Probe into Listening Teaching’s Common Problems in Junior High _School _—Strategy and Technique_毕业论文.doc

Probe into Listening Teachings Common Problems in Junior High School Strategy and TechniqueYin YakunA Graduation Thesis Submitted toThe Department of English of Tang Shan Teachers CollegeIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsFor the Degree of B.A. Tutor: Zhang Jianwen Specialty: English Direction: The Teaching MethodologyTangshan, Hebei ProvinceMay 2006郑重声明 本人的毕业论文（设计）是在指导教师张健稳的指导下独立撰写完成的。如有剽窃、抄袭、造假等违反学术道德、学术规范和侵权的行为，本人愿意承担由此产生的各种后果，直至法律责任，并愿意通过网络接受公众的监督。特此郑重声明。毕业论文（设计）作者（签名）： 2006年 6 月2 日摘 要里弗斯指出人们日常生活中信息的获得45%是通过听，30%是通过说。这个比例证明了听是语言交流中一个十分重要的环节。同时也说明听力是人们在学习和掌握一门语言的过程中必须练习的技能。因此，在英语教学中的听力教学应被视为一个关键环节。纵观目前初中听力教学现状，听力教学较之以前已有了很大的改观。但是，初中听力教学中仍然存在一些亟待解决的问题。有的教师忽视了听力策略的训练；有的教师很少使用具有“真实语言”特点的听力材料；教学气氛单调，致使学生对听力课产生厌倦。与此同时，对课外听力也缺乏足够的重视。本文将会运用相关的听力理论，如克拉申教授的“语言输入假说”理论分析这些问题，同时也会从教师因素，学生心理的角度加以探讨。在此基础上找到了解决问题的途径，即教师要在课堂上多进行如认知策略，情感策略等听力策略的训练，设计丰富多样的练习活动，把课内与课外相结合，注重改善学生的听力课外环境。听力能力的提高不是一个简单的过程。使学生爱听，会听是关键。只有这样，才能激发学生学习的积极性和主动性，最终促使学生听力水平的提高 。关键词：听力理解；问题；策略；技巧AbstractWilga M Rivers points out that people get 45% information in life by listening while 30% by speaking which proves that listening is a very important method for studying and mastering a language. So teaching listening should be seen as a key sector of teaching.In the whole view of English teaching in junior high school presently, listening teaching has made a great progress than before. But in the process of listening teaching in junior high school still exist some problems demanding prompt solution as follows: some teachers ignore the training of listening strategies; the teacher seldom use the materials concerned with characteristics of real life; the teaching atmosphere is so dull that students have no interest in listening course. With the deception of this, teachers pay little attention to outside-classroom listening. The paper intends to apply relevant listening theory to analyze these problems such as the Input Hypothesis of Professor Krashen. Besides, the paper is to approach them from the angles of teachers factors and students psychology. On the basis of these, some solutions are proposed, these are the teachers should make strategies training which includes cognitive strategy, affective strategy, design various exercise-patterns and combine the classroom teaching with extracurricular listening. Improving listening ability is a complicated process. It is crucial that the students are interested in listening and are skilled in listening. Only in this way, can the teacher stimulate the students initiative，thus improve the students listening ability.Key words: listening comprehension; problems; strategies; techniquesContentsIntroduction.1Chapter One Teaching Problems in Junior High School.21.1. Classroom teaching.21.1.1The neglect of strategic listening teaching21.1.2The contradiction of classroom and authentic listening31.1.3The dull atmosphere of listening.31.2. Teaching deficiency of outside-classroom listening.4Chapter Two The Analysis of These Problems.52.1. The violation of listening theory.52.2. The restraint of teachers quality62.3. The violation of students psychological characteristics7Chapter Three The Solutions to These Problems.93.1. To make strategic training in classroom teaching.93.1.1The training of cognitive strategies.93.1.2The training of affective strategies.123.2. To design various exercise-patterns.133.3. To value students outside-classroom listening16Conclusion.18Bibliography19IntroductionListening plays an important role in peoples communicative ability. According to W.M. Rivers and M.S. Temperly, people take in about 45% of all information needed by listening. So in the aspect of input, listening takes a decisive role. In China, listening usually starts to be taught in junior high school , yet it has merely made a little progress for many years and was still a great concern that has been haunting English teachers in middle school. English syllabus in junior high school demands that students can understand class wording with response, grasp the passage which is close to the students life at a speed of 120 words per minutes or so, and see the English voice data corresponding to the current English level. According to the syllabus, the purpose of listening teaching is to train the listening ability of the students. However, few listening strategies and techniques have been mastered by the students because they have been neglected by teachers for long; the students get used to listening to the artificial materials in listening class, so they performed like a“deaf” in authentic listening; the dull atmosphere of listening teaching has been making the students “Affective Filter” up . In view of these problems, the paper makes analysis from various angles. The Input Hypothesis of Professor Krashen was used in the course of analysis. In addition, the teacher will learn the psychological process of listening through reading this paper. Then, the students psychological characteristics were also mentioned. Suiting the remedy for the case, teachers should make strategic training in classroom teaching in order to let students know how to listen; design various exercise-patterns to make students have interest in listening and place outside-classroom listening in a more high position. Improving listening is not an easy task. It needs the patience of the teacher and perseverance of the students.Chapter One Listening Teaching Problems in Junior High School1.1. Classroom teachingClassroom teaching is the most important channel for the students to learn, therefore many problems are easily to be found in the process of it. Some teachers dont perform their roles well. In other words, they dont have a clear idea both of where they are going and how to get there. With these neglected problems, listening teaching has stepped into a vicious circle. Despite the efforts made by both students and teachers, it is still “a kettle of warm water that never comes to the boil.”1.1.1 The neglect of strategic listening trainingIn China, because of the traditional teaching style that stressed the ability to deal with every kind of examinations, both teachers and students have paid much attention to the ability of reading comprehension and written exercises. The teacher has been ignoring the students ability of listening, let alone the listening strategic training. For example, the teaching models of most listening class were confined to playing record-doing exercise-checking answers. Under the circumstances, a listening class is always going like this: the teacher just say“listening to this”and then play the tape once. As soon as the tape is over, the teacher quickly asks students to give their answers. After the tape was played three times, if most students still can not understand the discourse and complete the drill, some teachers will play the record again and again or translate the sentences one by one. At last, the meaning of the discourse was understood and the drills were completed without difficulty. Is this a satisfying lesson? The answer is absolutely no because students problems in listening still exist. Such as some students once said “I have to understand every word; if I miss something I feel I am failing and get worried and stressed”(Ur,Penny,1996:110); others stated:“I find it difficult to keep up with all the information I am getting and cannot think ahead or predict” (Ur,Penny,1996:110).An investigation has shown that most students have realized the important role of strategies in listening comprehension, but didnt know how to use them effectively. It is high time that teachers changed their roles and chose appropriate strategies for the students.1.1.2 The contradiction of classroom listening and authentic listeningIn principle, the objective of listening comprehension practice in the classroom is that students should learn to function successfully in real-life listening situations. Therefore, it is important to think about the situations students will listen to English in real life and then to think about the listening exercises the teachers do in a class. In real-life listening situation, we almost always know in advance something about what is going to be said; who is speaking. That is to say we always listen to something on purpose and with expectation. Yet in junior high school, many teachers seldom give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening. These make it difficult for students to practice and understand. In many, perhaps most cases, the listener is required to give some kind of overt immediate response to what has been said. Yet many classroom listening comprehension demands no response until the end of stretches of speech, so that when it comes this response is very largely a test of memory rather than of comprehension. In real-life, we have something that is linked to what is being said to look at. However, in classroom teaching, the speaker is seldom present for the recording is used as the basis of exercises.1.1.3 The dull atmosphere of listening teachingDuring listening class, many teachers make full use of every minute whereas the organization of the whole classroom was seldom taken into consideration. In their mind, tapes and exercise books are enough. The students just repeat automatically the same work, which is concerned with listening, doing the exercise and checking the answer. The listening materials may not suit them, however, the teachers pay little attention to rearrange them. The tasks are dull and dont require listeners to do something in response to what they hear. Pictures, maps and English songs are rarely used as an aid to teach listening. In addition to these problems, if a class is planed in such a way that a passage is followed by some questions, and students need to answer them on the spot, the students will feel quite nervous about them. In this kind of environment, students may easily feel tired. They have no interest in absorbing and interpreting the “strange sounds”.1.2. Teaching deficiency of outside-classroom listeningClassroom teaching plays a decisive role in improving students listening ability so the teachers take more notice of it and seldom consider how to cultivate an extra-curricular linguistic environment. In class, because of the confinement of teaching period and other related conditions, it is impossible for students to solve all the concrete problems of listening by practicing. Therefore, students need to draw support from extra-curricular source and condition concerned with listening. At present, more abundant and more convenient listening equipment is still not available to students in junior high schools; some schools have listening lab but they are not open to students after class; some students hope to copy the listening material of tape or MP3, but it is quite difficult to find such a place in junior high school. The English lectures, especially the foreign teachers, which are regarded as a good way to enlarge knowledge scale, are seldom organized. Except all of these, many students complain that they cannot find appropriate listening materials. At the same time, teachers provide little necessary inspection and instruction. Chapter Two The Analysis of These Problems2.1. The violation of listening theoryIn the 1960s an American linguists S.D Krashen put forward his second language acquisition theory, which attracted worldwide attention in the field of language teaching from a new perspective. The famous theory consists of five linked“hypothesis”: input, acquisition, monitor, natural order and affective filter. The Input hypothesis is simply stated by Krashen(1985:2,cited from Vivian Cook,1983:55)“human acquire knowledge in only one wayby understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input”In order to stimulate language acquisition of students, the teacher should provide them with optimal input. Krashen (1982,cited from Ni Xiuying,2005:49)states that“There are four factors for the optimal input: comprehensible, interesting and listening relevant, not form-focused and quantitative.” The convenient listening teaching lacks real-life listening characteristics. The artificial texts-with-questions make students do listening exercise with little motivation. Because the students listen to the text without knowing much about what they are going to hear or what they are listening for, and then have to answer comprehension questions usually multiple-choice. If the listening materials without any hint are not interesting, the students are very likely to fail the listening. In Krashens theory,the Affective FilterHypothesis describes variation between learners to their psychological states. If the filter isup, it means the listener is unmotivated, lacking in self-confidence or anxious. Most of the time, the listening class was regarded as a boring thing by students for their filter is always up in class.One of the factors of optimal input is quantitative. As Krashen(1982:30,cited from Ni Xiuying,2005:49) believes“an approach that provides substantial quantities of comprehensible input will do much better than any of the older approaches”. In junior high schools, the students may have two periods of listening class a week. Although they will listen as much as possible, it is still not enough for them to improve listening in the long run. Substantial quantities of comprehensible input can be guaranteed not only by classroom listening but also by outside-classroom listening. Hence, the teachers should provide the students with appropriate materials that have been graded after class. The English films and video may be sometimes difficult for the junior high school students; the other choice would be English teaching video or special English of VOA. According to the optimal input, the students must be exposed to substantial quantities.Krashen emphasized “optimal input”. Meantime, he also put forward the input principle of i+1. This is conceptualised by Krashen in terms of the learners current level called i and the level that the learner will get to next, called i+1.(Vivian Cook,1983:53). For the learner to progress rather than remain static the input has always to be slightly beyond the level at which he or she is completely at home. If the students level is “i, the teachers should provide practice with the level of “i+1” for them. During practical teaching, the teachers play more emphasis to the result. They hope to see a scene that all the students find all the correct answers on first hearing. In fact, it just reflects over-simple tasks and little progress in listening have been made. It means the students present level is “i” and the teachers have provided practice with the level of “i” for them. Such a task cannot attract their interest and encourage them to progress.2.2. The restraint of teachers qualityListening comprehension competence is a kind of ability which is important yet hard to grasp. An effective way to improve listening ability is to make strategic training. In the course of it, the teacher plays a very important role. Most teachers hardly do some more deep research on listening, although they have received professional training and possessed large quantity of professional knowledge. Teachers were misled by traditional teaching models, and they have been thinking that listening teaching is an easy task. They scarcely learn the essence of listening comprehension process. Therefore, it is not easy for them to make the construction of listening strategies. Listening comprehension is an actively cognitive process in which various linguistic competence, background knowledge and thinking ability functioning together. Lele-Maricia (1995) thinks listening comprehension includes two types of processing. According to Rost, those are top-down processing and bottom-up processing. These two information producing process include phonological perception, word recognition, grammatical analysis and contextual inferencing(Yang Jianding,2003:67). It is important for listeners to operate from both directions since both can offer keys to determining the meaning of spoken discourse.The features of psychological process of listening comprehension demand that strategies concerned with listening must be used in the comprehension process in order to understand speakers information promptly and correctly.All of the four processes are important for teachers to keep in mind as they teach. They are all relevant to a learners purpose for listening, to performance factors that may cause difficulty in processing speech, to overall principles teachers make of what techniques to use and when to use them in classroom.2.3. The violation of students psychological characteristicsNowadays, in China, the adolescent who are at the age set from 12 to 18 usually go to middle school. Because the students begin to enter the age of puberty, they are to change from half-mature to mature. The junior high school students who are in this period usually have following features in English learning. During the class, they are active and always do active response to any questions and hints given by the teachers. They usually memorize things through images. The ability to comprehend and analyze language is relatively