A Discussion on the Teaching of English Listening to Middle School Students.doc

a discussion on the teaching of english listening to middle school students关于初中英语听力教学的讨论abstract：language is the tool that the human beings use to exchange information and communicated. english is the most popular language. the aim of learning english is to communicate with others. listening is the first important step in language communication, because it is the main method for people to understand each other. this paper, in view of the influential factors of teaching middle school students english listening, put forwards some effective tactics for the english teachers to develop and improve their students listening ability in english teaching.key words: listening; influential factors of english listening; effective tactics of teaching listening摘要: 语言是人类交流与沟通的工具，而英语是使用最广泛的语言。英语学习的目的是为了与其他人进行交流，而听是语言交流中的第一个重要步骤，它是人们理解他们的话语的重要手段。本文通过对初中英语听力教学的影响因素的考虑，提出了发展和提高初中学生英语听力的有效策略。关键词：听力；英语听力影响因素; 听力教学的有效策略1contentsabstract：i摘要:iipart i. introduction1part ii. the current situation of the teaching of english listening in middle school22.1 the importance of listening22.2 the problem of the teaching of listening2part iii. the influential factors of teaching middle school students english listening43.1 basic ability43.1.1 phonetics and phonology factor43.1.2 vocabulary factor43.1.3 grammar factor53.2 chinese interference53.3 listening habits53.4 background knowledge63.5 psychological factors7part vi. effective tactics of teaching middle school students english listening84.1 improvement of students pronunciation84.2 enhancement of students vocabularies and grammar knowledge84.2.1 vocabulary84.2.2 grammar94.3 extension of students cultural background knowledge94.4 development of students interest in english listening and triumph of psychology barriers94.5 development of students listening skills104.5.1 prelistening activities104.5.2 while-listening activities114.5.3 post-listening activities11part v. conclusion12bibliography1a discussion on the teaching of english listening to middle school studentspart i. introductionwith the development and open-door to the outside world of china，the scale of english education becomes larger and larger and lots of significant achievements have also been made in it. english, a tool for communication, has a profound influence on the students future development. as technology advances and trade and exchanges between countries increase, it is becoming more and more important to understand spoken english in many situations such as face- to-face, on the telephone, in business meeting, lecture, speech, television, and so on. in the four skills of english: listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is the basic, and the most important skill. listening is an important step in the learning of english but it is often neglected. as teachers, they should pay more attention to listening teaching, so they can perfect their teaching skills, find out their students weakness and imperfection and improve their abilities.part ii. the current situation of the teaching of english listening in middle schoollistening is a basic component in our communication, but for most middle school students, among listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, listening is the most difficult one, that is to say, it is their common weakness.2.1 the importance of listening“it is one of the important ways in english 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 of language understanding. and some statistics show that nearly 50% students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examinations”(任小萍，2001：1-2). when listening, listeners follow the speaker, thinking about what the speaker is saying and what is going on in the mind of the speaker, guessing the speakers opinions and attitudes and catching the true meaning of the speakers words. listening itself accounts for almost half of the commutative activities in ones daily life. in addition, learners should have the knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. improving listening ability is not in a short time, it is a long time work.2.2 the problem of the teaching of listeninglistening comprehension is a complex activity: it requires students to use their phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and background knowledge, so most students have many difficulties in listening comprehension. many learners are afraid of listening, looking on it as more difficult than any other skills and pay much attention to training their ability to speak, read and write. at the same time, listening is often ignored by both teachers and students. they do not pay much attention to their learning of listening, because they think in the entrance examination for high school listening test does not occupy an important position. many students are good at writing, but they are afraid of listening and they even dont understand what the foreigners say. in fact, if they want to get a high mark in the examination they must practice their listening, because listening skill is the basic of other english skills.part iii. the influential factors of teaching middle school students english listeninglistening comprehension can be affected by various factors which include students basic ability, chinese interference, listening strategies, background knowledge, and psychosocial factors. there are also other obstacles such as some new words, new sentence patterns, new grammar, or connecting and weak reading, lost tone and stress shifting in the listening material. all those will make the listener fell difficult to not understand the meaning of the material. 3.1 basic ability3.1.1 phonetics and phonology factorit is clear that “phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of language, and phonology studies how speech sounds system in a language form pattern”(戴炜栋,2002:22). “according to an american scholar, rita wong, phonetics is crucial in listening comprehension. this is because sound is the direct medium of listening and speaking. only by using correct sound, can we express our views and ideas accurately. similarly, it is inevitably that poor pronunciation will cause aural difficulties in smooth acceptance of others ideas expressed in correct pronunciation.”(马占祥, 2002:96) unfortunately, we found that many middle school students lack of basic phonetic knowledge of distinguishing sounds, liaison, incomplete plosive, words stress and intonation. these linguistic obstacles affect listening comprehension deeply and severely hinder their improvement in listening ability. for example: the pronunciation is not accurate, especially for similar words. such as: jeep-sheep; beatbit; countcant; herehair; muchmarch; quitequiet; kitchenchicken; mouthmouse.3.1.2 vocabulary factorduring the process of listening comprehension, listeners should not only do the exercises of sound recognition, but also learn more vocabulary. vocabulary is the building materials of languages, so students must master enough vocabularies if they want to improve their listening ability. new words appearing in the listening passage seem boring for students. definitely they will meet some difficult words while listening. when they hear unfamiliar words, they become nervous and ponder the word. as a result, they fail to accept the following sentences. “vocabulary is the major component of language; people always compare vocabulary to building material. for every english learner, study english without a certain amount of vocabulary is just like builders building houses without bricks”(刘红梅,2004:96). during the process of listening, listeners should not only do the exercises of sound recognition, but also grasp the language continuity.3.1.3 grammar factorgrammar plays an important part in the analysis of written sentence structure and sentence pattern. the purpose of the analysis is to comprehend the whole passage. the same is true of listening comprehension of sentence. systematic grammar knowledge is like a strong frame of a building, it can help students to catch the implication of vocal sounds, and understand them well, and it also can tell students the tense, voice and mood. lets take an example: i should have studied last semester. if a learner well knows the function of the subjunctive mood, he or she can easily decode the implication of the speaker: he or she should study last semester, but he or she did not.3.2 chinese interference“still some students cannot directly understand english materials; they are used to translating english into chinese while listening”(池涌,2004:44). in china, english is a foreign language, both students and teachers are doing their jobs under this condition which is quite different from that such as in the us. chinese students can not use english to think. when they hear the information which is transferred by english, most students would translate the information into chinese, and then understand the information, but during listening time is limited, they will miss a lot of information.3.3 listening habitsduring the listening process, the students should understand the general idea of the materials, and try to catch the major content, which is the key point. but many chinese students have some bad habits while listening. the students always try their best to get the meaning of each words, each sentences. sometimes when they meet a new word or a difficulty sentence, they will stop to think, then they can not catch up with the speed any more. actually, it is unnecessary to know every word, every sentence, only should catch the main idea and grasp the major point, that is enough.(liuyangchun once summed up some bad listening habits as follows: “(1). a poor listener will/ turn off his or her ears as soon as he or she decides a listening 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 something else, expecting to get the information out of the tape scripts later.(4).a poor listener will use very little distraction -footsteps, a door opening or closing, a cough, a dropped bookas an excuse to stop listening to the recording or the teacher.”(刘阳春,1996: 1-2) “language is a kind of cultural expression. it is very necessary for students to know.”3.4 background knowledge the background knowledge is indispensable in listening comprehension. “language is a kind of cultural expression. it is very necessary for students to know some background about english countries, such as the history, culture, customs and habits, even life styles” (戴炜栋 何兆熊,2002:28). language is a kind of cultural expression. the relationship between language and culture is very close, and different countries have different cultures. it is necessary for students to know some background knowledge about the english countries, such as the history, culture, customs, life styles and habits. if students lack these kinds of knowledge, they cannot understand the listening materials correctly. for example, there are two passages of the same difficulty. one explains something about chinas spring festival; the other is about christmas day of the west countries. the former is easy to understand but the latter is more difficult, why? it is clear that the students know little about the latter.3.5 psychological factorslisteners listening ability is also influenced by psychological factors. during listening, the listener may meet some words or sentences they do not know, it will make them feel very nervous. “anxiety has a negative effect on listening comprehension”(闫美英, 2001: 69). some students say that as soon as the listening is played, they become worried and afraid, even feel that they have nothing in minds. some students are too eager to get high marks, but they are afraid that they cant follow the exam content and listening speed, so they are over worried. as a result, they seem to have nothing in mind, and then they fail to catch the information which they need.part vi. effective tactics of teaching middle school students english listening4.1 improvement of students pronunciation “to improve this kind of ability, students need to practice in hearing and saying the sounds of isolated words pronounced by a native speaker”(张婷平, 1994: 76). in order to improve the students pronunciation, the teacher should ask students to do more exercise. at the beginning of the listening training, teachers must introduce something about connecting reading, weak reading, lost tone and stress shifting, and pay more attention to the pronunciation and intonation, so that students can overcome the barriers in the english listening. for example, let them distinguish the difference between two minimal pairs, or to identify whether the two sounds are the same.4.2 enhancement of students vocabularies and grammar knowledge4.2.1 vocabularyvocabulary is the foundation of a language. listeners must have enough vocabulary for their improvement in listening because vocabulary affects listening directly. if students do not have enough vocabulary, when they come across some unfamiliar words or phrases they will feel nervous and miss some information, which will affect students global understanding of the listening text. therefore, students must try every method to increase their vocabulary. to acquire a large vocabulary the students should accumulate every word they have learnt. even if some students vocabulary is large enough, they can still come across new words. they must continue listening, and try to use both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge or cues which they can get in further listening to infer the information. for teachers, they should explore new ways to teach students vocabularies and make students interested in memorizing words. for example, ask students to learn some words by heart through sentences, which helps students to remember the meaning of the words and its morphological features and usage in a concrete language background.4.2.2 grammargrammar plays an important part in listening. the teacher can never neglect grammar teaching. grammar can help the students to analyze sentence structure and pattern, and help them to understand the whole material. the purpose of recognition of the sentence pattern and capture of the key information is to understand the meaning of the speakers utterance. so listener has to have a good command of the knowledge of grammar in order to improve his listening comprehension. 4.3 extension of students cultural background knowledge“language and culture are intrinsically dependent on each other. a language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events, which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the peoples attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc. in a word, language embodies culture; language expresses cultural reality”(戴炜栋、何兆雄,2002:128). the teacher should encourage students to touch english as much as possible, such as reading some english newspapers, magazines and original novels, which contain a lot of information of english-speaking countries. the more students read, the more knowledge they know. teachers can let students make full use of the english movies or tv programs to gain some background knowledge. all these aim at making students familiar with those english speaking culture and traditions besides what have been explained in the classroom. students who know more about western courtiers culture do better than students who know little about western courtiers culture in listening comprehension. so students must read widely, enlarge common knowledge and pay attention to the currents and newest achievements of scientific culture.4.4 development of students interest in english listening and triumph of psychology barriers the teacher should help their students to realize that although listening is very difficult, but it is the first step of any language learning. it is very important for students to have a good psychological state while listening. so teachers should help their students to built up confidence to overcome the difficult, and never give up. in traditional english class, teachers and students pay much attention to grammar, and many students are unwilling to open their mouths to speak english. they feel nervous and are afraid of making mistakes. all these factors hinder students listening comprehension. the teacher should combine speaking and listening together, encourage the students to speak out. students will get good marks if they listen to the listening materials in a relaxed and pleasant mood. to arouse students interest in english, the teacher can choose some interesting materials for students to listen to, and the materials cannot be too difficult, or they will easily frustrate students confidence. so according to the material, we can complement some questions and use the forms of” ask and answer”, retelling, reviewing to give more chances for students o state their own opinions. in this way, not only can we encourage students to listen enthusiastically, but also can improve their spoken english. to make the teaching contents colorful and authentic. teachers can use english songs or movies as an auxiliary method to arouse students interest in listening. the teacher can also set some brainstorm questions which students are interested to discuss before listening, which will arouse their great interest in the topic. students will try their best to state their own opinions. it is a good method to draw student