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On the Development of Listening Skills in College English

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题目：On the Development of Listening Skills in College English

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英语

2010年 4月 15 日

西京学院学士学位论文 Abstract On the Development of Listening Skills in College English

On the Development of Listening Skills in College English

Abstract

This paper gives detailed analysis of the nature and process of listening comprehension and the factors that affect it. On the basis of the analysis, the paper makes some suggestions on how to improve the teaching and learning of listening comprehension. Listening ability is an indispensable part in language acquisition, it is not only the foundation of the ability of speaking, reading and writing, but also has become an effective means of language acquisition. In particular, it is frequently used in international communication. With the fast development of modern science and technology, developing language skills is much more urgent than we think. The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to cultivate students’ communicative competence in which listening skills play a key role. Several suggestions to improving teaching must be listed: Pay attention to the stages of listening teaching. Give emphasis on developing micro-skills of listening. Attach importance to developing students’ listening strategies. Teach listening with other language skills. Make good use of modern audio-visual media and other learning facilities.

Key words: listening comprehension, ability, language skills, teaching

西京学院学士学位论文中文摘要提高大学生英语听力提高大学生英语听力

摘要

论文详细分析了听力理解的性质、过程以及影响听力理解的因素，在分析的基础上提出了如何提高听力理解教学的建议。语言学习离不开听力，它不仅是说、读、写等能力发展的基础，而且是一种有效的语言学习方法，尤其是在国际交往日趋密切，科学技术突飞猛进的今天，发展语言能力已变得比我们想象中还要更加迫切。外语教学的最终目的是培养学生的交际的能力，其中听力起到至关重要的作用。因此，提高英语听力的几条建议是必备的：专心于听力教学阶段，注重细微的听力技巧发展，注重发展学生的听力策略，用其他语言技巧来教听力，充分利用多媒体和其他设施。

关键词：听力理解，能力，语言技能，教学

西京学院学士学位论文目录

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................................................ I 摘要 ............................................................................................................................................................................................. I Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 1

1.1 The Study on English Listening Teaching ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Purpose of Paper ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 The Study Methods of This Paper .................................................................................................................................. 2 Chapter 2 Literature Review ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

2.1 Overseas Review ............................................................................................................................................................ 4 2.2 Domestic Review ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 3 The Nature and The Process of Listening Comprehension ......................................................................................... 8 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension .......................................................................................................... 10

4.1 The Limitation of Vocabulary ...................................................................................................................................... 10 4.2 The Speed of Reaction ................................................................................................................................................. 10 4.3 The Pronunciation of College Students ........................................................................................................................ 10 4.4 Listener’s Interest ......................................................................................................................................................... 11 4.5 The Speaker .................................................................................................................................................................. 11 4.6 The Knowledge of Cultural Background ..................................................................................................................... 12 4.7 Psychological Factor of College Students .................................................................................................................... 12 4.8 Other Obstacles ............................................................................................................................................................ 12 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching .............................................................................................................................. 15

5.1 Pay Attention to the Stages of Listening Teaching ....................................................................................................... 16

5.1.1 Engage the Learners in a Pre-listening Activity ................................................................................................ 18 5.1.2 During the Listening Activities ......................................................................................................................... 18 5.1.3 Engage in a Post-listening Activity. .................................................................................................................. 19 5.2 Give Emphasis to Develop Micro-skills of Listening .................................................................................................. 19 5.3 Attach Importance to Developing Students’ Listening Strategies ................................................................................ 21

5.3.1 Intrigue the Students’ Interesting ...................................................................................................................... 21 5.3.2 Pay Attention to the Social Cultural Knowledge ............................................................................................... 21 5.3.3 Improve the Vocabulary and Pronounce Correctly............................................................................................ 22 5.3.4 Build Confidence When Listening English ....................................................................................................... 22 5.3.5 Train the Students’ Listening Skill .................................................................................................................... 23 5.4 Teach Listening with Other Language Skills. .............................................................................................................. 24

5.4.1 Remove the Effect of Voice to Listening........................................................................................................... 24 5.4.2 Remove the Effect of Grammar to Listening .................................................................................................... 25 5.5 Make Good use of Modern Multi-media and Other Learning Facilities. ..................................................................... 25

5.5.1 Use Multi-media Technology to Simulate of Real Listening Environment ...................................................... 26 5.5.2 Use Multi-media to Stimulate Students' Interest, Reduce Students Anxiety ..................................................... 26 5.5.3 Use Multi-media to Promote the Interaction in Listening Class ....................................................................... 26

Chapter 6 The Prospects of English Listening Study ................................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................. 28 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................................................... 29 References .................................................................................................................................................................................. 30

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 The Study on English Listening Teaching

Listening involves hearing the speaker’s words, understanding the message and its importance to the speaker, and communicating that understanding to the speaker. The apparent problem is, of all the communication skills, listening is the earliest learned and the most frequently used, yet it seems to be the least mastered.

The status of listening teaching: traditional listening teaching in English is that teachers firstly make students listen to the listening materials and then students will take exercise. McDonough once pointed that this method is a way of testing, not the teaching method. Through this education form, students would always be passive in action; the limited listening level would still be the biggest obstacle in their process of communication. With the further development and reform of English education in college, listening teaching is becoming increasingly important and popular. During 1980s, some experts began to study listening strategies. During 1990s researchers made adjustment to the connection between listening strategies and listening level and finally made a conclusion that listening strategy is of great effectiveness. During 21st century listening strategy has entered a new age; many researchers have put this strategy into practice. In the end, it is proved to be necessary for students. Moreover, students at different listening levels should learn to grasp listening strategies that can appropriately meet their needs and cultivate their autonomous learning, which emphasizes students’

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 1 Introduction

activeness and individual traits.

Since it is different from traditional teaching method, it is not smooth in implementing the detailed procedures and the results are not promising. At the same time, during 1980s modern audio-visual media began to spring up, which facilitates listening teaching to some degree. While there also exist are some problems, stubborn teachers find it hard to accept this equipment, because it hinders the direct emotional communication between teachers and students. On the other hand, if schools lavish much more reliance on multimedia and even abuse this equipment, they won’t use it properly and it will be hard to realize “students-centered class” teaching doctrine. So experts suggest that schools should combine the multimedia teaching and traditional teaching together.

1.2 The Purpose of Paper

Listening is not only the basic of speaking, reading and writing, but also is a very effective studying tools and a means of acquiring knowledge. Especially in today, the communication is more frequent and the development of science is rapid, the development of listening skills is more need than ever before. In this paper, I intend to explore the factors which affect the college students’ listening, remove these obstacles which hinder the college students’ listening, in the end, I want to explore how to improve the college students’ English listening

1.3 The Study Methods of This Paper

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 1 Introduction

In this paper, I choose these following ways to study on how to improve college students’ listening. The first way is investigation. During the process of investigation, I get some experience from the college English teachers and college students. The second way is reading articles written by scholars. Through which, I learn some knowledge about how to improve college students’ English listening.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 2 Literature Review

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Overseas Review

Fischer and Farris (The instructional basis of Libra, 1995) regard listening comprehension as a process by which students actively form a mental representation of an aural text according to prior knowledge of the topic and information.

Coakley & Wolvin(Listening Instruction, 1979)suggest that listening comprehension in a L2 (second language) is the process of receiving, focusing attention on, and assigning meaning to aural stimuli. It includes a listener, who brings prior knowledge of the topic, linguistic knowledge and cognitive processes to the listening task, the aural text, and the interaction between the two.

Douglas Brown (1994, Teaching by Principles) defines listening

comprehension as not only the process of sending and receiving sounds, but also as the interactive and conscious process to send and transmit the message to the brain which will influence in the process of communication.

According to Anderson and Lynch, there are two influential views: traditional view and alternative view. Traditional view regarded the listener as a tape-recorder and the listener took in and stored aural messages in much the same way as a tape-recorder. Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as inappropriate and inadequate. This notion is not a tenable one. Alternative view considered the

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 2 Literature Review

listener as an active model builder. This kind of listener could combine the new information with his previous knowledge and experience to reach full comprehension of what had been heard. Anderson and Lynch agreed with this view. It emphasized the active interpretation and integration of incoming information with prior knowledge and experience. Many scholars supported this view. O’Malley and Chamot(19,420, Learning strategies in second language acquisition) made a conclusion by doing a research on LC in 19: “Listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement”.

2.2 Domestic Review

The satus of listening teaching: traditional listening teaching in English is that teachers firstly make students listen to the listening materials and then students will take exercise. McDonough once pointed that this method is a way of testing, not the teaching method. Through this education form, students would always be passive in action, the limited listening level would still be the biggest obstacle in their process of communication. With the further development and reform of English education in college, listening teaching is becoming increasingly important and popular. During 1980s, some experts began to study listening strategies. During 1990s researchers made adjustment to the connection between listening strategies and listening level and finally made a conclusion that listening strategy is of great effectiveness. During 21st century listening strategy has entered a new age, many researchers have put this strategy into practice. In the end, it is

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 2 Literature Review

proved to be necessary for students. Moreover, students at different listening levels should learn to grasp listening strategies that can appropriately meet their needs and cultivate their autonomous learning, which emphasizes students’ activeness and individual traits.

Since it is different from traditional teaching method, it is not smooth in implementing the detailed proceedures and the results are not promising. At the same time, during 1980s modern audio-visual media began to spring up, which facilitates listening teaching to some degree. While there also exist some problems, stubborn teachers find it hard to accept this equipment, because it hinders the direct emotional communication between teachers and students. On the other hand, if schools lavish much more reliance on multimedia and even abuse this equipment, they won’t use it properly and it will be hard to realize“students-centered class” teaching doctrine. So experts suggest that schools should combine the multimedia teaching and traditional teaching together.

Xu fang(1970, Listening Comprehension in EFL Teaching) thought that the nature of LC (listening comprehension) means that the learner should be encouraged to concentrate on an active process of listening for meanings, using not only the linguistic clues but his nonlinguistic knowledge as well. He should also know that not every clue is equally important to the message. Therefore, even when he misses a piece of language, he need not worry: there is a good chance that other clues will make him understand the message, or at least, enough of the message for his own aim. Of course, it may be that the missed item is one which

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 2 Literature Review

completely changes the whole message. This doesn’t concern the general point being made here; since the learner has more hope of realizing his own misunderstanding if he concentrates on the communication rather than being distracted by a sense of failure.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 3 The Nature and The Process of Listening Comprehension

Chapter 3 The Nature and The Process of Listening Comprehension

Courses in listening comprehension have a prominent place in language programs around the world today. Ever-growing needs for fluency in English around the world because of the role of English as the world’s international language have given priority to find more effective ways to teach English. It is therefore timely to review what our current assumptions and practices are concerning the teaching of these crucial language skills. Our understanding of the nature of listening and speaking has undergone considerable changes in recent years, and in this paper I want to explore some of those changes and their implications for classroom teaching and materials design.

Listening has often been called a passive skill, though most teachers of the ability do not agree with this assertion. Listening is neither passive, nor receptive. On the contrary it’s quite an active process because it demands a great deal of active involvement from the hearer. We also consider listening as a creative skill. In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker intends, the hearer must actively contribute to the process with linguistic and nonlinguistic sources. To comprehend the sounds he hears, the listener takes the material and from that material he creates a significance (what the hearer understands from the text) which depends on a number of factors such as: The linguistic information the listener grasps from what was emitted by the speaker. In order to avoid misunderstanding or lack of motivation, the social-cultural information the situational context of the utterance and the intention of the speaker that surrounds the text which the listener must have some ideas of.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 3 The Nature and The Process of Listening Comprehension

Douglas Brown (1994, Teaching by Principles) defines listening

I believe that using some of these listening techniques or activities makes the process of listening comprehension easier for students and allows them to gain independence, to overcome their fears and to combine what they learn from a listening text to other activities in the language oral or written. The experience from Douglas Brown and other scholars with such activities has proved to be quite effective and our results have increased a lot.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

According to my learning experiences, factors that affect listening comprehension can be clarified as the following points:

4.1 The Limitation of Vocabulary

The lack of vocabulary is not the obstacle of reading comprehension, but also is the obstacle of listening comprehension. Students who possess large vocabulary will easily grasp the meaning of sentences or the whole passage, while students who are poor in accumulating vocabulary and useful expression probably can’t understand the authentic materials even some simple catchy phrases. During the listening process, if you meet the unknown words, it would affect your comprehension to some sentence or even the whole passage.

4.2 The Speed of Reaction

Many students are slow in reaction when they think about things, answer questions，listen to authentic materials and so on. Because of the time limit in the exam, students who have slow reaction won’t get the general meaning of listening materials including teachers’ spoken language and authentic materials. So this shortcoming will hinder their progress in listening.

4.3 The Pronunciation of College Students

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

The correct pronunciation is the basic of language communication. Many college students can’t pronounce correctly due to they are not aware of practice of pronunciation and have heavy dialect. When they meet some words pronounced correctly, they will not know the words the speaker speak whether it right or wrong, so it leaves difficulties to understand the listening materials. As the result, the pronunciation can influence college students’ listening results.

4.4 Listener’s Interest

Interest in a topic increases the listener's comprehension; the listener may tune out topics that are not of interest. A listener who is an active participant in a conversation generally has more background knowledge to facilitate understanding of the topic than a listener who is, in effect, eavesdropping on a conversation between two people whose communication has been recorded on an audiotape. Further, the ability to use negotiation skills, such as asking for clarification, repetition, or definition of points not understood can enable a listener to make sense of the incoming information.

4.5 The Speaker

Colloquial language and reduced forms make comprehension more difficult. The extent to which the speaker uses these language forms impacts comprehension. The more exposure the listener has to them, the greater the ability to comprehend. A speaker's rate of delivery may be too fast, too slow, or have too many hesitations for a listener to follow. Awareness of a speaker's corrections and

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

use of rephrasing (\"err. . . I mean . . . That is . . .\") can assist the listener. Learners need practice in recognizing these speech habits as clues to deciphering meaning.

4.6 The Knowledge of Cultural Background

On the account of difference between Chinese culture and European culture, the social custom are also different which hinder the college students to comprehend the authentic listening material. When they meet an article involves a lot of cultural knowledge, if they aren’t familiar with the cultural background, they would not know some words’ relevant meaning and the ways of using, they will have no idea of what the have listened. It obvious that the knowledge of cultural background is directly affects the quality of listening.

4.7 Psychological Factor of College Students

All the factors as I state will affect the listening quality, sequentially, will give the students a lot of psychological pressure. They will be immersed in nervous condition, the logic will be lagging, the attention can not focus, which will make students produce the sense of tiredness and lose the interest to continue to listen. This is why students are tired of listening English.

4.8 Other Obstacles

Birne classifies listening as one of the fundamental abilities of the language that allows all users of the language to get not only information, but also

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

instruction and comprehension in general.

Departing from students´ difficulties teachers should judge their level, they should figure out when, and how to include certain texts with a high degree of difficulty, with variation of accents, etc and the kind of exercises for each occasion. Listening comprehension enables the students to acquire language subconsciously, even if teachers do not draw any attention to its special features. Trying to accomplish such aims prove usually troublesome to teachers because of the number of obstacles to be surpassed such as:

1) Catching the actual sounds of the foreign language;

2) Poor attention span and poor listening habits;

3) Not understanding every word that is said and trying to (Though they are told to disregard unimportant elements to comprehension);

4) Demanding repetition more than once for understanding;

5) Failure to recognize the signals useful for understanding;

6) Inability to concentrate or focus on the text;

7) Problems of interpretation due to limited vocabulary and cultural barriers;

8) Noise;

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 4 Factors That Affect Listening Comprehension

9) Darkening of vowels, etc.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

Listening is the basis of true communication—listening to oneself to hear the truth of one’s heart, and listening to the other, to hear clearly what they are saying. Listening is a skill that we are never finished learning. It is one of the basic skills of body-mind-spirit workshops, where part of the process involves listening to the wisdom of the body. Actually listening is an active attentive presence to oneself and to the other person. The purpose of active listening is to provide a safe and caring space for a person to speak and share whatever is going on within them, knowing that they are accepted and understood by the listener. When a person is listened to, they are often empowered to free themselves of feelings, memories, emotions, thoughts, concerns, problems, and wounds of the past. For person suffering traumatic stress, listening brings much comfort and provides the atmosphere for healing. When a person is listened to with care and respect, they are able to discharge many memories and wounds of the past that are affecting their lives in the present. And from the security and wisdom of the present moment, they can let go of the wounds of the past.

Active listening involves one person who takes the role of the speaker, and the other person who is the listener. While the speaker shares, the listener gives their total attention, and from time to time asks a question or mirrors back what the speaker has shared. After one person has shared for a while and feels finished, the two exchange roles and the listener becomes the speaker. This kind of listening is very useful in many situations and is excellent at times of conflict. Many times problems can’t be easily resolved. Putting aside your feelings and opinions to

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

truly listen to the other person can help you to deeply understand the other and their point of view. Listening presence is a variation in which two people take turns at sharing and listening. Here the listener only listens to the speaker with respect, without comments or questions. The listener simply accompanies the speaker with their attention.

5.1 Pay Attention to the Stages of Listening Teaching

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin). An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:

1) Predicting what people are going to talk about;

2) Guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic;

3) Using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand;

4) Identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information;

5) Retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing);

6) Recognizing discourse markers, e. g., well; oh, another thing is; now, finally; etc;

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

7) Recognizing cohesive devices, e. g., such as and which, including linking words, pronouns, references, etc;

8) Understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues to meaning and social setting;

9) Understanding inferred information, e. g., speakers' attitude or intentions.

According to Bulletin (1952), listening is one of the fundamental language skills. It's a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education--their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. In this day of mass communication (much of it oral), it is of vital importance that college students to listen effectively and critically, he says.

Listening to and understanding speech involves a number of basic processes, some depending upon linguistic competence, some depending upon previous knowledge that is not necessarily of a purely linguistic nature, and some depending upon psychological variables that affect the mobilization of these competence and knowledge in the particular task situation. The listener must have a continuous set to listen and understand, and as he hears the utterance, he may be helped by some kind of set to process and remember the information transmitted. His linguistic competence enables him, presumably, to recognize the formatives of the heard utterance, to dissect out of the wave form of the morphemes, words, and other meaning-bearing elements of the utterance.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

Teachers can facilitate the development of listening ability by creating listening lessons that guide the learner through three stages: pre-listening, During Listening Activities, and post-listening.

5.1.1 Engage the Learners in a Pre-listening Activity

This activity is to help students to make preparation to reduce the difficulties when they are listening. During this activity, the teacher should establish the purpose of the listening activity and activate the schemata by encouraging the learners to think about and discuss what they already know about the content of the listening text. This activity can also provide the background needed for them to understand the text, and it can focus attention on what to listen for.

5.1.2 During the Listening Activities

Listening should be accompanied by some activities through which students can demonstrate their comprehension and experience the pleasure of success (Rivers). While students are listening, the teacher asks them to take some notes. The activity should involve the listener in getting information and in immediately doing something with it. The teachers should give a clear lead in what they are going to hear; use some kind of visual back up for them to understand; give questions and tasks in order to clarify the things in their minds, and be sure that these tasks help in learning, not confusing. Students should learn how to use the environmental clues, the speaker's facial expression, posture, eye direction, proximity, gesture, tone of voice, and that general surroundings contribute

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

information.

5.1.3 Engage in a Post-listening Activity.

The teacher writes some questions on the board and asks them to answer the questions. They are also stimulated to talk and participate in the activity dominantly. This activity should help the listener to evaluate success in carrying out the task and to integrate listening with the other language skills. The teacher should encourage practice outside of the classroom whenever possible.

5.2 Give Emphasis to Develop Micro-skills of Listening

The teaching of listening skills has long been an accepted classroom activity in the General English classroom. Language teaching, however, has tended to lag behind in this respect and to concentrate on reading and writing skills at the expense of aural skills.

When we speak of listening what we really mean is listening and understanding what we hear. In our first language, we have all the skills and background knowledge we need to understand what we hear, so we probably aren't even aware of how complex a process it is. Here we will briefly describe some of what is involved in learning to understand what we hear in a second language. We can be involved in our listening, which is called Interactive listening and that situation usually includes face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner. Some non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, TV, films, lectures, or sermons. In such situations we usually don't have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition.

Richards (1983, 126-127, Omaggio) proposes that the following are the micro skills involved in understanding what someone says to us. The listener has to:

1) Retain chunks of language in short-term memory;

2) Discriminate among the distinctive sounds in the new language;

3) Recognize stress and rhythm patterns, tone patterns, into national contours;

4) Recognize reduced forms of words;

5) Distinguish typical word boundaries;

6) Recognize typical word-order patterns;

7) Recognize vocabulary;

8) Detect key words, such as those identifying topics and ideas;

9) Guess meaning from context;

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

10) Recognize grammatical word classes;

11) Recognize basic syntactic patterns;

12) Recognize cohesive devices;

13) Detect sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, prepositions, and the like

5.3 Attach Importance to Developing Students’ Listening Strategies

Listening is the weaknesses in college English teaching. Because of some complex factors, developing the level of college English listening must be highly pointed, strict in teaching, manage scientifically, and apply excellent teaching method, take advantage of the initiative of teachers and students, only through taking these strategies can improve students’ English listening fatherly. The strategies are in detail as following:

5.3.1 Intrigue the Students’ Interesting

In order to switch the status of passive to active in listening, the thing the teachers must do is to intrigue the students’ interests of listening. The interests is the best teacher, any activities without interests can not success, so the teachers must train the students’ interests.

5.3.2 Pay Attention to the Social Cultural Knowledge

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

An English material, always involves history, geography, culture, social system, custom and science of the English speaking countries. If we have no idea of this background knowledge, we can’t listen efficiently. So we should begin the class with some introduction of the background of the material, and connect it to the text to make students understand easily.

5.3.3 Improve the Vocabulary and Pronounce Correctly

Whether the vocabulary large or not and the pronunciation correctly or not is relevant to the listening comprehension. If we posses a large number of vocabulary and pronounce correctly, we can easily comprehend the listening materials. So we should take notice of the words usually presented in the listening materials and keep the unknown word in mind, also you should keep your eyes open for the stress, voice, tone, the speed, etc.

5.3.4 Build Confidence When Listening English

Perhaps the most vital element in listening is confidence. Many students are anxious about listening to English, this is partly because of difficulties presented by the text, for example the seed of delivery, and partly because students have unrealistic expectation, for example they need to understand every word. If we follow the basic principles for the selection of texts and the design of tasks, the teachers can have every chance of helping the students to develop confidence in dealing with arrange of texts and speakers, and with variations in the speed of delivery.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

Confidence can be built with practice. The role of the teacher is to provide as much positive practices as possible by talking to listeners in English, by exposing them to a range of listening materials in the classroom, and by encouraging the students to use whatever resources are available in their school. Confidence can also be built through exposure to English, and there are such ways as radio, TV programs and English language films.

5.3.5 Train the Students’ Listening Skill

It contains three aspects: the ability of prediction; the ability to grasp the main idea of listening materials; the ability to take notes.

Prediction is a preparation for the students to listen. The teachers should teach the students to predict the place, time, affairs, the relationship and the question the material may present.

To grasp the main idea is not an easy thing. But the main idea is often appear at the beginning or the end of a material, or appear in a transitional sentence. So it’s important for teachers to give the sign where the main idea always appears.

Take necessary notes is vital for listening. If you take the useful words or expressions, it will help you easily comprehend the materials. Thus, the teacher should do is to teach the students to distinguish the key word. The key words include: time, place, name, number, and some useful expression.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

5.4 Teach Listening with Other Language Skills.

Among the four language skills, listening is receptive skill. During the listening process, listener can’t know the topic the speaker wants to speak. Compared to reading, listening is more difficult for college students, students can read repeatedly, unlike reading, listening away be controlled by the time and space. In practical study, college students can not control the speed, articulation and the speech characteristic of the speaker, so it’s difficult for the students to grasp the meaning of listening material with short time.

In fact, ther are subjective and objective factors affect listening effect. Not only be related to the difficulty, speed, ways of speaking and proficiency level, but also be related to the basic language skills. Now I will give some tips which from some other scholars’ and my experience on how to teach listening with basic language skills, as following:

5.4.1 Remove the Effect of Voice to Listening

As the communicative language, firstly, is audio language. It conveys the information through audio system, so, pronunciation is the basic for the communication process. In college students’ listening study, they are not aware of the pronunciation of words, continuous reading and the change of tone. In this case, the teachers should teach the students pronounce correctly, teach them where or when they should read continuously and draw attention to the change of the tone.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

5.4.2 Remove the Effect of Grammar to Listening

Grammar is the link in sentence, is the rule of language, it plays an important role in language system. As the same, it is vital for college students to grasp the meaning when they listening. Tense, subjunctive mood and form of structure are the main factors to listening. During the listening process, if you know well about the tense, it will be helpful for students to listen, so does the subjunctive mood and the form of structure. Teachers should teach students to how to use grammar when they are listening.

5.5 Make Good use of Modern Multi-media and Other Learning Facilities.

Along With the fast development of computer information technology, network communication technology and the multi-media digital technology, Social information has penetrated into every field of people’s lives. In this kind of environment, multi-media teaching has become an inevitable trend.

Multi-media teaching are the most advanced method in modern education technology, it greatly enriched teaching mode, teaching content and structure in the classroom, it is vivid and interesting, and fascinating, which cause students’ interest.

These multi-media tools include: computer, recording tape, recording video, English film and English music, TV, radio, slide, etc.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 5 Suggestions to Improve Teaching

5.5.1 Use Multi-media Technology to Simulate of Real Listening Environment

During the listening class, teachers can take the advantage of multimedia technology, various hardware equipments and software to simulate the real listening communicative activities. For example, we can present the relevant cultural background through slide and video, use the animation to simulate the listening material in various communication scenes, besides, the teachers also can choose the most suitable and current multi-media English listening material to greatly close to the real life during the listening class.

5.5.2 Use Multi-media to Stimulate Students' Interest, Reduce Students Anxiety

Multimedia technology collect the voice, picture and text into one, integrate the scientific, artistic, interest as one, can arouse various organs of sense, thus stimulate students' interest, solve the difficulties in listening, decrease the anxiety.

5.5.3 Use Multi-media to Promote the Interaction in Listening Class

Through the multi-media lab, the teacher can communicate efficiently with students, students can be divided into several groups to discuss and make activity such as role play to strengthen the listening effect. And multimedia technology used in the man-machine dialogue, to intervene the listening results, to arouse students' learning motivation, interest and initiative.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 6 The Prospects of English Listening Study

Chapter 6 The Prospects of English Listening Study

We should clearly realize that the listening theory is still at the stage of borrowing and quotation foreign theories, domestic innovation is rare, and moreover, the width and depth of the listening comprehension still have developmental space.

The study of listening teaching almost are perceptual feelings and experience, in view of this situation, the scholars and teachers should pay more attention on this aspect, during the process, teachers can adjust the method, plan and skills of teaching according to the students’ feedback and the evaluation to the students, sequentially, improve the teaching mode; Teachers and scholars should constantly perfect the construction of listening theory which suitable for Chinese college students and actively look for the effective method of listening teaching; How to write English listening materials should be deeply researched; They also should improve the authenticity and communication of listening and the reliability and validity of valuation; Clear that the goals the teaching during the multi-media teaching and realize that how to effectively improve the listening level is the task we should resolve immediately.

西京学院学士学位论文 Chapter 7 Conclusion

Chapter 7 Conclusion

This essay mainly analyses the development of listening skills in college English. According to my learning career and the experience from other teachers, I have examined three important theoretical aspects of listening comprehension, that is to say, nature and process of listening comprehension and the factors that affect it. In the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening is the basic, and the most important skill. It isn’t only the main way of acquiring language information, but the base of improving other skills. Chinese students often regard the listening test as the most difficult part of a whole test, so some activities of teaching English listening should be emphasized on the process of listening, rather than the result of listening. How we can improve our listening and get good mark has become the great concern. During the English teaching, it is important for teachers to come up with some ideas of improving students’ listening skills.

With the fast development of modern science and technology, developing language skills is much more urgent than we think. The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to cultivate students’ communication competence in which listening skills play a key role.

西京学院学士学位论文 Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to my Prof., my advisor, for his inspiring lectures, constructive suggestions and continual encouragement that have been guiding and supporting me in my research. The completion of this thesis would have been impossible but for his patient yet rigorous supervision.

I would like to thank all my teachers in Xi Jing University for their splendid lectures, admirable devotion and kind help that benefited my work and my life tremendously.

My thanks also go to Mr. Si, my teacher and friend, for providing so many good books for us to share, for his kindness, encouragement and helpful advice that have been guiding me in my life.

西京学院学士学位论文 References

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西京学院学士学位论文 References

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[17]Wolvin & Coakley . Listening Instruction. Urbana, Illinois, 1979

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