The Reasons and the Strategies for Junior Middle School Students’ Poor Listening Ability英语专业本科毕业论文.doc

The Reasons and the Strategies for Junior Middle School Students Poor Listening Ability 初中生英语听力薄弱的原因及对策Outline:Introduction1. The reasons for students poor listening ability 1.1 Inadequate English learning environment 1.2 Old teaching beliefs and methods 1.3 Barriers of listening comprehension 1.3.1 Barriers of phonetics and phonology 1.3.2 Barriers of tempo 1.3.3 Barriers of lexicology and grammar 1.3.4 Barriers of listening habits 1.3.5 Barriers of cultural background 1.3.6 Barriers of psychological factors2. The strategies for improving students listening ability 2.1 Pre-listening activities 2.2 While-listening activities 2.3 Post-listening activities Conclusion： 摘要：现代语言教育理论高度重视“听”在语言学习和语言使用中的作用。听力教学既是一种语言教学，也是一种能力的培养。在听、说、读、写四个技能中，听是最基础的，也是初中英语教学的一个重要组成部分。它不仅是获取语言信息的主要途径，还是提高其他技能的基础。因此，许多初中生认为听力能力的测试是所有测试中最难的部分。本篇论文介绍了现在初中英语听力教学的情况，并分析了初中生英语听力薄弱的原因，同时作者对如何提高初中生英语听力能力提出了自己的见解。 关键词：初中生 听力 原因 策略 Abstract：In modern world, language teaching theories highly emphasize the effect of “listening” on the learning and the use of language. The teaching of English listening is a teaching of language, as well as a training of ability. Of the four skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is the basic, and a most important part of English teaching in junior middle schools. It is not only the main way of acquiring language information, but the basis of improving other four skills. Therefore, junior middle school students regard the listening test as the most difficult part of a whole test. In this paper, the author starts with the conditions of junior middle schools listening teaching, analyzes the reasons for junior middle school students poor listening ability and tries to suggest the effective ways of improving their listening ability.Abstract： junior middle school students listening ability reasons strategiesThe Reasons and the Strategies for Junior Middle School Students Poor Listening Ability IntroductionListening is essential for developing other skills and provides a basis for language learning. It is also the most difficult of all the learning skills for learners to master. When listening, listeners follow the speaker, thinking about what the speaker is saying and what is going on in the mind of the speaker, guessing the speakers opinions and attitudes and catching the true meaning of the speakers words. Listening itself accounts for almost half of the commutative activities in ones daily life. In addition, learners should have the knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. So many learners are afraid of listening, looking on it as more difficult than any other skills. Instead, they pay more attention to training their abilities to speak, read and write. Therefore, in this paper, the author aims to analyze the reasons for junior middle school students poor listening ability and tries to suggest some effective solutions with the hope of improving their listening ability in future English teaching.1 The reasons for students poor listening ability As one of the most significant ways in English language communication, listening is very important for language study. But a lot of students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examinations due to the following reasons.1.1 Inadequate English learning environmentEnglish teaching and learning ask for quite some challenges. The challenges are the short of adequate linguistic environment, the strong interference from their mother tongue, the overcrowded classrooms and the lack of sufficient time for English study on the students side. In junior middle schools, it is true that Chinese students are not so influenced as those in Western countries mainly because they are lack of self-confidence and they are afraid of making mistakes. In China, English is a foreign language (EFL), not a second language (ESL). Both students and teachers are doing their jobs under this condition which is quite different from that English speaking countries. For example, Chinese immigrant students in Canada can learn English more quickly than those in China. Why? Because English in Canada is regarded as its second language. They have a much better English environment and higher motivations. A better English learning environment is also needed in China. What students in China need is just an authentic language learning environment.1.2 Old teaching beliefs and methodsWhat most teachers do in class is merely to play the recorder and check answers to listening exercises. As a result, most students can hardly learn anything in class, and listening comprehension gives much headache. Whats more, teachers of English in China are placed under a serious disadvantage. It is usually difficult for to go to study or work in the countries where English is spoken them. Even worse most of them have no opportunities to go abroad to make further English study. They have learned English only in China. So, we can say that their English teaching must be influenced by their mother tongue. In addition, they are accustomed to using the old teaching method, which lays more emphasis on grammar. In order to make themselves understood by all the students, some teachers would explain the grammar rulers or even the texts in Chinese rather than in English in class. Therefore, students have fewer opportunities to be exposed to English listening, let alone improve their listening skills.1.3 Barriers of listening comprehensionListening comprehension is the integration of two aspects-hearing and understanding. If you have a better level about English knowledge, you may be capable of understanding very well in listening to the materials, and may have a perfect response to any question asked by the speakers on the tapes.1.3.1 Barriers of phonetics and phonologyAccording to Dai (2002), “phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of language, and phonology studies how speech sounds system in a language form pattern 1”. English, as a new language for Chinese students, usually appears some problems exactly on phonetics and phonology, such as the mistakes on pronunciation, intonation, and all kinds of skills like assimilation word stress, sentence stress, motion of sound, sound-linking and incomplete explosion, etc. Therefore some basic knowledge about English phonetics and phonology will directly influence students listening comprehension. So designing some interesting games is to let students discriminate the different pronunciation. The key point is guiding students to find the difference themselves. For example, most Chinese students find the discrimination of some sound is a problem in listening comprehension, especially, some vowels. e.g., they can hardly distinguish the words like “meet-meat” and “bag-beg”. In a sentence like “He seats himself behind the desk.” seat /si:t/ is very important in understanding the sentence, but some students just recognize it as sit /sit/.1.3.2 Barriers of tempoFor the tempo, it means the speed of speaking. An actor who is good at tongue twisters can control it very well. Some people enjoy more variation in tempo than others, but everyone has a norm which in characteristic of his usual conversational style. One tends to use a rapid tempo in everyday speech in English, but Chinese students usually dont have such a tempo in listening. Although sometimes they can speak very fast, they may not catch up with the materials on normal tempo while theyre listening to a tape, especially to a longer conversation or a passage, thats their problems. Because they only used to listen to teachers who always read under the average speed in daily life, or used to slow conversations with their partners while practicing oral English, thats why Chinese students can not suit the need of normal speed listening materials or native speakers. Teachers can help students to form a good sensation. Students can train the tempo through reading, because there are many skills on it. English teachers should take efforts to teach students how to learn some knowledge about sentence stress, rhythm, sound and intonation, etc. So, during in the class, or at the beginning of the class, teacher can design a game or completion about reading. The student who is the winner can give him/her a present. If doing so all the time, students sensation can be improved.1.3.3 Barriers of lexicology and grammarOn the process of listening comprehension, listeners should not only do the exercises of sound recognition, but also learn more vocabulary. If a new word appeared while theyre listening, theyll find it difficult for them to understand the whole meaning, even some students stop to listen and think about over and over the new word they met before while the material are going on. So does the grammar. Grammar can help us to catch the implication of the vocal sounds, and understand them well, and it is also the essential condition of a whole passage comprehension. It gives us a basis for judging when the action happens, who is the operator or supporter? What is the factual evidence? Whether it is the subjunctive mood? etc. Only do students have a solid foundation on grammar, they may have a probability to achieve good results while you are listening.1.3.4 Barriers of listening habitsFor the listening, the main purpose is to understand the general idea of the materials. During the process of the listening, they should try to catch the major content, whichs the key point. But many Chinese students have some bad habits while listening. For example, they always try their best to get the meaning of each words, each sentences. Once they meet a new word or a difficulty sentence, they will stop to think. It is doubtless they cant catch up with the speed any more. Still some students cant directly understand materials in English, but with the help of Chinese, they experienced the process of a heart translation. These bad habits are the main factors influencing their listening comprehension. In fact, it is unnecessary to know every word, every sentence. They only need to catch the main idea and grasp the major point, thats enough. If they just give all their attention to think, they cant catch up with the materials, and also thats the reason why they dont have adequate time to attend to the main content, even comprehend the meanings of it.Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to point out the bad habits of the students and then help the students form good habits. Here are some bad listening habits on listening, which are paraphrased below. According to Liu (1996), a poor listener has the following characteristics: he/she will/ turn off his or her ears as soon as he or she decides a listening task is going to be dull; he/she listens to only facts and ignores the ideas; he/she will fix his or her eyes on the teacher or the blackboard, then relax, or do something else, expecting to get the information out of the tape scripts later; he/she will use very little distraction -footsteps, a door opening or closing, a cough, a dropped bookas an  excuse to stop listening to the recording or the teacher. 2  1.3.5 Barriers of cultural background Language is a kind of cultural expression. It is necessary for students to know some background about the English-speaking countries, such as the history, culture, customs and habits, even life styles. Many students lack of these kinds of knowledge, no wonder they are always making mistakes about them. For example, if teachers give two pieces of passage for them to understand the former, because Spring Festival is the traditional festival in China, everybody knows it very well, thats helpful for their understanding; however the latter about the Thanksgiving day, students know little about it. It is not easy for them to understand, even very difficult for them to answer some questions about it. Listeners should base on their background knowledge about the topic and their experience of how talks on such themes are structured (as in the case of listening to news or weather reports) besides their understanding of language forms related to the subject area. 1.3.6 Barriers of psychological factorsIt is very important that students should have a good state while listening. Students should know clearly that listening is the first step of any language learning, they should pay more attention to learning it well at the beginning.The process of listening comprehension is a very complicated psychological one. Linguists tell us that it is easy for one to produce fears when he is at his nervousness. If students meet some words or sentences they dont understand by chance, theyll have the fidgets, even some students are afraid of listening at the very beginning. They have placed all sorts of obstacles on the important information invisibly and make them less effective, those lowered the degrees of listening comprehension. On the other hand, eternal links, such as the noise made by inside or outside factors, 待添加的隐藏文字内容2the quality of the recorders, the loudness and the articulation of the sounds, etc, may all become obstacles influencing the students listening well. Zhang (1996) claimed, psychological linguistics regards listening is involved with the perception of a language: Perception is to turn the voice into meanings，and it is an analysis of the language signal perception. The process of the language perception is an activity of the short-time memorization. 32. The strategies for improving students listening abilityIf teachers want to train and improve students ability in listening comprehension, they should combine daily teaching with following points. First of all, in English class, teachers should try to organize their classes in English, whichs the most effective way, students can concentrate their attention while listening to English. Teachers can also know from the expressions in students eyes if they understand. Second, using the first five minutes efficiently before the class, or the revision time, ask students to listen to the radios, television programmers in English. Never be afraid of it. Psychological quality is quite important for doing anything, so does listening comprehension.Foreign language learners always complain that listening is the most difficult one to acquire among the four skills-listening, speaking, reading, writing. To teach listening better should focus on process.It have three stages in listening activities for language learners: pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening, which will discuss in detail as follow .2.1 Pre-listening activitiesAccording to Zhao (19