How to Improve Students’ English Listening Skills 英语本科毕业论文.doc

how to improve students english listening skills . introduction .obstacle of influencing listening skill 1. obstacle of mother tongue, students usually go through a translation process from english to chinese. 2. obstacle of language foundation knowledge obstacle of speech sounds, some students cant pronounce 44 phonemes well. obstacle of speech speed, speakers speak extremely fast. obstacle of new words and grammar, some sentences are ling and complicated. .the major listening skills 1. listening to gist is an important skill that we try to get ideas of what we hear. 2. listening to specific information enables the listener to pick out from the whole text what he regards as important or relevant. 3. listening to detailed information 4. inferring can helps people to listen between the lines. 5. notetaking is widely used by people in their daily lives. .selecting suitable listening material 1. how to find listening material 2. how to choose listening material .conduction of listening class 1.prelistening is to introduce enough about the topic, type of text or purpose for listening. 2.whilelistening is for students to employ a certain listening skill. 3.postlistening. the purpose of this stage is to consolidate what has beenlearned by the students. .conclusion .referencehow to improve students english listening skills abstract: all of us know. listening is so important in our daily life that more and more english teachers have become concerned with developing students listening ability. however few teachers would say it is easy to teach listening. there are two main reasons. first, since listening is a mental activity carried out in our head. it is very difficult to know exactly. what mental processes are involved as one tries to extract meaning from an aural text. second. to listen successfully. students should not only understand the language itself. but they should have knowledge of such things as the topic, the context the speakers and so on. some students many know a little after they listen to material. but some cant understand the meaning of the material at all. therefore. this essay analyzed students main obstacles in english listening and put forward some concrete measures about improving listening level. key words: obstacle. analyze. improve. listening material. listening stayed. how to improve students english listening skills .introduction nowadays english is widely used in some big cities and companies. they need many people of talent who understand english. we can see that an ability to communicate in english listening might help them get a better job, which would mean dealing with non-chinese people. in tourism education or trade. those who enter other professions such as medicine or scientific research might see the need to be able to communicate in english in order to attend international conferences in their profession or read professional journals. so that they can benefit from the research done in other countries. they might learn english from or in the library. they might learn english for listening to english program radio broadcasts or pop songs, or for watching films or television programmers in english. on the other hand, in the english test. many students feel that listening is difficult to listen to the material. so as an english teacher should help students improve their listening level. .obstacle of influencing listening skills 1. mother tongue. usually we can only speak and listen to english in a book, because of lacking a good language environment. we have been paying attention to the traditional grammar translation teaching method, most of students lacked english training, they usually cant think in english, therefore ,listening comprehension only have the aid of english grammar analysis during english studying and in general usually translate them into mother tongue. so when we listen to english. we usually go through a translation process from english to chinese. all the students have an intense wish. when they listen to english and want to report chinese about listening material. it seems to only have the aid of mother tongue, but remember and understand the contents of listening, not directly realize the concept that it points to. as a result, it is certain to last reaction time, therefore listener cant catch up with speakers speech. usually the brain cant set free from translation, thinking, and comprehension. 2. language foundation knowledge (1) speech sounds. because most of students speech foundation is weak, they cant pronounce 44 phonemes well and cant control the aureate pronunciation of every new word. if things go on like this, especially some new make out some contuse phonemes easily, such as: sheepship, househorse, tooto, etc. on the other hand, because some students cant understand the british and american speech teaching system, along with opening policy to out world. some american language materials will become more and more popular. once some students hear these words, they dont know what course to take. (2) speech speed obstacle the reading speed of students english textbook is showed in the tape, and some english teachers speak english slowly in class, in the course of time, the students form a habit. once they ran into some listening materially of reading in normal language speed and they cant adapt. if they run into some continual reading, weak reading, stress, lose to blasting, stress moving etc. they dont know what course to take either. (3) obstacle of new words and grammar during the period of listening comprehension, listener is not only distinguish but also a profess that realization the coherent language in the meantimefor example, some new words appear in the coherent language. its hard to recognize its meaning. the grammar is also similar. its a necessary condition of helping us comprehendlistening material correctly, giving us the time of judging action happens rightly, the executer of action and the supporter of action subjunctive and facts etc. and providing the necessary basis. if grammar knowledge is poor, it will influence the result of listening comprehension directly. . the major of listening skills. 1. listening to gist (main points) when people listen in their mother tongue, they consciously or unconsciously employ some particular listening skills. listening to gist is an important skill used by people when they try to get a general idea of what they hear, which is just like reading for gist, for instance. when a listener watches a drama, he concentrates on every word spoken by the actors. in our teaching, we often let students listen to the tape. after listening, the students are required to decide upon a title for the text or to write out the answers to a few questions about some specific aspects of the text, or to fill in some blanks with the words in the text etc. these are all good ways of listening to gist. deciding upon a title, sequencing the main points and writing a brief summary are all useful tasks to develop the skill of listening to gist. however they differ from one another in the amount of response required of the listener. the listeners response is, in fact, a commonly used criterion to measure the complexity of a listening task. according to it, all listening tasks fall into four categories (a) those requiring no response (b) those requiring short responses (c) those requiring longer responses (d) those using listening as a basis for study or discussion. 2. listening to specific information. the skill of listening to specific information enables the listener to pick out from the whole text what he regards as important or relevant. this is the listening equivalent of the reading skill of scanning, when using the skill, the listener does not focus on the meaning of every word, but concentrates only on the information he needs, for example. (1) while listening. let students look at the list below and circle the names and numbers mentioned on the tape. it is the easiest. (2) while listening. let students fill in the table below with the information on the tape, or match the names mentioned on the tope with their circulation numbers. (3) while listening. fill in the blanks with the information you hear on the tape. it is most difficult. write out in the space below the names of the newspapers mentioned on the tape and the number of copies each newspaper sells every day. 3. listening to detailed information. listening to detailed information is another important skill used by the listener to obtain a detailed knowledge of a topic. unlike the listener who adopts the skill of listening to gist, the listener who employs this skill is not satisfied with getting only a general idea, but tries to secure on exact and detailed picture. for example: (1) while listening. let students choose the best answer to each of the following questions according to the information on the tape. (2) while listening. decide whether the following statements are true or false. (3) answer the following questions according to what you hear on the tope. 4. inferring when we listen, we may need to do the equivalent that is listening for what is not directly stated. the skill which helps people to “listen between the lines” is called inferring. it is a skill which allows the listener to decode what is indirectly expressed including the relationships between speakers, the moods or attitudes of the speakers, the physical setting of the text and so on. there are several sources for a listener to rely on when he is trying to make an inference. one is intonation. a sentence, if produced with different types of intonation, can express totally different meanings. for instance, if a person says“ close the door, please.” with a rising intonation, he may be making a polite request. but if he utters the same sentence with a falling intonation, he may be expressing annoyance or criticism of the other persons forgetting to close the door. another source is the speakers choice of words. if a speaker uses a lot of formal words, he is probably, speaking in a formal situation. on the other hand, if most of his words are colloquial, he is likely to be chatting with someone he is familiar with. in addition, if the listener can the speaker. watching the facial expressions, gesture or body movement can also help him to infer the speakers attitudes or moods. 5. note taking notetaking is a kill which combines listening and writing, because it require the listener to write down, either word for word or in his own words. what he considers important while listening. notetaking is widely used by people in their daily lives. we take down telephone messages for friends and members of our family. we write down directions for getting to friends house, we write down the time and place of a meeting our boss wants us to attend. we take lecture notes in fact we write down every piece of information were told that we dont want to forget. when you take notes, you dont need to use exactly some words, but it is necessary for you to get the meaning right. for example: in notes we often write “&”instead of “and”, and we shorten certain words in ways that we recognize them, such as “poss.”, for “possible”, or “shd”for “should”. we also tend to leave out definite and indefinite articles. you must remind students, though that when they come to write their notes out in full sentences, they should not use these abbreviations. . selecting suitable listening material. 1. how to find listening material we have noticed that a lot of the listening texts provided in my supplementary textbooks consist of monologues. which are probably the lead common forms of listening text that we have to deal with in real life? sometimes we find its provided for us in the school textbooks, and we may want to design some classroom activities on texts that we collect ourselves. we can start from these. published cassettes television or radio programmers teachers talk classmates talk foreign visitors talk video tapes, video tapes are another good source of listening material, they not only give students practice in listening, but also allow them to see the speakers and their physical setting. which may help in decoding the message? have mentioned losing songs as a source of listening material, as young people usually like listening to pop songs and there are many pop songs in english available. 2. how to choose listening material. different teachers teach different students at different school, they will naturally make different choices, however there are still a few principles for a teacher to apply when he tries to select for his students suitable listening material. as we know, language is often the first thing many teachers would consider, while you do not want the language to be beyond the level of comprehension of your students so the language should provide a challenge to the students so that they feel they gain something new from it and really use their listening skills to the full. as for length, a listening text of between half a minute and two minutes is most suitable. if it is too short, it will not allow the students to have enough time to get used to the topic or speakers voice or tone. if it is too long, if might put too much of strain on the students, who can be easily distracted or decorticated due to boredom or tiredness. in terms of content, there is little doubt that a listening text which is interesting and thought provoking is best for the students, for only such a text can stimulate them to try all the means to extract the meaning. students are not motivated if the concepts are beyond their understanding. they should listen to something that interests them and contain some new information for them to find out. a listening text illustrated with some pictures, maps or charts is often desirable, as it can give students useful visual support, especially when the topic is unfamiliar. this graphic material can also be very useful to the teacher in designing tasks, such as labeling a map or a picture, interpreting information in a graph, giving a suitable caption to a picture or drawing. with regards to the style of delivery. students should be introduced to the listening texts spoken with a variety of accents rather than being limited only to chose with the standard one. so as to prepare them to understand different people in reallife situations. remember that texts spoken at a speed skiver than the one normal for its purpose. will lose a great deal of its natural rhythm and intonation, and therefore leave the students with a wrong impression of “real” spoken language. the questionof a listening text was discussed at length in the lost task much depends on thelevel of your students, but remember that the eventual aim is to understand and produce natural spontaneous speech. the problem with the classroom situation is that the quality of recording or playing equipment might already place a strain on the listener. which could be aggravated by under background noise on the tape? how are unobtrusive backgrounds sounds, such as music, traffic, and people around speaking quietly, weather conditions, can add realistic flavones to the context and also give an indication of the physical setting? . conduction of listening class the whole process of a listening class can be explained in terms of a film shouting analogy. the teacher can be thought of as a “director” and the students “actors” and “ actresses”, a listening class just like the film shooting, is also divided into three stages. prelistening, it refers to the period before the students start listening. the main purpose of the prelistening stage is to introduce enough about the topic, type of text or purpose for listening in order to activate the students schema and get them ready to predict what they will hear and make sense of it, most of the students must have a purpose to listen and employ the most appropriate skills. the teacher could give students the key words from the text and ask them to predict the content or topic of the text, and then they could listen to check that prediction. whilelistening, it is the period in which students perform the act of listening. this is the stage in which students actually carry out all the activities while the teacher observes and operates the machine. their purpose is for students to employ a certain listening skill. there are in general two aims, one is to external students ability of matching what they expect to hear with what they actually hear and of utilizing their knowledge of the language and the world to decipher the meaning, the other is to train students to approach listening with specific skills based on certain purposes and contexts. postlistening stage. it is the last period of a listening class. in a number of teachers mind, the postlistening stage is a period in which the teacher checks students answers. points out their problems or explains the listening text, however. in recent years, there has been a trend to engage students in some kinds of speaking or writing activities after they have finished listening. the successful completion of such activities is built upon the comprehension of listening text. the purpose of this stage is to consolidate what has been learned by the students. . conclusion rarely if ever do ace pass a day without listening to something, every day we listen to different people for vario