影响英语听力各种因素的分析.doc

IntroductionListening and speaking are two important parts of English study. They link to each other inseparably, however, listening is more challenging than speaking. When we speak, we can choose appropriate words, sentence structures and speed of speaking. But we can not request the speaker to adjust himself to our speed. Listening is the basic part of communication and the first step of the language study, so listening play a main role in language skills. With the spread of communicative teaching method and reform of College English Test, people pay more attention to listening comprehension and request school to strengthen the teaching of English listening. However, it is difficult to improve listening skill soon because there are many factors affecting listening comprehension.1. The Importance of ListeningListening, as a part of communication in human society, plays a more crucial role in todays world which is experiencing information revolution and globalization. It is as well a significant element of improving English skill, takes an important position in English study. As a beginner, you must improve your listening level as soon as possible to master a language indeed. Listening correctly can lead to the fluency of reading and speaking. For any language, voice is in the first place, spoken language could represent the communication functionality of language. During the course of communicate, by way of tongue, rhythm and stress etc, both sides can exchange ideas better. One of the important destinations of studying language is that you can communicate with the person living with, and both levels of listening and method of how to listen are directly concerned with the degree of mastership. According to one American investigation, when human being is in his waking status, he spends 70% time to varied social activities, among them writing takes 11%, reading takes 15%, speaking takes 32%, but listening takes 42% at least. 1 Thus, improving English listening is one of the key stones of mastering this language. Nevertheless, in daily study, because we are neither able to control the speed, clearness of the listening material nor can we understand the characteristics of the speaker; its considerably hard to comprehend the meaning of the material in a limited amount of time. Generally speaking, there are many obstacles in English listening, such as new words, complex sentence structures, acquaintance with the content, the speed of the speaker, the disturbing voice in the background and the change of tone etc. Its not only due to the language itself, but is also because of the culture understandings, logical thinking, and listening skill, etc and many other factors. Understanding these factors can help students overcome these obstacles, which, in turn, is an essential part for English learners to improve English listening. 2. Factors Affecting Listen Comprehension2.1 Influence of PronunciationAs a language, English must be pronounced. The most radical material appearance is sound and tone. If the student does not have enough knowledge of sound, the ability of distinguishing sound will be worse, then directly influence the ability of understanding. Pronunciation is the most basic element. The correctness of learners pronunciation directly affects the effectiveness of efficiency of learners listening. Speaking of this aspect, people from urban and developed areas are better than those from rural or undeveloped areas. This is because developed cities have advantages on Mandarin speaking and language studying environments and people usually pay more attention to it. Besides this, we ought to realize the influence of distractive accent to pronunciation. This factor reduces the quality of pronunciation, misleads learners study. One distinct characteristic of spoken English is informality. For example, we always say “well, theres” rather than “we shall” or “there is”. When people meet each other, they always say “Hi!” or “Morning!”, “How do you do” is only used in formal situation. Otherwise, we hope others will speak English word one by one when we study it. But the characteristic of spoken English is that we couldnt speak separately between the meanings of a sentence. Meanwhile, such as concatenation, inexplosive, unstress etc could make difficulty for listening. When you understand these, you just prepare for listening.The incorrect pronunciation of some teacher directly influences the simulation of the student， which will cause the following problems： 、Couldnt distinguish similar factors between words, such as /f/&/v/,/s/&/z/,/e/&/A/ etc; 、Not acquaint with stress and unstress, such as “and” should be pronounced as /And/, but it always unstressed as /End/,/En/or/n/ , in and out /5in End 5aut/,black and white /5blA En 5wait/,bread and butter /5bred n 5bQtE/ etc;、Not adapt to concatenation, for example think of it /5WiNkEvit/, put it on /5puti5tRn/,first of all /5fE:stE5vR:l/ etc; 、Couldnt distinguish the stress in word and sentence, the different position of stress causes different meaning, or different character, different emphasis, different tone etc. such as “content”, when it is read as /5kRntent/, it is a noun, but /kEn5tent/, it is a adjective or verb; 、Not acquaint with assimilation and simplification. Such as assimilation “Did you like it? /5didVu5laik it/,Im glad to meet you /aim5glAd tE5mi:tFu/” and simplification “youre /jR:r/,dont /dEunt/, were /wiE/” etc; 、Couldnt distinguish the pronunciation between American and British. For example, class, in British, its /kla:s/, in America its /klAs/;news Brisher call it /nju:z/,by contrast, American call it /nu:z/.Sometimes they differ from the stress, detail, in British, its 5detail, in America, its de5tail。Address, British calls a5ddress, American calls 5address.Therefore, due to the basic and crucial role pronunciation plays in English listening, we should focus more on pronunciation and emphasize its importance. Teachers should also improve their pronunciation so that they can give students correct instructions. They should also fully use electrical devices in class to improve students listening ability in order to make them overcome obstacles. 2.2 Influence of Vocabulary Not only has the improving listening skill relied on the improvement of pronunciation, but also on a solid basic knowledge. A bad listening skill can usually be attributed to the lack of fundamental knowledge, especially vocabulary and grammar. If the vocabulary is too small, then the new words in listening materials will certainly cause difficulties. Sometimes some kind of words, such as preposition, adverb, article, auxiliary word etc. They always are unstressed, slip away lightly and quickly, making more practice can get these words. Many words are structured with the prefix or suffix, if you couldnt recognize them, then that will increase your vocabulary or even worse, take the opposite meaning. For example, antidepressant, we all know the word “depress”, if we miss the prefix of “depress”, then we cant get the meaning. Another example, we all understand the word “illegal”, if we hear it as “legal”, then the meaning is totally different. The difference between British and American will also influence the comprehension of English, they use different words to express the same meaning, or use same words to express different meaning. Such as “lift” and “elevator” are of the same meaning, “pavement” and “sidewalk” also are the same. “first floor” and “public school” in British and American have different meanings. If we are not acquainted with the difference, then absolutely it will make influence to our listening. The influence does same as the vocabulary taking to reading and writing. Skill development should start with a solid foundation. Therefore, building vocabulary should be emphasized in daily study, and a good way for memorization should be introduced and put into practice. Record and study the words that are in listening materials.In listening, many sentences are composite sentence, if you cant distinguish the main clause and subordinate clause, and dont know the relationship between them, then even though you can understand every word of the sentence, you may misunderstand the meaning of the whole sentence. Some expert points out: Listening is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear. To listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions and not simply to understand the words themselves. 2 According to this, during the daily life, listeners not only get each word, but also catch the content of the speaker in varied occasion, and respond in time to make the social activity go smoothly. Moreover, we used to analyze the grammar quickly in mind, this needs to be accomplished in a short period. Listener always is confused by the relationship inside the sentence or between sentences, they dont know on earth whats the relationship between them. That means the insufficient knowledge of grammar also reduces the level of listening.Therefore, we should enlarge our vocabulary everyday, grasp correct method to help us memorize the word, such as classified mnemonic method. We should also explain and describe the new word and old word in practicing our listening. Otherwise, we should learn some skills on how to pick out the main words and key words. Some documents indicate that mechanism of listening understanding has two parts, one is instant react, the other is delayed consequence. The speed of the former is related to the number of memorized information and the language practice; the speed of the latter is related to the logic thinking and sentence atmosphere recognition. It is obvious that the larger in the listeners memorized information, the stronger of the listeners logic thinking, the feedback speed of understanding is quicker. Based on the former theory, listener must bear in mind what they have listened, and integrate them with the incoming content. Thereby, when you listen, you need listen to the whole, memorize quickly, grasp the main word, make some simple shorthand and take key words. Never listen to a single word isolated, but listen to them sentence by sentence, get the meaning of the whole sentence, dont stick on some unstudied sentence.2.3 The Relationship with the Listening and Reading Many people have been studying English for years, but still are confused when listen to other people speaking English, even though its just a simple sentence. Nevertheless, if they could read it, everything would be clear in their minds. This problem exits among all students in school and self-learners. In English teaching, listening materials are usually much easier than readings, but the students who do well on reading are still having hard time on listening. Although listening and reading are different topics in language study, they are all categorized as comprehensive trainings, and have many common characteristics. From the lower level, in listening comprehension, the listener receives information, decodes the information and infers according to the information. In another word, besides catching pronunciations, listeners need to explain and judge the concept included in order to comprehend the material. From higher level, if the listener wants to understand what the sentences tell, he needs to rely on the understanding of the concept. Because a completed understanding usually comes from the process of rebuilding the concept contained in the material. During this process, the language method only makes listeners utilize the already-known knowledge to build the meaning of the material, including consumptions of cultural understandings and predicting speakers intention. Obviously, the process of understanding, the effectiveness of understanding, and the knowledge related are very essential to listening comprehension. For instance, when listening to forecasting, whether or not you can quickly understand the contents, in a big part, is relied on your geographic knowledge, even some social and cultural knowledge, such as either Fahrenheit or Celsius is used as the measurement. The above process is also the one involves in reading comprehension. From this aspect, students should be familiar with this understanding process, and gradually improve and complete this ability in order to improve listening skill. One efficient way to improve listening skill is putting down your book and doing your best on listening. Some beginners depend on the book badly. They consider that it will be helpful if they browse the book before listening or read book at the same time. In fact, this kind of comprehension depends on the help of visibility, neither tone nor voice, will be harmful to the improvement of listening. As the result, it became a kind of hindrance without reading words for the direct contact to what it means, so the listeners can not be content to the idea of reading before listening ,while he should try to analyze what the material is related to .2.4 Influence of Cultural DifferencesLanguage is the carrier of culture, special culture will produce characteristic language background. Sometimes the listening material is fairly easy, but we still dont quite understand. This may be caused by the cultural differences. This can be attributed to the lack of the understanding of the cultural differences between English and Chinese. In the material of English listening, some articles are written by foreigners, if students dont know their regime, natural conditions and social customs, ethical custom, thinking mode and value conception, if the writer assumes the reader understand such knowledge and not necessary to provide, then student may miss the meaning when listening. For example, in one article which introduces the American telephone system, there is such a sentence: “It provides 800 telephone services”. In American, phoning the uncharged long-distance call must add 800. If we dont get this point, then well misunderstand this sentence to “It provides 800 numbers telephone services”. Therefore, learning a language can not be limited within only vocabulary, grammar and phrases, but should also include the related common cultural knowledge. American linguist Edward Sapir considered: culture can be explained as the commonly accepted deeds and thoughts of a society. Language is the detailed expression of thoughts. Culture, from a wide range, includes literature, arts, philosophy, history, geography, architecture, etc, From the narrow sense, it includes customs, life style, social norms, religious belief, various social organizations, etc. The effective part is from the narrow sense. Languages usually have numerous differences among them, and these differences are reflections of their own social and cultural characteristics. The obstacles in listening caused by the lack of cultural understanding are common. So, if you wish to improve the listening skill, you must have enough knowledge of language culture. By way of read more and memorize more, increase the knowledge, enlarge the vocabulary; By way of read more article of westerner, talk with foreigners, get familiar with western country and knowledge of cross-culture intercommunication, language learners should also pay some attention on it. 2.5 Listening and Memory Listening is not a passive action, so only capturing the information but not organizing them is not advisable. Some research shows that the memorizing ability of human brain is beyond any artificial intelligence, so the listening material can never be too long for memory. The point here is how to fully use your brain to work on it. Psychologists also noticed that the memorization is a process that goes through first unstable and then stable condition. From this point, memorization and listening comprehension have a critical relationship. During listening, the impression generated from spoken information happens in a short time, so is fairly weary, and the amount captured is also very limited. This is called Instant Memorization or Short-turn Memorization. This type of memory is the accordance of the comprehension. But the problem is that it can only be kept for a really short time, usually 0.25 to 2 seconds in listening, no longer than 1 minute under regular condition, this increases the difficultness of listening. 2.6 Listening and Psychological Emotion In recent years, lots of researchers have found that the mood of listeners has some effects on the comprehension. The researches show: people can do the best under a happy and relaxing environment. During listening, avoiding bad mood, focusing as much as we can are really crucial. Because under a fluctuate mood, people easily have scary, fear, even detestation. So we consider the non-intelligence factor, combining the strengthening listening practice with strengthening mental leading, cultivating the interest on study and self-confidence, arranging a suitable environment for listening, all these will overcome the mental obstacle and improve listening.The process of understanding what you listened is also a more complex mental active process. Psychologist says: when the student is on the class, the emotional factor has direct relationship with the degree of efficeny about listening comprehension. 3 So listening processed is not only concerned with the listeners mastery of language knowledge, with the listeners knowledge background, but also concerned with the listeners mental diathesis nearly.2.7 Improving Listening by “listening, speaking hand-in-hand”“Listening, speaking” has two tiers of meaning. The goal of listening is to understand and speaking is in the role of