and they do not know how to practice English listening, on the other hand, although some students have already practice it for a long time, their achievement is very little because the teachers have not told them the knack of listening training, which results in students losing confidence in it, and even give up halfway.In the history of listening teaching examination, listening was regarded as a passive skill all the time. Since 1970's, listening was treated as a skill correctly used in the teaching. Therefore it was said that listening teaching was taken for granted after several years experiment and demonstration. It is considered that it is not essential and important link in English teaching until recent year.These experts made plenty of practices and proofs on listening teaching and its function. But with the development of society, listening teaching will be further developed, especially when English and Chinese are not belonging to the identical language system and there are many differences in pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, sentence structure, which will inevitably bring great barriers to Chinese students.The purpose of this paper is to provide some methods of English listening teaching for English teachers and to help the listeners to improve their listening comprehension. The author makes a brief analysis on the listening comprehension process, characteristics of the listening process, the common listening barriers and reasons, and ways of improving student's listening ability in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, background knowledge, note and so on. This article is the authors superficial understanding of the teaching practice and research, so the author attempts to invite experts to give advice on the course. Because the English listening teaching just only starts, there are many insufficiency in teaching, it needs further consummate and enhancement. At the same time, it also sincerely appealed that there are more and better listening materials that suit students and teachers being published.The author often heard these questions involved in the listening teaching process, such as “Why the listening comprehension level is difficult to improve?” “How the students improve the level of listening comprehension?” These questions are not easy to deal with; because listening is a process that complicated perceptual knowledge is needed. Especially as a college student, they must take part in some exams, and the listening is the most important part in these exams. So it is seems that the listening is very important. The listening fostering is one of the basic trainings that contain listening, speaking, and reading, writing and translating. Rivers and Timperley (1978) indicated in A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English: In the peoples mutual communication, listening and understanding what other people said is the most important. A number of people have frequently made the point that of the total time and individual is engage in communication, approximately 9% of which is devoted to writing, 16%to reading, 30%to speaking, and 45%to listening, undoubtedly it is therefore the case that listening should be given more attention in language teaching (Wang Qiang，2000). But in the foreign language learning process, people also feel the difficulty of listening fostering and improvement. The author thinks that these are closely related to the complication of listening itself, the language knowledge and skill of the listeners and Chinese traditional teaching model. I. Listening Comprehension ProcessNoam Chomsky (1960) thinks that people in the entire of using languages experience these processes: recognition analysis by synthesisunderstanding. Likewise, listening is a kind of complicated process that people use language knowledge, common sense, special knowledge and analysis by synthesis ability to receive, analyze, comprehend, summary, choose, remember and other activities by enthusiastic and initiative attitude. To put it briefly, this process can be divided into three periods, namely, the stage of the language receiving; the stage of comprehension; the stage of general cognition.A. The Stage of the Language ReceivingThe stage of the language receiving is the first step of the listening comprehension. In this stage, listeners mainly identify some characters from objective languages pronunciation, syntax and meaning of a word, and then receive as well as analyze this information. For example, English pronunciation contains 49 phone; English words constitute of one or some phone according to regular law. A word that more than two syllables has the voiceless or accent. Constituted by the word, a sentence has continuous and rising/falling tone, but the word stress and the intonation can also express speakers different emotion hue, communication aim and so on. As to syntax, every language often has its own syntax law that is different from other languages. When receiving information, listeners often use these laws (such as words and some restrictions and hypothesizes that different from other languages) to arrange and analyze this information. Moreover, the change of various sorts of style should be paid attention. In China, listening material can be divided into three species: dialogue genre, narrative genre and news body. It can be changed because of the different speaker status, context and theme. These changes make the language its personality. Being familiar with these different language characters will help the listener understand the information.B. The Stage of ComprehensionComprehension is a complicated and multi-gradation process. It is not only a process that distinguishes pronunciation, word and sentence to comprehend the whole article, but also a process requests the coherence in the beginning and the ending, think over and over again, and a deep understand. In this stage, it demands listeners to take part in analyzing, solving, choosing and reconstructing activities about analysis by synthesis. According to contexts relation, listeners seize the key words that transmit message and infer or hypothesis these information heard by using logic and comprehensive analysis way. The listener will make all kinds of prediction, according to the material and languages and contents.C. The Stage of General CognitionThe main task of this stage is to analyze, choose and arrange the information that heard and kept in the short-term memory, and then keep in the long-term memory, for accumulating the knowledge in listening channel. At this time, because the listeners capacity of the short-term memory are limited and easy to be disturbed by other factors, with the aid of some notes the listener then can seize, arrange and remember.Landolfi (1984) thinks that, people can show the step of the listening comprehension process by the graph.verbal, non-verbal inputshort-term memoryselection of the main ideagist corelong-term memoryIn a word, listening is not a simply psychological process that absorbs the sign of sound. But it is quite a complicated and multi-gradation of the psychological process. The listener should not only master the three elements (pronunciation, syntax, vocabulary) of the language, but also need a certain degree of comprehension and general cognitive ability. It needs to be pointed out, the three periods of listening comprehension as a whole, either is indispensable or can be alternated. So it is impossible to make a clear distinction between them, and it is not scientific. The reason why divide them perfectly is for the convenience of analysis and comprehension. .Characteristics of the Listening ProcessFrom the previous section the listeners have seen that there is a great variety of situations where they need to listen to English. It is important to understand the characteristics or processes behind these listening situations so that the teachers can design appropriate activities to students develop effective listening strategies.Generally speaking, listening in real life has the following characteristics (Ur 1996):A. SpontaneityWhile some of the things that the listeners listen to be rehearsed, e.g. radio news, television news and shows, movies, theater, and some formal lectures, most of the time during an average day the listeners listen to people speaking spontaneously and informally without rehearsing what they are going to say ahead of time.B. ContextBoth the listener and the speaker in real life usually know the context of listening. In other words, the listeners know the relationship between the listener and the speaker. Therefore, the situation helps them predict what they are going to hear. C. Visual CluesThe listeners can frequently see the person whom they are listening to. This means the listeners can see their facial expressions, gestures and other body language as well as the surrounding environment, which is relevant when, for example, people point at objects or in certain directions. These visual clues help them understand and predict what they hear. Of course there are situations where the listeners cannot see the speaker, such as when the listeners listen to the radio or use the telephone.D. Listeners ResponseMost of the listening in daily life allows the listener to respond to the speaker, such as in a conversation. This means the listeners can interrupt the speakers and ask for repetition or clarification.E. Speakers AdjustmentIn most cases, the speaker is talking directly to the listener, so he or she can adjust the way of speaking according to the listeners reactions. For example, if the listener indicates that he or she does not understand what is being said, the speaker may rephrase or elaborate. Common Listening BarriersListening as an important comprehensive skill is being paid attention to and grasped by more and more people. Simultaneously people deeply feel the difficulty in grasping this skill. According to investigation and research, the author discovered that the listener's difficulty mainly displayed in the following several aspects:A. Low SpeedThe author frequently hears that listeners complain about the listening speed excessively fast, the information flashed and passed so that the human cannot understand the material. Listeners will be affected when the speed is too fast. So the listeners often have no enough time to arrange and ponder the content that heard. As a matter of fact, the Englishs voiceless and accent is quite prominent in the sentence, every word and sentence all have its accent, the non-stress parts neednt pay more attention to. Moreover, because of the adoption of liaison, assimilation, attenuation and the other pronunciation techniques, it will appear some phenomena that the word pronounces individually and pronunciation changes in the sentence. Interfered by mother language Chinese, the students in the listening process, often likely to translate English into Chinese and then comprehend. So the speed of listening comprehension is influenced.B. Shortage of Imagination and AbilityMajority listeners try their best to understand the whole article word by word, as soon as students meet difficulties in one word, and then they miss the following sentences. So when they listen to this sentence, the following sentence has already passed, so that they have no confidence in listening to the following sentence. While such listeners brains became a piece of blank, so it is impossible for them to quickly react to what they listened.C. Not Seizing the Main PointsAs if some listener understood each sentence, but cannot speak out the real meaning of the whole text, because they are not good at gaining the main points and have no correct memory methods. So what kept in their mind is in a mess.D. Lack of Background InformationWe often discover that when listener hear some familiar materials, it is easy for them to obtain the real meaning, vice versa. Therefore they understood the literal meaning but the deep meaning. This mainly attribute to listeners lack of the essential background knowledge (including specialized kn