Problems and Possible Solutions in College English Focus Listening 大学英语听力学习中存在的问题及其可能解决的方法.doc

Problems and Possible Solutions in College English Focus ListeningAbstract：Listening comprehension ability is one of the basic skills in language competence, it plays a crucial role in our daily life as well as in language learning. Listening teaching is of great significance in the college English teaching. Listening comprehension ability plays a very important part in improving students comprehensive language competence in English learning, moreover, with the development of our country, the request to English teaching is getting higher and higher. Therefore, the thesis analyzes listening problems the college students have and proposes ways of tackling them.The aim of this paper is to explore how to use effective and correct approaches to guide English listening teaching and so as to improve college students listening comprehension. Key Words: Listening; unrealistic materials; effective and correct approaches 大学英语听力学习中存在的问题及其可能解决的方法摘要：听力理解能力是语言运用的基本技能之一，无论是在日常生活中还是在语言学习中，都起着极其重要的作用。在大学英语教学中，听力教学占有十分重要的地位。英语听力理解能力的提高对学生英语水平的整体提高有着至关重要的作用。在我国高速发展的情况下，对英语教学的要求也越来越高。因此，本论文主要分析了大学生在英语学习中存在的问题及其可能的解决方法。本论文的研究目的在于，探讨和研究如何有效、正确的方法来指导大学英语听力教学，以便提高大学生的听力理解能力。关键字：听力；真实的材料；有效正确的方法Contents1. Introduction11.1 The importance of English listening in college11.2 Current situation of English listening in college22. Some theories concerning English listening32.1 The definition of listening32.2 The Audio-Lingual Method32.3 Tasked-based Listening43. Three problems in listening teaching in college53.1 Problems in listening materials and the solutions53.1.1 Lack various listening materials53.1.2 Old and unauthentic materials53.1.3 Unrealistic listening materials63.1.4 Solutions to the problems in listening materials63.2 Problems in Teaching Methods and the Solutions73.2.1 Traditional Listening Teaching Method73.2.2 Lack Interactive Activities in the Class73.2.3 Solutions to the Problems in Listening Teaching73.3 Problems Concerning Students in Listening Teaching83.3.1 No English Environment83.3.2 Lack Autonomy of Practicing Listening83.3.3 Choose Inappropriate Listening Materials93.3.4 Solutions to the Problems Concerning Students94. Research Design and Result Discussion94.1 Research Design94.2 The Survey Background104.3 Data Collection and Analysis115. Conclusion12Reference14Appendix 116Appendix 2161. Introduction 1.1 The importance of English listening in collegeAs we all know, China has entered into the WTO and has held the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. successfully. China is in urgent need of many different kinds of professionals with a super level of English language proficiency, and English has become a craze nowadays. The four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing have been greatly improved on the part of Chinese students. However, in China, the four skills have not developed at the same rate. For most students listening and speaking remain the most difficult skills to master. After over ten years of learning English, most students couldnt understand what foreigners say let alone talk with them. Therefore, to cultivate students ability of listening is the first and foremost requirement of English teaching in college in our country (Yu Lu, 2003).In recent years, some teachers at colleges(Wen Qiufang,1996;Lu Guojun,2000;Lu Jianna 2001;Zhou Ying,2001;Ding Aiqin,2000)have already made researches on English listening. They have studied the nature of listening, the methods of listening, the theories of classroom listening, models of classroom listening teaching and so on. The results of these researches are all valuable to the learners.Most teachers think they can improve students listening ability by saying English as much as possible during the class, letting students do duty report at the beginning of class, using CAI（Computer Assisted Instruction）and so on. As the ability to communicate effectively in English is now a well-established goal in English language teaching, the importance of listening comprehension in communication has been widely accepted. The point has been frequently made that when one is engaged in communication, he devotes approximately 9% of his attention to writing, 16% to reading, and 30% to speaking, but he devotes 45% to listening. Besides listening plays a key role in second language acquisition. The Input Hypothesis put forward by Krashen (1981) claims that a considerable amount of comprehensible input is indispensable for successful second language acquisition to take place. And he goes further to indicate that the major channel for meaningful input is the “auditory channel (Krashen, 1982)” 1.2 Current situation of English listening in collegeDespite a gradually increasing acceptance of the significance of listening comprehension, in college, listening teaching and research are not satisfactory. It is often heard comment that listening comprehension is a somewhat neglected skill. In other word, it seems that listening does not draw enough attention of both students and teachers in Chinas English language teaching and learning. Even though some teachers have realized its importance, listening teaching still does not go beyond the stage of play-the-tape-and-check -the -answers.Teachers are devoted to getting students to listen and complete the listening tasks instead of taking the students as individuals who learn usefu1 skills to cope with listening comprehension. In this case, students listen mechanically to various materials and try different comprehensive exercises. If they can not catch the meaning for the first time, usually the teacher encourages them to try a second time just in time for the tape to be played again, and sometimes there is even a third or a fourth time before the teachers patience gives out and before the teacher provides the students with correct answers and then gives the routine advice to practice more after class. Such listening comprehension lessons are by no means effective ways to radically improve the student listening proficiency in that they give no instruction as to how to go about listening, but just tell the students listening ability. Whats more, in college, limited classroom hours and the lack of scientific theories have given rise to the problems in listening teaching. In a listening class, the teacher usually plays a role as to simply play the tape recorder and check the students answers. The teacher occasionally explains some new words. After listening, the teacher will ask the students some questions. Therefore, students usually assume passive role in the listening class. This kind of test-oriented listening teaching depresses the atmosphere and the feelings of students.Therefore, to promote more effective listening teaching and enable students to become more competent listeners, we need to research how to improve college students listening competence with the help of the problems analysis and the formats on listening teaching, and to re-examine the listening teaching style and seriously think about what should be taught to the students in the listening classes. 2. Some theories concerning English listening2.1 The definition of listeningAs an invisible mental process, different people give different definitions about listening. In the opinion of Michael Rost (2002) in Teaching Listening Comprehension, every definition of listening has some unique aspect. The definition of listening can be understood in four orientations, the receptive, the constructive, the collaborative and the transformative. In Underwoods (1989, cited in Dunkel, 1991) understanding, listening is “the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear”. In simple way to students, listening means catching what the speaker says. Michaels definition of listening is that listening is experiencing contextual effect. Different experts also offer other listening definitions. Thomlisons (1984) definition of listening includes “active listening,” which goes beyond comprehending literally to an empathetic understanding of the speaker. Hirsch (1986) groups definitions as attempts to define the process; explanations of sequential phases in listening; how sound is received, comprehended, and acted upon. Ronald and Roskelly (1985) define listening as an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, and revising. As an English teacher, the author believes that listening is the language skill that students acquire. Listening, which plays a life-long role in the process of communication, provides a foundation for all language development. Some recent studies describes listening as an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express (Clark 1977; Mendelsohn 1995;Richards 1983,cited from Thompson and Rubin,1996).2.2 The Audio-Lingual Method The Audio-lingual Method based on structuralism became popular in the 1950s. It argues that listening itself was nothing but a process of passive “decoding”, in which the listener “find equivalents” in his own language system for the words, phrases and sentences he hear. Listening was defined as the listeners ability to recognize the language structure when he hears something “a satisfactory listening ability is the foundation of speak” (Anderson, A. and Lynch, T.1988)Compared with the past pedagogy, this approach further exposed the relationship between listening and pronunciation so that it created many new ways of practice on phonemes and single sentences to improve the listeners listening and at the same time emphasized that oral English practice must be supported with plenty of listening materials. However, the Audio-lingual Method had a very limited understanding of listening. Jack C R. and Theodore S.R. (2000) point out that “Students were often found to be unable transfer skills acquired through Audiolingualisim to real communication outside the classroom, and man found the experience of studying through audio-lingual procedures to be boring and unsatisfying.”2.3 Tasked-based Listening Tasked-based Listening is an activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allows teachers to control and regulate that process (Prabhu,1987). Or it is an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language. For example, drawing a map while listening to an instruction and performing a command, may be referred to as tasks. Tasks may or may not involve the production of language. A task usually requires the teacher to specify what will be regarded as successful completion of the task. The use of different kinds of tasks in language teaching is said to make language teaching snore communicative since it provides a purpose for a classroom activity which goes beyond the practice of language for its own sake (Richards et a1.,1985). Any classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right (Nunan,1993). To sum up, task could be defined basically as follow: a task is an activity that requires learners to use the target language, with meaning at the core, to achieve an objective.3. Three problems in listening teaching in college3.1 Problems in listening materials and the solutions3.1.1 Lack various listening materialsMost college students have background knowledge obstacle. Background knowledge is made up of cultural and topic background knowledge, which are factors that affect listening comprehension. Culture reflected in language. Nowadays, in college, most listening materials were written before and relate to some stories, which were designed by someone. There are seldom different kinds of materials which have various topics. Thus, most students cant understand listening materials of certain difficulty degree, especially about science, psychics and physiology, which have too many technical terms.Although to do more listening is an active means of improving ones listening ability. Listening ability is not completely determined by the times students do listening practice or the lengths and difficulty degrees of what they listen to. Listening, which is not an isolated language skill, is not only connected and affected by speaking, reading and writing, but also is the integrated reflection of ones knowledge of English.3.1.2 Old and unauthentic materialsIn college listening teaching, many listening materials used today are unauthentic and not suitable for the students and for listening teaching indeed. Teachers often use the recorded materials of written language. These materials are usually extracted from some written prose with standard English lack of the characteristics of spoken language and are difficult to understand. And listening comprehension exercises are usually prepared in advance and read aloud by the teacher or on the tape, which obviously does not provide the land of practice needed. Many books of listening exercises often consist of passages originally composed as written texts. Students listen to the text without any idea of what they are going to hear or what they are listening for, and then they have to answer comprehension questions, usually multiple-choice. This is a convenient classroom technique, which does provide a certain type of practicebut it does not provide any realistic preparation for real-life listening. Students getting used to this kind of slow and clear English find it hard to communicate with English native speakers in real-life listening, because they often fail to follow the rate of speech and to understand the idioms, slang and locutions used by native speakers. Although some can get high marks in listening test, they still find it rather difficult to catch what native speakers say and even more difficult to talk with them face to face. 3.1.3 Unrealistic listening materialsThe contents of the listening materials often lose contact with the reality and with some specific situation; and the words are usually written by the teachers instead of coming from the authentic and natural language in real life, which is unfavorable to improving students listening ability it cannot be denied that there is a certain amount of spontaneous teacher-talk in class, much of which provides incidental listening practice. Although they do much such listening practice, a learner relying on such type of exercises is likely to have great difficulties in understanding native speech in natural communicative situations. Nevertheless, “it is not enough to base classroom exercises only on an imitation of reality. We must also take into account the specific difficulties faced by the foreigner in learning to deal with heard English speech.”(Ur, 1984)3.1.4 Solutions to the problems in listening materialsHow should we solve these problems? First, use authentic materials. Teachers should consider using different kind of authentic materials in listening teaching, which can bring students into contact with language as it is used in the culture to meet actual communication needs. Second, use realistic materials. Teachers should design activities for learners to practice in dealing with at least some of the features of real-life listening, and base most listening materials on discourse either genuinely improvised, spontaneous speech, or at least a fair imitation of it. So that it can provide students with training in listening comprehension.The possible sources for authentic materials can usually be readily found with little effort. They are radio broadcast, teaching materials and our own recording of native speakers. As for the types of materials, we can use speeches, telephone conversations, interviews, news broadcasts, advertisements, announcements, plays, stories, songs, poetry reading and so on.3.2 Problems in Teaching Methods and the Solutions3.2.1 Traditional Listening Teaching MethodIn English listening teaching, the traditional method is to play a tape several times for the students, then involve them in the relative exercisesanswer comprehension questions or make multiple-choice. The main task of the teacher is to check the answers and explain the difficult issues. This kind of teaching method focuses on the result, that is, to decide whether the students answers are right or wrong. In this way, what the students learn has little differences from what they get from reading class. Their listening comprehension ability has only made minimal improvement. What should be mentioned is that many classroom exercises for listening comprehension demand no response until the end of fairly long stretches of speech, so that when they come, these responses are very largely a test of memory rather than of comprehension. It is helpless to improve students listening ability.3.2.2 Lack Interactive Activities in the Class On one hand, in a listening class, the teacher usually plays a role as to simply play the tape recorder and check the students answers. Few teachers design enough interactive activities for students to practice their listening ability. Therefore, most students become passive even bored listeners because of the lack of participation in the process of listening. Gradu