英语听力教学论文

英语听力教学论文

郝 元 和

[Abstract] Modern language teaching theory highly emphasizes the effect of “listening” on the learning and the use of language. The teaching of English listening is n‟t only a teaching of language, also a training of ability. In the four s kills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is the basic, and the most important skill. I t isn‟t only the main way of acquiring language information, but the base of improvi ng other skills. Many Chinese students regard the listening test as the most difficult part of a whole test. In this article, we start with the conditions of the middle sch ool listening teaching, point out some problems and design some activities in the b eginning of the class. Then we focus on some activities of teaching English listenin g and insist that the activities should be emphasized on the process of listening, ra ther than the result of listening. How can students improve their listening and get g ood mark, become the subject that junior middle school teachers care. During the English teaching, it is important for teachers to master the skill of designing the list ening activities

[Key Word] listening; middle school; English teaching; barrier; teaching activity desig ning;

【摘 要】随着时代的发展和进步，英语作为一种国际通用语在贸易往来和文化交流过程中发挥着不可替代的作用。掌握好英语这种交际工具，对学生将来的发展有着深远的影响。现代语言教育理论高度重视“听”在语言学习和语言使用中的作用。听力教学既是一种语言教学，也是一种技能的培养。在听，说，读，写四项技能中，听是最基础的，最重要的技能。它不仅是获取语言信息的主要途径，还是提高其他技能的基础。许多中国学生认为听力能力

的测试是所有测试中最难的部分。在本篇论文中，开篇介绍了现在中学听力教学的情况，指出当中存在的一些问题，针对课前的一些较短的时间设计了一些教学活动。然后集中介绍了听力教学活动的设计，强调听力教学活动应将目光集中在听力的过程上，而非其结果上。如何提高学生英语听力水平，使他们能取得好的成绩，成为广大初中教师所共同关注的问题。在英语教学中，教师如何进行听力教学，精心设计教学活动，如何掌握听力教学的各种技巧显得十分重要。

【关键词】听力；初中；英语教学；障碍；设计教学活动

1. Introduction

It is true that listening, speaking, reading, and writing are four basic skills in langua ge teaching and learning. Developmentally, these skills are acquired in a certain se quence. Listening is essential for developing other skills and provides a basis for la nguage learning. But it is also the most difficult of all the learning skills for learner s to master. When listening, listeners follow the speaker, thinking about what the s peaker is saying and what is going on in the mind of the speaker, guessing the s peaker‟s opinions and attitudes and catching the true meaning of the speaker‟s wor ds. Listening itself accounts for almost half of the commutative activities in one‟s d aily life. In addition, learners should have the knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary a nd grammar. Many learners are afraid of listening, looking on it as more difficult th an any other skills and pay much attention to training their ability to speak, read a nd write. Improving listening ability is not in a short time, it is a long time work.

2. Background study

Listening is important in junior students‟ En glish learning. A child first listens for a l ong time before he is able to speak, so listening plays the first and the most impo rtant role in learning a foreign language. Listening is an important means of langua

ge. “It is one of the important ways in Engl ish language communication. According to Rivers study indications, listening occupies 45% of the whole social interactions. From this, we can see that a good listening can help to improve students‟ ability o f language understanding. And some statistics show that nearly 50% students regar d listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examination s.” [1] ( p1-2) . We must admit that there is no short cut in our life, so as the En glish learning. It finds that the original initiative to learn listening is very important, which can lead the way to success.

Now have a look at our junior schools. What most teachers do in class is merely t o play the recorder and check answers to listening exercises. So most students ca n hardly learn anything in class, and listening comprehension gives much headache. Hence, in teaching listening comprehension, it is very important for teachers to fin d the problems students have and suitable ways to solve the problems. English tea ching and learning asks for quite some challenges. The challenges are the lack of adequate linguistic environment, the strong interference from their mother tongue, th e overcrowded classrooms and the lack of sufficient time for English study on the students„ side. And students are having quite a few subjects on hand and shoulder ing the great task of all-respect full development in schools. And, in many junior sc hool ， it is true that Chinese students are not so influent as those in Western coun tries mainly because they lack self-confidence and they are afraid of making mistak es .In addition, teachers are quite used to the old teaching method, which lays mo re emphasis on grammar. In order to make themselves understood by all the stude nts, some teachers would explain the grammar rulers or even the texts in Chinese rather than in English in class. Thus, students get fewer opportunities to improve t heir listening skills.

3. What are the factors influencing the listening comprehension in Chinese middle school classrooms?

Listening is an important mean of language learning. It is one of the significant wa ys in English language communication. But so many students regard listening comp rehension as the most difficult one among all kinds of examinations. Where are the ir barriers? How to train some tac tics for them? That‟s what I am going to talk abo ut here.

3.1 The analysis of the reasons for students‟ poor listening ability

3.1.1．About the teacher aspect

There is a shortage of English teachers in China. It is usually difficult for English t eachers in China to go to English-speaking countries to study or work. Most of the m don‟t have the experience of going abroad. They have learne d their English only in China. So we may say they have certain shortage.

3.1.2．The English environment

The English environment in China is different from other countries e.g. Canada. In China, English is a foreign language (EFL), not a second language (ESL). Both stu dents and teachers are doing their jobs under this condition which is quite different from that such as in the US. For example, Chinese immigrant students in Canada can learn English more quickly than those in China. Why? Because in Canada, E nglish is regarded as their second language. They enjoy a much better English env ironment as well as have English high motivations. This is what is needed in Chin a. What those students in China need is this authentic language environment which isn‟t easy to be created in China.

3.1.3. The learning aspect

Listening comprehension is the summation of hearing and understanding. If you ha ve a better level about English knowledge, you may be capable of understanding v ery well in listening to the materials, and may have an excellent response to any q uestions asked by the speakers on the tapes.

（ⅰ）Barriers on Phonetics and Phonology

It is clear that “Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of langu age, and Phonology studies how speech sounds system in a language form patter n.” (p22) English, as a new language for Chinese students, usually appears some problems exactly on Phonetics and Phonology, such as the mistakes on pronunciati on, intonation, and all kinds of skills like word stress, sentence stress, motion of so und, assimilation, sound---linking and incomplete explosion, etc. Therefore some bas ic knowledge about English Phonetics and Phonology will directly influence student s‟ listening comprehension. So designing activities must be aimed at point. So desi gning some interesting game is to let students discriminate the different pronunciati on. The key point is guiding students to find the difference themselves. For exampl e, most Chinese students find the discrimination of some sounds is a problem in li stening comprehension, especially, some vowels. E.g., they can hardly distinguish t he words like “sit—sea” and “bed--bad”. In a sentence like “He saw a thief steal in to the palace”, steal /sti:l/ is very important in understanding the sentence, but som e students just recognize it as still/stil/.

(ⅱ) Barriers on tempo

Tempo means the speed of speaking. It can be controlled by an actor who is goo d at tongue twisters. Some people enjoy more variation in tempo than others, but everyone has a norm which in characteristic of his usual conversational style. One who tends to use a rapid tempo in everyday speech in English, but Chinese stude

nts usually don‟t have such a tempo in listening. Although sometimes they can spe ak very fast, they may not catch up with the materials on normal tempo while the y‟re listening to a tape, especially to a longer conversation or a passage, that‟s the ir problems. Because they only used to listen to teachers who always read under t he average speed in daily life, or used to slow conversations with their partners w hile practicing oral English, that‟s why Chinese students can not suit the need of n ormal speed listening materials or native speakers. Teachers can help students to f orm a good sensation. Students can train the tempo through reading, because ther e are many skills on it. English teachers should take efforts to teach students how to learn some knowledge about sentence stress, rhythm, sound and intonation, etc. So, during in the class, or at the beginning of the class, teacher can design a ga me or completion about reading. The student who is the winner can give him/her a present. Through insisting on doing so, students‟s sensation can be improved. (ⅲ) Barriers on lexicology and grammar

During the process of listening comprehension, listeners should not only do the exe rcises of sound recognition, but also learn more vocabulary. If a new word appeare d while they‟re listening, they‟ll find it difficult for them to understand the whole me aning, even some students stop to listen and think about over and over the new w ord they met before while the material are going on. So does the grammar. Gram mar can help us to catch the implication of the vocal sounds, and understand the m well, and it is also the essential condition of a whole passage comprehension. It gives us a basis for judging when the action happens, who is the operator or sup porter? What is the factual evidence? Whether it is the subjunctive mood? Etc. If y ou don‟t have a solid foundation on grammar it‟ll directly influence your achieving g ood results while you are listening.

(ⅳ) Barriers on listening habits

The main purpose of listening is to understand the general idea of the materials. D uring the listening process, they should try to catch the major content, which‟s the key point. But many Chinese students have some bad habits while listening. For e xample, they always try their best to get the meaning of each words, each sentenc es. Once they meet a new word or a difficulty sentence, they will stop to think. It i s doubtless they can‟t catch up with the speed any more. Still some students can‟t directly understand materials in English, but with the help of Chinese, experienced the process of a heart translation. These bad habits are the main factors influenci ng their listening comprehension. In fact, it is unnecessary to know every word, ev ery sentence, only should catch the main idea and grasp the major point, that‟s en ough. If you concentrate to think, you can‟t catch up with the materials, and also t hat‟s why you have no time to attend to the main content, let alone seize the impli cation of it.

Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to point out the bad habits and then help the students form good habits. Here are some bad listening habits on Listening, w hich are paraphrased below.

“(1) A poor listener will/ turnoff his or h er ears as soon as he or she decides a lis tening task is going to be dull.

(2). A poor listener listens to only facts and ignores the ideas, the general picture.

(3). A poor listener will fix his or her eyes on the teacher or blackboard, then relax, or Do some thing else, expecting to get the information out of the tape scripts lat er.

(4).A poor listener will use very little distraction --footsteps, a door opening or closi ng, a cough, a dropped book —as an excuse to stop listening to the recording or t

he t eacher.” ( p1-2)

(ⅴ) Barriers on cultural background

Language is a kind of cultural expression. It is necessary for students to know so me background about the English-speaking countries, such as the history, culture, c ustoms and habits, even life styles. Many students lack of these kinds of knowledg e, no wonder they are always making mistakes about them. For example, if teache rs give two pieces of passage for them to understand the former, because Spring Festival is the traditional festival in China, e verybody knows it very well, that‟s help ful for their understanding, however the latter about the Thanksgiving day, students know little about it, it is not easy for them to understand, even very difficult for th em to answer some questions about it. Listeners should base on their background knowledge about the topic and their experience of how talks on such themes are s tructured (as in the case of listening to news or weather reports) besides their und erstanding of language forms related to the subject area.

(ⅵ) Barriers on psychological factors

It is very important of students to have a good state while listening. Students shoul d get clear that listening is the first step of any language learning, they should pay attention to learn it well at the very beginning.

The process of listening comprehension is a very complicated psychological one. Li nguists tell us that it is easy for one to produce frightens when he is at his nervou sness. If students meet some words or sentences they don‟t understand by chance, they ‟ll have the fidgets, even some students are afraid of listening at the very beg inning. It have placed all sorts of obstacles on the important information invisibly a nd make them less effective, this lowered the degrees of listening comprehension. On the other hand, eternal links, such as the noise made by inside or outside fact

ors, the quality of the recorders, the loudness and the articulation of the sounds, et c, may all become obstructions influencing the students‟ listening well. “Psychological linguistics regards listening is involved with the perception of a language: Percep tion is to turn the voice into meanings ，and it is an analysis of the language signal perception. The process of the language perception is an activity of the short--tim e memorization .” (p1)

Training and improving students‟ ability in listening comprehension should combine daily teaching with following points. First of all, in English class, teachers should try to organize their classes in English, which‟s the most effective way, students can concentrate their attention while listening to English. Teachers can also know from the expressions in s tudents‟ eyes if they understand. Second, using the first five mi nutes efficiently before the class, or the revision time, ask students to listen to the radios, television programmers in English. Never be afraid of it. Psychological qualit y is quite important to do everything, so does listening comprehension.

4．How to improve students’ listening ability ---designing effective classroom activities Among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), foreign language learners ofte n complain that listening is the most difficult one to acquire. Teaching listening should fo cus on process.

There are three stages in listening activities for language learners: pre —listening, while —li stening, post —listening, which will discuss in detail as follow:

4.1 Pre —listening activities

“Research points out that listening activity in general should consist of a pre—listening ph ase, which should make the context for listening explicit, clarify the purposes for listening, and establish goals, procedures and roles for listening. So a pre —listening activity can in

volve listeners in the following ways:

(1).By posing the tasks before the students listen to the topic, they are given a purpose fo r listening, which forces them to focus on selected information.

(2).The listener brings an orientation to a listening event. By opening up the topic, it arou ses certain expectations and mentally prepares the students for the topic, it may also activ ate latest knowledge of vocabulary associated with the topic.

(3).Activating learner’s scripts and tuning in their prior knowledge about the topic helps to relate their background knowledge to the topic to be heard, thus enhancing the comprehe nsion and interpretation of the received message.

(4).By brainstorming what they know about the topic before listening, learners will be abl e to compare what they know with what they are going to hear, and listen selectively.” (p10)

4.1.1 Purpose

No less than in speaking, the listening process means that the learner must be motivated by a communicative purpose .This purpose determines to a large extent what meanings the y must listen for and which parts of the text are most important to them. For example, th ere may be parts where he does not need to understand every detail, but only to listen fo r the general gist. There may be other parts where a topic of special significant arises, re quiring them to listen for more detailed information —for example, so that they can report about the topic to other members of a group. At other times, a task may require them t o listen for specific pieces of information distributed throughout the text.

“The activities will be grouped according to the kind of response that the learner must produce:

(1)Performing physical tasks (e.g. selecting pictures)

(2)Transferring information (e.g. into tabular form)

(3)Reformulating and evaluating information” (p67-68)

4.1.2Choose the appropriate materials

Before having the class, teachers must choose and analysis the materials. “Teacher need to listen the tape all the way through .That way, they will be prepared for any problems, noises, accents etc. That way they can judge whether students will be able to cope with the tape and the tasks that go with it.” ( p100) By doing so, the teacher will know the l ength of the materials, the difficult points and the focus of the materials, so the teacher c an decide in advance how to go on with the teaching in class. Of course, it is a demand for teachers if all other courses. But some teachers do believe that they can teach listeni ng course without any preparation so long as they have the tapes and reference books. So some researchers would like to emphasize the importance of preparations for a class: it i s the basic need and also a basic insurance of an effective listening teaching. And the rol e of analyst, which means that teachers should analyze the functional patterns of the lang uage used in the listening materials that students are to hear. The functions of a language can be simply divided into two patterns: the communication of emotion and the conveyin g of information. Communication of emotion means that the purpose of using a language is mainly for the establishment of harmonious relationship among the participants of social interaction.

4.1.3 Skills

(ⅰ)Prediction.

Research on speech proce ssing and interpretation suggests that the listener’s ability to mak e intelligent guesses about what will come next plays a crucial role in their understanding of speech, and prediction is regarded by many researchers as on of the most powerful fa ctors in comprehension. Therefore, a good listener is a good predictor. “By helping our st udents become better predictors, we are helping them become better listeners.” ( p86)

Prediction also involves asking questions and answering them. According to Fisher and Te rry active comprehension is process of generating questions while reading and searching fo r answers to them. Questioning helps to establish the purpose and causes the listener to in teract with the speech, confirming or rejecting expectations.

“Penny Ur sum marizes five types of cues that listeners depend on for making predictions about continuation of an utterance:

(1) The stock formula of the language, such as clichés, idioms, quotations and proverbs.

(2). Stress on a particular word in the first part of an utterance is often explained or clari fied by a comment in the second.

(3). The logical relationship between the first part of an utterance and the second is often signaled by a conjunction.

(4.) There is construction where the speaker proclaims in advance the kind of thing he is going to say.

(5). Rhetorical questions or bold, brief statements, particularly in the negative, are often fo llowed by answers or amplification in the form of reasons, examples or explanations.” (p11)

(ⅱ)Setting the scene

Another type of pre-listening activity is to set the scene for the students, for example: pic ture, video, TV etc. Listening to passages in the classroom can be more difficult than list ening in real life, because of the lack of context .So the teacher can help provide the bac kground information to activate learners’ schema or illustrate the picture to help students t o understand the main idea, so they will be better prepared to understand what they hear. (ⅲ)Listening for the gist

This type of the pre-listening activity is listening for the gist. It is very important to give students practice in this area, because in real life, they can not listen to the materials se

veral times. Therefore, it will be impossible for them to catch all the information, so they need to be fit with some ambiguity in listening and realize that they can still learn even when they do not understand every word. Listening for the gist is familiar with skimmin g a passage in reading. The key point lays in let students some questions that focus on t he main idea or the tone or the mood of the passage. Find whether students can answer t he questions even though they can not understand each word or phrase in the passage. (ⅳ)Listening for specific information

There are situations in real life where they listen only for some specific details and ignor e the rest of the entire message. For example, when they listen to the weather report on TV, they are only interested in the temperature in the city where they live or where we plan to go on the holiday, or when they are sitting in a train station or an air port, they do not listen to the details of all the announcements. It is important to expose our student s to a variety of type of listening texts for a variety of purpose so that they will develop a variety of listening strategies to use for different situations.

4.2 While - listening activity

This stage is the most difficult for the teacher to control, because this is where a student should pay attention and get the information actively. However, if the teacher can provid e a reason, goal, or task for the learner, this should encourage and help students to focus their attention.

In daily class, students must use all aspects of personal listening ability. At the beginning of this article, we have discussed the problems on students’ listening ability.

According to these problems, we must train the comprehensive listening ability in daily ti me.

Following are some special training

4.2.1 Listen and tick

A large part of what makes a listening task easy or difficult is what the teacher asks the students to do with the materials. If what students all need to do just is tick as they he ar them, the task will be much easier. What you need to tick, you can hear them clearly. Because it is quite easy, ticking is very fit for the students who are in grade 7. It can e ncourage them to listen to the dialogue or passage carefully.

4.2.2 Listen and act

These activities relate to a method of teaching called Total Physical Response, which conc entrates on learning language by listening and responding physical to commands or directi ons. Here is an example:

“Beginning TPR

Procedure:

(1.) Have two students positioned to two chairs.

Commands supporting vocabulary

Stand up fast slowly

Sit down table chair

Walk head stomach

Stop door blackboard

Turn around

Touch

(2)pick two other students and add more vocabulary that are in the classroom--- such a s book, pencil, paper, desk, floor, teacher —and add to the commands put, place, scratch..

(3)use the following type of commands repeatedly in random order, rotating pairs of stu dents from time to time, until you can see that all the students clearly understand what th ese commands and actions mean.

For example:

Put the pencil on the book.

Scratch your head.

Scratch your stomach.

Put the paper in the box.

Put your hand on your head.

Place the box on the teacher’s head.

Scratch your head and stomach. ” [10] (p11)

4.2.3 Listen and draw

This is similar to acting out physically, but in this type, the students are drawing picture, diagrams on paper. “This type of activity works very well as an information gap activity between pairs of students.” [11] (p90) One example: one student draws a simple picture and then tells his/her partner how to draw it in English .Neither partner can look at eac h other’s drawing during the task. After they have completed the task, they can compare t heir pictures to see how similar they are.

Other way: according to last example.

“Introduce the word dr aw. This opens up a rich network of things you can ask your stud ents to do. Start very simply with the familiar items that the students have already interna lized through TPR.

For example:

Draw a table

Draw a chair

Draw a hand

Draw a box

Draw a hand on a door

Draw a window and a hand and book. ”[12] (p11)

4.3 post --- listening activity

Post--- listening, teachers can determine how well the students have understood what they listened to, but it is important to design the tasks well. “One important point t o keep in mind is whether we are testing the students’ listening comprehension or their memory. In fact, in real life, listener can remember the gist of the conversation, but cannot remember exactly what words were said. It is more natural to select and interpret what we hear rat her than repeat everything we have heard.” [13] ( p187) .Here are some types of post—li stening activity: multiple choice questions, answering questions, note-taking, gap —filling an d dictogloss.

“It is important to remember when desi gning activities not to demand that students remem ber more details the native-speaker would in a real life, because we do not want our stud ents to get into the habit of thinking that they need to understand and remember.” [14] ( p117)

5. Conclusion

As teachers change their practice activity they gain new insights about the learning potenti als of their students. “These successes have encouraged teachers to persevere in their effor ts to design learning experiences that provide multiple entry and exit points for their stude nts.” [15] ( p290-297)

During the exercitation in middle school, in fact, teachers did not teach the phonetics a nd phonology. Main practice on listening is just about the textbook. For example, GO FO R IT, the book has a small part for training listening. but the listening teaching is limited. It must add some activities. In the listening activities, according to the certain purpose, it can choose different skills: listen and act, listen and draw, and so on. These types of act ivities can be designed into games, which are popular for students.

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