The Training Skills in Listening Comprehension1.doc

英语听力训练技巧The Training Skills in Listening ComprehensionContentsAbstract.1Introduction.2I. Background Study. 3II. The Natures of Listening.5III How to Improve StudentsListening Abilities.8IV: Testing Listening.13V Conclusion.16Reference.17The Training Skills in Listening Comprehension摘 要：本文的目的在于，通过对中国英语学习现状的分析及一些英语学习者的语言学习技巧的介绍，一方面能够引起英语学习者和教学者对听力的重视，另一方面可以帮助学生解决他们在听力理解中遇到的困难。文章开头，在简单的介绍了听力理解的发展、现状后介绍了一种虽然普通但比较有效的听力训练方法及一些相关的技巧即三步训练法。该方法共有三个阶段即：听前、听中和听后。其中每个阶段都有其训练的侧重点及技巧。听前，主要为听力做准备工作；听中，要将注意力集中在课文中并加强对文章的理解；听后主要是让自己从文中所学的知识融入自己的知识体系中。此外，老师也可以通过鼓励学生在练习听力时使用一些听力训练技巧，以及做一些听力测试，帮助学生更有效的练习听力。关键词：听力理解、听前、听中、听后。Abstract：This paper aims at arousing the attention of the English learner and teacher toward listening comprehension and helping students figure out their difficulty in listening comprehension by some information on language learning skills of English learners in China.At the beginning of this article, it gives a brief introduction of the development，current situation of listening comprehension. it is found that they are simple but effective：pre listening, which help the students prepare to listen; While listening, which help to focus the students' attention on the listening text and guide the development of their understanding of it; post listening, which help the students integrate what they have learnt from the text into their existing knowledge.The implication of the study is that teachers can help their students become more effective listeners by encouraging them to apply a variety of learning skills to listening tasks and doing appropriate listening test.Key words: listening comprehension, pre-listening, while listening, post listening.IntroductionIn this essay, I've chosen the topic of "listening”, and I know you may have heard a great deal about listening already. Being a great listener can win you friends, improve your marriage, boost your business profits or advance your career. It can make people feel so good about being with you that they'll literally follow you anywhere.Listening is a kind of skill in second language learning. All too often, it has been overlooked by its elder sister: speaking. For most people, being able to claim knowledge of a second language means being able to speak and write in that language. Listening and reading are therefore secondary skills - means to other ends, rather than ends in themselves. Every so often, however, listening comes into fashion. In the 1960s, the emphasis on oral language skills gave it a boost. It became fashionable again in the 1980s, when Krashen's (1982) ideas about comprehensible input gained prominence. A short time later, it was reinforced by James Asher's (1988) Total Physical Response, a methodology drawing sustenance from Krashen's work, and based on the belief that a second language is learned most effectively in the early stages if the pressure for production is taken off the learners. During the 1980s, proponents of listening in a second language were also encouraged by work in the first language field. Here, people such as Gillian Brown (see, for example, Brown, 1984; Brown, 1990) were able to demonstrate the importance of developing roach (the ability to listen and speak) as well as literacy, in school. Prior to this, it was taken for granted that first language speakers needed instruction in how to read and write, but not how to listen and speak because these skills were automatically bequeathed to them as native speakers. To be frank, as a student I've got to listen to people every day. If I don't do this well, I might fail my examination and miss some important fact, or make people feel that I'm not friendly with them. And when I get home, I've got to listen even more. I've got to listen to my parents, which I must admit I don't always do expertly. I've got to listen to my brother and to anyone else who might call or drop by. Whew! That's a lot of listening. You'd think that with all the practice we get, and with all the attention this skill has received, we'd all be pretty good at it. But you know what? Most of us aren't. We're not very good listeners much of the time. It's not because we're lazy, or stupid, or uncommitted, or anything like that. It's just that we all have trouble with listening because listening is not a simple skill! Contrary to what you may have been lead to believe, listening is an incredibly complex skill to master. There's so much going on that doesn't meet the eye, that it's silly to even try to cover the subject in just a few short pages.So even though our life and friendships depend very heavily upon good listening skills, and even though our customers, clients, and co-workers demand this from us constantly, most advice we receive about improving our listening isn't all that helpful. That's because most advice focuses on technical aspects of listening, such as giving feedback, making eye contact, asking open-ended questions, and not interrupting others while others are speaking.On the other hand, the purpose of middle school English teaching is to improve the students' four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, with the base of necessary phonetics, large vocabulary and good grammar. But this is not the final purpose, the final purpose is to lot let students be able to use the language.Now most of the students do better in reading and writing English than in listening and speaking. They can read and write, but they can hardly communicate. They can hardly express themselves with their own words. This is partially because of our examination system, and partially of the teaching method. We are not able to change the examination system, but we can improve our teaching method. Most of all the teachers like to provide the students with a lot of knowledge-words, phrases, grammar, usages and so on. They are focusing these things, especially on the grammar. But nowadays, with the reforms and development in all walks of life and the carrying out of the opening policies to the outside world in China in recent years, the traditional grammar-translation method of the foreign language teaching has been found unable to keep pace with the times. This has given rise to many new thoughts and concepts of it. As a result, the communicative approach is getting more and more widely used in Chinese middle school English classrooms. The application of it is based on the view that English should be taught as a communicative tool , not merely a kind of the knowledge of language. In this case, the students listening ability must be the most important thing for teachers to improve. However, it is a very difficult job. How can we manage it? This is the very subject I am to deal with. Here in my thesis, some issues related to improving senior students listening ability in Chinese middle school classrooms are to be discussed in the following five parts.I. Background Study1.the current situation about listening teaching:Most of all the teachers like to provide the students with a lot of knowledge-words, phrases, grammar, usages and so on. They are focusing these things, especially on the grammar. And for too long listening has been relegated to a secondary position in the English language teaching classroom. This stems, in part, from the fact that whereas a considerable amount of research has been conducted into reading, writing and speaking-research which has influenced our approaches to teaching language and has also influenced how textbooks have been written (see sidebar)-there has been a lack of research interest into listening. Some of the reasons for this lack of research interest come from the fact that speaking was always considered a more "valuable" skill to focus on in the classroom; that researchers and teachers have often considered that listening was something which could just be "picked up" and as researchers and teachers had not been taught listening themselves, they saw little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teaching listening. It is indeed interesting that listening has not received wider attention in the past given that it is the language skill most often used in everyday life. More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burly-Allen 1995). Although listening has been a relatively neglected skill in terms of research and how it is introduced to language learners, it is now beginning to receive more attention. In the past few years we have seen the publication of several major texts, both practical and theoretical, specifically dealing with listening skills: Mendelson and Rubin 1995; Nunan and Miller 1995; Buck 2000; Rost 2002; Flowerdew and Miller, in press. In conjunction with these books, there is now a greater awareness among teachers that we have to help learners develop their listening skills, rather than rely on the skill developing itself. The question of how to help learners develop effective listening skills brings attention to the methods we use and the type of materials we introduce our learners to. The aim of all listening lessons should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context, and that means using authentic texts. Authentic texts are any spoken texts that have not been specially prepared for language learners, and they are often delivered via technologies like radio, television/video, and the Internet .2.the analysis of the reasons for students poor listening ability(1) About the teaching aspect:a. Without listening test: listening text can enforce students study listening.b. The textbook limit: most of the listening text are alike which let the students feel boring.c. The teachers limited knowledge of English teaching methodology. (2) About the learning aspect: A lot of students have their own listening habits. Some students often tries to understand each word or each sentence. They will think hard when they meet some difficult words or sentences, and a great many students could understand the material directly, They often translate the English into Chinese in their heart, thinking that only in this way can the sentence be understood. This is also a reason, trying to understand each word is difficult, and it is not necessary at all. You should catch the most important points.II. The Natures of Listening1. Listening is not a passive activity.Listening is anything but a passive, neutral activity. While it may appear that this is all that's going on, many active processes are taking place within the listener-if they're listening well, that is. You see, listening is not just hearing the words people utter. If that's all there was to it, we could train computers to do the job.But listening to human beings involves much, much more (which computers will never do). It involves not just accurately hearing what people say, but getting a sense of who they are, how they view life, what they want to accomplish, what concerns they have, what they're afraid of, how they're feeling, what they want from you, and more. It even involves "listening" to what people aren't directly saying, or what they might be too reluctant to say, or what they definitely don't want you to do in response to their communications. Show me a computer that can do all that! Thus, in order to become a very good listener, we can't just stop with hearing the words people say. We've got to attend to many other details and many other dimensions that don't meet the eye, but that are crucial nonetheless. (This is why it's so difficult to recognize what good listeners do that makes them successful-it's all going on invisibly inside their heads and the rest of their body.)2. Listen with wisdomWhen people speak, they always reveal their deepest thoughts, ambitions, and concerns. Most of the time, neither the speaker, nor the listener, pick up on these subtle, underlying issues, but they are always there.Good listeners, on the other hand, frequently attend to these background, unspoken emotions and concerns. And when they "hear" them and empathize with them (either verbally or nonverbally) the speaker often remarks, "Boy, you really know how I feel" or "Gee, you really understand exactly what's going on with me.” Here are a few examples to illustrate this important point:EXAMPLE 1: A young father with a new son makes an appointment to see me (as a doctor) and asks me to refer him to a support group. He wants to resolve some lingering personal issues relating to abuse that he experienced through much of his childhood.As I listen to his request, which on the surface seems straight forward, I also "hear" other things in the background. In addition to his words, I "hear" unspoken concerns."Am I going to do the same to my child?"."What can I do to keep from damaging him?"Did I listen correctly? In this case I did. Once I gently put words to his deepest fears and concerns, his body relaxed and he acknowledged that he was secretly harboring these thoughts. EXAMPLE 2: Another person comes in to see me (as a stress counselor) because she's feeling increasingly tense, irritable, and anxious on her job. She clearly relates to me numerous problems with her job. But as I listen to her carefully, I also "hear" the following unspoken concerns."Am I going to lose control and embarrass myself in front of my co-workers?"."Am I going to look incompetent or not as strong as my male counterparts?". "Am I going to go home and start taking out my frustrations on my kids and my husband?"And the amazing thing about human communication is that she never said any of these things! But a good listener can pick up on them, and most of the time they'll be interpreted correctly. How do you know when you're right about such hunches? Sometimes you just know intuitively. Sometimes, you can tactfully check out your assumptions by probing with a compassionate question or two, or by restating your hunch for the speaker to confirm. Most of the time, however, your intuition will be right on. Which brings me to the next important key to good listening.3. Listen without thinking about how you're going to respondIt's very hard to be a good listener-at any level-if you're not fully attending to what others are saying and feeling. Much of the time when people are speaking to us, our heads become filled with our own personal thoughts and agendas.thinking how we're going to respond.thinking negative thoughts about the other person.thinking how we would think