英语论文howtoimprovetheabilityoflistening.doc

How to improve the ability of listening?Abstract This paper is about how to improve middle school students listening ability.There are four abilities in middle school listening,speaking, reading and writing which are connected with each other,however,the listening is the basic of them .It is also considered as one of the most difficulties to conquer for students in middle school. With the development of modern english teaching, more and more educators have pointed out the practice use of listeningcomprehension so that they pay more attention to developing the studentslistening ability in their english teaching.whats more ?listening takes about 30 persent of the total marks in studentsmiddle school entrance examination.as ateacher,we provide our students with lots of listening skills and useful ways to improve their listening.Key words : listening , ability , skills , middle schoolThe importence of listening As we all know ,language is a means of communication with other people .If that is so ,then what is the purpose of teaching and leaning language ? We all learn our mother tongue in order to function is our home community .When we come across people brought up in a different language community ,we might need to communicate with them, too; They might have food that our community lacks ,so we have to engage in commerce and trading ,for this we need a common language. This was the earliest need for learning another language ,a second or foreign language .These days our lives are more implicated than that ,but trade between nations is still one of the most common reasons for learning a foreign language. According to the characters of language learning, information is the first step to communicate with each other. Above all ,listening is the most important way to get useful information.The factors affecting students listening.Though the factors influencing students listening are various ,they can be divided into the following two parts: Main factors of teachers.1.Paying no attention to listening. Because of the poor condition ,especially in the countryside ,some schools in China have few equipments to train students listening ,teachers teach English still with a mouth ,a chalk and a blackboard. On the other hand, some teachers ,they themselves have problem in listening .Some even can hardly speak English fluently .They pay no attention to listening ,which cause the low level of students listening .2 Lack of right training skills. Some teachers have already known the importance of English listening, and they try to do a lot to improve students listening, but no effect. This is just because they are lack of right training skills, which will be discussed later in the paper. 3.Selecting Appropriate MaterialsListening material is a very important element, which affects students listening comprehension. So teachers should pay more attention to selecting materials for students.4.Use modern teaching aids in teaching listening.Now TV, radios, recorders, computers are widely used in teaching, which makes teaching activities direct, lively and vivid. They help enlarge the teaching contents, quicken the teaching rhythm and help the students understand the materials more easily. In my teaching experience, I have found it best to do listening practice on computers. We put the voice of listening materials in the computers, We can let students listen as many times as possible without worrying about putting back or forward the tape. Although it often takes us lots of time to do so before class, it can really save us more time in class .When I give a new lesson, or do listening exercises, I often put materials and voices on the computer. Sometimes I search some listening materials on the Internet.It not only stimulates the students interest but also improve the class efficiency.5.Listening cant be taught separately. It is often connected with speaking. We should encourage every student to speak in class to create chance for them to listen. Make the students listen and speak English as much as possible not only in class but also out of class. They can hold “English Corner” ,”Reading and Lecture Competition”, etc These make the students be interested in English.Main factors of studentslistening1.Pay attention to pronunciation, the phonetic symbol, word stress, sentence stress and sentence structure.A famous educator has ever said “As long as you can pronounce correctly, your audition will get a huge progress in a day.” Pay attention to the oral reading skill, It includes stress, strong form, weak form, intonation incomplete plosive consonant, affricate consonant, syllable and so on. Training and practicing the oral reading is not a days word. There is no easy way. 2 The emotional factor.When beginning a listening class ,some students will be nervous ,anxious and depressed mentality ,the process of their mental speech activity will be in a restrictive condition ,so low in thought .It is difficult for them to develop the normal listening level. The material which was familiar to them formerly will get strange ,then the more they listen ,the less interested in they are ,so the more they wont listen ,the less will enter the brain.Some students tend to find faults with teachers ,such as out date clothing ,unpleasant voices, strong accents .This lead them to have no interest in listening. There are also some students who sill turn off their ears if they think the subject is dull, not interesting of funny ,such as the notion and conception.Generally speaking ,a good listener should know exactly listening is important and valuable ,after all, nothing can replace it.3 To be absent-minded. Sometimes, students cant control themselves in listening class. They may think of something else while listening. As a result ,they cant keep up with the speed of the speaker ,even they cant help giving up listening.4.help students to establish self-confidence.In teachers spare time, he should pay more attention to the students, especially to the failing students. The teacher should have friendly interaction with his students, he can provide eye contact, body gesture and voice tone to express his respect and positive regard for the students, help them develop pride and self-confidence. Dont show your special favoritism to those successful students, which will hurt the failing students. And try to hearten students to study hard by saying “You can ! You are unique !The major of listening skillsA good teacher should teach students how to study. As the famous saying goes,“Give a man a fish and hell eat for a day, teach a man to fish and hell eat for ever.” We should provide students some listening skills.1.Listening for the Gist Listening for the gist means listening for the main idea, and listener need not catch all the details or grasp every word. It is similar to the concept of skimming a passage in reading, which is to ask the students one or two questions that focus on the main idea of the whole passage. Teachers should encourage students to answer the gist questions without understanding every word or phrase in the passage. It is very important to give students more practice in this way, because in real life, they will not be able to relisten to something as easily as reread a passage. Therefore, it will be impossible for them to catch all the details, so they need to keep calm with some ambiguity in listening and realize that they can still learn even though when they do not understand every single word. Teacher can provide the students with some idea of what they are going to hear and what they are asked to do with. It helps them to succeed in catching the gist of what they are listening to.2. Listening for the Specific InformationIt is important to train our students to listen for getting specific information, because there are many situations in real life where we listen only for some specific details. We need to ignore the rest of the listening message. For example, when we are sitting in a train station, we need not listen to all the announcements. We are only interested in the train, which we will take, and the time when we will leave. Therefore teachers should teach students to listen to a variety of types of listening texts for different purposes so that they will develop different listening skills to use for different situations. In listening process, teachers can let students listen with a specific purpose in mind. And let students ask themselves what they are listening for, are they listening for general understanding of the whole lecture or conversation? 3. Predict and guess the meaningWhen the students listen to a person speaking their own language in many situations, they can be one step ahead of the speaker. They can very often predict what the person is going to say next.,. perhaps not the exact words but at least the main idea. The more they predict, the easier it becomes to understand in a foreign language too. The students should train themselves to predict as much as possible. When the students have listening practice or exam, they should go over the words on the paper quickly before the tape starts, then guess what kind of question or content theyll hear according to the choices on the paper, then try to get the key words and give the proper answer. When meeting new words while listening, guess their meaning from the content.4.Take notes while listening. Students should learn to make some simple notes while listening, for examples, the names of people and places, time, age, distance, occupation, figures and so on to get a better understanding of the content.5. Insist on listening Only through the practice can the students improve their listening. As is known to us all, “practice makes perfect. Rome was not built in a day” Keep listening continuously in our daily life, 30 minutes a day better than 3.5 hours a week.Conclusion This paper points out that we should help students to solve the problems in listening teaching and learning, and also pay more attention to the factors affecting the listening. The main part of this