培养高中生英语听力理解能力初探

1、On Training High School Students English Listening Comprehension Ability Abstract: Listening is considered to be one of the most difficult skills in English learning. The high school students have some common problems of English listening, for example: the lack of interests in English listening, the

2、 lack of background knowledge of English, the lack of listening skills and so on. The core of this thesis is to discuss the corresponding skills of eliminating the obstacles in listening comprehension ability.Key words: train; listening; listening comprehension ability 培养高中生英语听力理解能力初探摘要: 在英语学习中，听力是最

3、难掌握的技能之一。在培养高中生听力理解的过程中，常会遇到以下一些问题，如学生缺乏对英语听力的兴趣，缺少英语背景知识以及缺乏英语听力技能等常见问题。本论文主要讨论消除听力理解障碍的相应技巧，从而提高学生英语听力理解能力。关键词：培养；听力；听力理解能力 CONTENTS1. Introduction12. Present State of High Students English Listening Comprehension Ability12.1 Common Problems of English Listening among High School Students22.2 Fact

4、ors Affecting Students Listening Comprehension Ability23.The Effective Ways to Improve High School Students English Listening Comprehension Ability33.1 Arousing Students Interests in English Listening43.2 Enlarging Students Background Knowledge of English53.3 Developing Students Listening Skills63.3

5、.1 Predicting63.3.2 Making Inferences73.3.3 Taking Notes83.3.4 Discussing93.4 Selecting Suitable Listening Materials94. Conclusion10Bibliography11中国最大的论文知识平台On Training High School Students English Listening Comprehension Ability 1. IntroductionThe final goal of mastering a language is to communicat

6、e with others, using the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. According to the data investigated by Rivers (Rivers，1984: 332), among the time an individual is engaged in communication, approximately 9% is devoted to writing, 16% to reading, 30% to speaking and 45% to listening. The da

7、ta indicates that effective listening comprehension is one of the guarantees to carry out successful communication and it should be considered as the most important in English teaching.In order to grasp the nature of the listening process, we need to decide what listening comprehension is. According

8、 to OMalley and Chamot, listening comprehension is “an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirements” (1990). From this defi

9、nition, we can see that listening is an active and conscious process, in which “listeners use cues from the text together with their world knowledge; and the task of comprehending is achieved by using different strategies. In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker intends, the listener mu

10、st actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources” (Littlewood, 1998：66)In this thesis, I choose the high school students as my subjects to study how to improve their listening comprehension ability because they always do poor in English listening in the college entranc

11、e examinations. I will focus on the solutions to the problems in English Listening, such as arousing students interests in English listening, enlarging students background knowledge of English and developing students listening skills. 2. Present State of High School Students English Listening Compre

12、hension Ability In the last few decades, listening, speaking, reading and writing were regarded as the four basic skills in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching in China. Although listening was listed in the foremost position among the four skills, the

13、attention it received was not as much as other skills did. To most of the Chinese students, listening is a real headache, and they could hardly learn anything in class. To their minds, what most of the teachers do in class is merely to play the recorder and check answers to listening exercises. Henc

14、e, in teaching listening comprehension, a teacher should find the difficulties that the students may encounter and classify them so as to find suitable ways to overcome them.2.1 Common Problems of English Listening among High School StudentsGenerally speaking, English teaching today, to some extent,

15、 is still a type of examination-oriented education. The students grammatical knowledge, reading ability, and writing ability are stressed, but the listening ability is somewhat neglected. In 2005, The National Collage Entrance Examination had some changes; listening comprehension is not a part of En

16、glish examination in Zhejiang province. Therefore, most of the teachers will not spend much time practicing students listening in class. The traditional listening class is usually something like a pure test. The common mode is that tapes are played, comprehension exercises are attempted by the learn

17、er and feedback is given in the form of “right answer”. During the listening comprehension process, teachers pay great attention to teaching and checking answers of the listening materials, neglecting what students need, how they feel and more importantly what they really achieve. This traditional t

18、eaching mode lacks guidance to students about listening skills. What teachers focus on are the outcomes of listening, rather than listening itself, product rather than process, since success is usually measured by correct responses to questions and answers. This type of listening teaching disobeys t

19、he cognitive regularity and the result is of course undesirable, though some students may get quite satisfactory marks in this kind of listening test.When we design listening activities, a number of special characteristics of spoken language need to be taken into consideration. Second language learn

20、ers need to pay special attention to such factors because they highly intumesce the processing of speech and can often block comprehension if they are not attended to. In other words, they can make the listening process difficult. From the teaching probation and the teaching experience as an intern

21、in Caiyuan High School, the author found that English teachers pay most of their attention to the teaching of English reading and writing. The students have few chances to practice authentic materials in listening, and their listening comprehension is poor. When listening to the text, if the student

22、s cannot understand some new words or phrases, most of them will feel upset and lose patience and confidence in the rest of the content. They hope to understand each word of the text even at the early stage of learning. However, most of them dont know much about the skills and strategies while pract

23、icing listening comprehension; and they dont have enough background know- -ledge relevant to the topics of the passages. There are some common problems among the students: 1) the lack of interests in English listening; 2) the lack of solid linguistic and background knowledge, including pronunciation

24、, vocabulary and grammar; 3) the bad habits in listening; 4) the lack of listening skills.2.2 Factors Affecting High School Students Listening Comprehension AbilityListening is the frequently employed skill in everyday language use. It is very important in the language classroom because it provides

25、input for the learners. It is the base of learning. Most learners spend more time in listening to the foreign language than in producing it themselves. It is not only that they must understand what is said to them during face-to-face interaction. There is also a vast range of situations where they w

26、ill be the silent receivers of messages directed at them, from radio, television, announcements and a multitude of other sources. Both teachers and students realize the importance of listening ability in English learning. But it is really not an easy job to acquire listening comprehension ability. B

27、ased on the teachers experiences and my experiences of intern, there are three possible reasons.First, many listening materials used in high schools are not suitable for teaching listening indeed. Most of them are not authentic and natural language in real life. They are either written language that

28、 has been read out loud and recorded, or it is a clearly scripted simulation of spoken English. Second, as for some teachers, the model of teaching listening remains a very traditional one: explain the new wordsplay the tapedo the exercisescheck the answers. They only focus on the right answer to th

29、e question while neglecting the process of learning. They do not teach the students some listening skills.Third, students are tired of attending listening classes because they dont understand much of the materials. When they are having the listening class, they will feel upset and bored. Of course,

30、the students have many other problems which are the obstacles on listening teaching.3. The Effective Ways to Imporve High School Students English Listening Comprehension Ability “Listening comprehension is a highly integrative skill. It plays an important role in the process of language learning/acq

31、uisition, facilitating the emergence of other language skills” (Larry，2002：173). In the item of English Curriculum Standards about English skills, it stipulates language skills are important component parts constructing communicative capacities. They consist of listening, speaking, reading and writi

32、ng and the comprehensive ability in using them. Listening and reading are the skills of comprehension; speaking and writing are the skills of expression. These four skills supplement to and promote one another. Students should go through lots of particular and comprehensive language practice to buil

33、d up the ability of comprehensive use of the target language as the basis of real communication (The Education Department of P.R. China, 2000). It is obvious to see that training students English listening comprehension ability should be strengthened. Proper methods can make listening effective; the

34、y can not only improve learners listening comprehension level but also foster learners language capacities. 3.1 Arousing Students Interests in English ListeningMany students said they felt nervous during the course of listening. “Students feel anxious and confused because they have great difficulty

35、in listening. They try hard in listening, but make little progress” (Wu, 2001：161). Doing listening exercises is the high intension practice, if the students pay attention to this for a long time; they will feel so tired that the efficiency will be influenced. After a short period of time, they find

36、 that listening is so difficult to learn and they believe that they have no aptitude for learning, and thus lose interest and confidence in it. As an English saying goes: Interest is the best teacher. It is teachers job to arouse the students interest, help them gain confidence in themselves and mak

37、e sure that they can achieve success in listening with the limited amount of English. In the listening class, the teacher must control the time and choose the suitable materials which will make the listening more effective. For example, the teacher can choose the materials which are interesting and

38、familiar to the listeners, and even better to use the materials about the events in real life. It is undoubtedly that authentic listening materials are too difficult for the students to deal with, but we can give the students simple tasks to complete. For example, the students are interested in watc

39、hing English films and it is a good way for students to expose themselves to authentic English. The teacher can choose a fragment of the film that students are familiar with. For the first time, they are required to catch the main idea. Before the second listening, they are told to pay more attentio

40、n to some conversations and appreciate the language in this part of the film. And then the teacher can ask some students to play the role in the film. In this way, the students get to know how the native speakers use English to communicate in real situations. They will acquire some idioms and expres

41、sions used by the native speakers. When the teacher explains the listening materials, he should speak English as much as possible, with the simple and interesting phrases and sentences. He can also use the real objects, pictures and short plays to hold the students interest and guide the students le

42、arning motivation. When the student who failed to answer the question, the teacher shouldnt give him the answer or ask someone else. Instead, he should try to improve the students responses by giving some clues or using some other teaching techniques. If the answer is right, the teacher may say, “Go

43、od. Very good. Im satisfied. Im pleased. Youve done very well this time. Thank you.” To the students who failed to answer the questions, the teacher should have friendly interaction with his students. He can provide eyes contact, body gesture and voice tone to express his respect and positive regard

44、 for the students, help them develop interest and self-confidence, because positive reinforcement is a powerful motivator for all the students. 3.2 Enlarging Students Background Knowledge of English “The process of listening comprehension is an interaction between the listeners linguistic competence

45、s, the background knowledge, and the aural utterance” (Griffiths and Parr, 2001：248). People use language to describe all the things in the world. It includes many aspects of social life, from politics, economy, culture, and customs to science, sports and arts and so on. Learning English means the a

46、pproach to the understanding of those items mentioned above. In a sense, to enlarge the students culture background knowledge means making the students get familiar with the culture contents contained in the listening texts. For example, as English learners, it is incredible that they dont know abou

47、t what date Christmas Day falls on; who George Washington is and who the present president of the United States is.In another sense, background knowledge refers to the students own knowledge, such as common knowledge, life experience and the knowledge they learn in and out of classroom. If they dont

48、 have the basic knowledge, they cannot take in the new information into their own knowledge system. An understanding of the language in listening is impossible without constantly relating it to the culture in which it is operative, because language is rooted in the reality of the culture.Alistening

49、material of English examination in Xiaoshan No. 3 High School reads “In Sydney there is a special long distance running race called the City to Surf. This race takes place on the second Sunday in August every year”.The question is: When is the race held?A. In spring B. In summerC. In autumnD. In win

50、terMany students choose C as the answer. They made such a mistake only because they are not aware of the fact that Sydney is located in the southern hemisphere, so August there is winter time not the autumn time. The correct answer should be D.Background information is important to listening. The te

51、acher should provide the students with the background knowledge and information before the listening test. Doing this not only arouses students interest in English but also helps students easily understand the listening passages. For example, after listening the passage about New Years Day in China,

52、 the teacher can introduce the overseas culture about New Year: At midnight on New Years Eve, people in Rome, Italy, throw out all the things they no longer want. The streets are filled with old chairs, beds, clothes and plates. In Madrid, Spain, the New Year comes in more quietly. People get togeth

53、er in the center of the city. Each holds a bag of grapes. As the clock strikes twelve, the people eat the grapesone for each strike. While in Tokyo, Japan, people eat noodles on New Years Eve. This food is said to bring long life. Early the next morning some Japanese families climb Mount Fuji. There

54、 they watch the first sunrise of the New Year.3.3 Developing Students Listening SkillsStudents are at a loss how to achieve a good result of listening. The teacher should have the students realize the importance of listening skills. Generally, a good knowledge of listening skills will not only make

55、listening easier, but also help improve listening comprehension ability. 3.3.1 Predicting As a good beginning is half done, an effective beginning is of vital importance to the success of the lesson. First, students need to bring to consciousness their knowledge of the listening materials, their kno

56、wledge of how information is organized in different texts and any relevant cultural information. Second, a purpose for listening must be established so that students know the specific information they need to listen for and /or the degree of details required. Using all the available information, stu

57、dents can make predictions as to what they might hear. For example, “by looking at the sequence of known words which the teacher picked out from a news broadcast: hurricanecoastFloridadamaged propertyfamilies homeless, the students would assign the role of agent to the hurricane, perceive the coast

58、of Florida to be the location, the damage to the property as the action, and homelessness the outcome” (Hedge，2003：230) Sometimes, in the listening material, a picture reflecting part of the content of the passage or dialogue is attached to each passage or dialogue. Prior to the listening activity, students are encouraged to make guesses at what might be talked about in the material by looking at the picture. In the meantime, they are asked to scan the questions or options in the exercises so that their prediction might be more reasonable.3.3.2 Making Inferences Makin