A Talk on Listening Strategies in English Learning英语专业毕业论文.doc

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1、A Talk on Listening Strategies in English Learning Abstract: Among the four main language learning skills, listening has always been the most basic and fundamental. But in China, the training of listening skills in English learning to students is not paid enough attention to. As a result, it is diff

2、icult for students to improve their listening ability. This essay involves listening strategies and how to use them in English learning.Key words: English learning; listening comprehension; listening strategies1 IntroductionAccording to some survey, it has been estimated that of the time spent in co

3、mmunication activities by adults, 45 percent is devoted to listening, 30 percent to speaking, only 16 percent to reading, and a mere 9 percent to writing. The importance of listening can be seen as simple as the common sense that if one does not grasp what is heard, then one has no ground to communi

4、cate. Thus, listening comprehension is the prerequisite measure of language proficiency. Yet, developing listening skills is never easy for those who learn a foreign language without going to the foreign countries where the target language is spoken. It takes little insight to see the importance of

5、language environment either as a major barrier of a catalyst in listening comprehension. It seems natural for children to start speaking their mother tongue as soon as they start speaking; it is also common for scholars who spend years learning a foreign language and are able to read and write well

6、yet doing very poorly in oral communication. The difference between the two lies in the language environment as the children are exposed to their mother tongue everyday while the scholars have few opportunities to be challenged by a foreign language environment in which oral communication is a must

7、for daily life. Regarding learning English in China, the situation was particularly true in the past for that listening and speaking English were largely a classroom activity. Lacking such language environment, we see much of the foreign language learning has been focused on reading and writing rath

8、er than listening and speaking.2 Definition of listening and listening comprehension2.1 ListeningIn the 1940s and earlier, the main stream of English (as a foreign language) teaching emphasized reading and writing, listening was largely neglected. In the late 1950s and 1960s, listening started to ga

9、in some attention yet the scope was still limited to pure linguistic such as identifying the sound making up the words. It was only after the 1970s that considerable changes in listening teaching took place, in which a much broader understanding of listening started to emerge including the very defi

10、nition of listening itself. One of the definitions is:Listening is the activity of paying attention to to and trying to get information from something we hear. To listen successfully, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular oc

11、casions and not simply to understand the word themselves. (Underwood, 1983: 13)It is worth noting here that a successful listening demands more than understanding the words that have been spoken, implying that special training is needed on how to listen, which is the central concern of listening com

12、prehension.a) Listening comprehensionWith the development of active listening theory, scholars became critically aware that listening comprehension is an active and complex process (OMalley & Chamot: 1990). Various conceptualizations have been developed for better understanding of the complexity of

13、such process. According to OMalley and Chamot, the steps of listening comprehension involve three interrelated processes: perceptual processing, parsing, and utilization. Those processes are recursive in that uninterrupted shifts may occur from the one process to the next and back to pervious proces

14、s. In perceptual processing, parts of the texts are retained in short-term memory for a few seconds. Listeners may start initial analysis of the language codes and convert some of the text into meaningful mental representations. In parsing, words and phrases are used to construct meaningful mental r

15、epresentations of the text and the propositions are integrated to form a more comprehensive understanding of the text. In utilization, listeners related the mental representation of the text to schema in their long-term memory and process it in a wilder context.During a single listening event, the p

16、rocess may flow from one into the other, recycle and may be modified based on what occurs in prior or subsequent processes.3 Listening strategies in English learningStudents do not have an innate understanding of what effective listeners should do; therefore, it is the responsibility of teachers to

17、share that knowledge with them. The most valuable way to teach listening strategies is for the teachers to model them themselves, creating an environment that encourage listening. It is important for the teachers to provide numerous opportunities for students to practice listening strategies and to

18、become actively engaged in the listening process. The three phases of listening process are: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening.3.1 Pre-listeningPre-listening is the preparation stage for while-listening. At pre-listening stage, teachers can fulfill three major functions to get learne

19、rs prepared for the while-listening stage. The first function of pre-listening is to provide context and motivation; and this can be realized by helping learners become conscious of the purpose of or the focus for the upcoming listening input. Therefore, teachers should help listeners narrow down th

20、eir expectations for the upcoming input and focus their attention on the relevant part so as to lessen the load of listening. This can be done by means of designing some appropriate comprehension questions whose aim is to assist rather than assess listening comprehension.The second junction of pre-l

21、istening is to give full play to learners initiatives by activating their background knowledge. In order to reach the goal, teachers can divide learners into groups to discuss and predict what they are going to listen to with certain clues. In doing so, learners can be motivated and activated to tak

22、e part in the classroom activities and consequently can stand more chance of becoming active and successful listeners. Naturally, it is also more likely for both teachers and learners to contribute their share to creating an optimal atmosphere in which listeners can feel more relaxed and willing to

23、listen in order to text their prediction.The third function of pre-listening stage is to provide listeners with necessary sub skill for “micro-listening” to assist their listening. Its desirable that teachers should set aside three or five minutes to train listeners to get familiar with certain impo

24、rtant phonological as well as grammatical cues. Therefore, teachers can design some exercises to help ease listeners difficulties in this respect. In a word, pre-listening stage prepare listeners for the while-listening with a purpose, a high motivation, with anticipation as well as necessary sub-sk

25、ills.3.2 While-listeningWith proper preparation at pre-listening stage, listeners can smoothly move on to while-listening stage with ease and anticipation. During the while-listening stage, listeners should at first be given the time and chance to listen silently and independently. In the course of

26、this period, listeners can listen attentively and continually without any interruption and distraction. This enables them to build up their hypotheses with the help of the carefully designed listening comprehensive questions and allow them to test their predictions they have made at the pre-listenin

27、g stage on their own. More importantly, by working independently, they are able to realize their problems as where they fail to grasp the key words due to unfamiliarity with certain sounds or where they get puzzled by a sentence, etc.Generally speaking, teachers should have a clear idea of the possi

28、ble difficulty-bound parts of the listening materials according to the knowledge of their learners. So they can help listeners make clear their difficulties by pausing at those parts and asking questions that aim to elicit listeners response, such as, “What is just said?” “What is going to be talked

29、 about?” By doing so, teachers are more likely to focus on listeners process of listening and can take advantage of such an interaction to help learners work out a solution to their problems by teaching either implicitly or explicitly some useful listening skills or strategies.On the whole, while-li

30、stening is not only a stage to encourage listeners to demonstrate their comprehension and to make their problems plain to the teacher rather than hide them, but also a stage for teachers to teach and help learners build up their listening skills and strategies so as to increase listeners chances in

31、listening tasks. Therefore, while-listening is indeed the most important stage of a listening class, because it is directed at learners listening problems in the process and aims at teaching learners the way to deal with them.3.3 Post-listeningThere should be a post-listening stage; learners should

32、be given a learner-learner interaction period, during which they can work cooperatively within small groups to check their prediction and hypotheses by negotiating meaning and exchanging opinions. This is also an important period as it to some extent echoes the pre-listening stage in providing oppor

33、tunity for listeners to “feedback” and discuss whether their techniques have worked in making the correct predictions.Furthermore, this also provides opportunity for students to go deeper into the listening text by discussing about the topic of the material. They can learn from each other and enjoy

34、their pleasure in real communication with peers. At the end of this stage, teachers should make sure that necessary feedback to learners performance is offered and received. Learners problems are summarized and tackled by reviewing the difficult parts, and newly taught skills and strategies will be

35、reinforced by encouraging learners to apply them in their out-of-class listening practice. In brief, post-listening not only winds up the current lesson, but also serves as a preliminary introduction to a new lesson.3.4 strategies to combine intensive listening and extensive oneIntensive listening r

36、efers to such a kind of listening that when a listener listens, he tries to understand every sentence or even every word of the speech. Extensive listening means when one listens, he does not have necessarily to understand the meaning of each word or every sentence but just to grasp the general idea

37、 of the speech. In real life communication, most of the listening activities refer to the extensive listening. The ability to find out the most important thing in a speech is to convey the main idea or central thought, which is perhaps the most valuable comprehension skill. Without it, the listener

38、gets lost in a mass of details. The biggest problem for the students is that they lack the ability to grasp the general idea in English listening.During the teaching of the listening comprehension both intensive and extensive listening should be emphasized. The two must be combined tightly. 4 Conclu

39、sionThe main objective of this essay is to explore the listening strategies for learners and teachers. The teachers must provide the students with the methods and learning strategies, that is, the teacher should teach not merely knowledge but how to learn. There is a need to develop a more effective

40、 teaching method for English teachers so they can be more effective in engaging students and more efficient in meeting the targeted goals that are often used to evaluate the teaching performances. Also, if the listening strategies can be used by students more frequently, it can improve their learnin

41、g efficiency and lighten their learning burden.References:1Brown, G. Investigating listening comprehension in context J. Applied Linguistics, 1986, (7)2OMalley, M. &Chamot, A. Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition M. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19903Underwood, M. Teaching Lis

42、tening M. New York: Longman Inc., 19834程晓堂，郑敏. 英语学习策略 M. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，20025刘润清. 论大学英语教学 M. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，1999生命列车The Train Of Life1. 不久以前，我读了一本书。书中把人生比作一次旅行。2. 人生一世，就好比是一次搭车旅行，要经历无数次上车、下车; 时常有事故发生; 有时是意外惊喜，有时却是刻骨铭心的悲伤 3. 降生人世，我们就坐上了生命列车。我们以为我们最先见到的那两个人-我们的父母，会在人生旅途中一直陪伴着我们。 4. 很遗憾，事实并非如此。他们会在某个车站下车

43、，留下我们，孤独无助。他们的爱、他们的情、他们不可替代的陪伴，再也无从寻找。 5. 尽管如此，还会有其他人上车。他们当中的一些人将对我们有着特殊的意义。 6. 他们之中有我们的兄弟姐妹, 有我们的亲朋好友。我们还将会体验千古不朽的爱情故事。7. 坐同一班车的人当中，有的轻松旅行。8. 有的却带着深深的悲哀 还有的,在列车上四处奔忙，随时准备帮助有需要的人 9. 很多人下车后，其他旅客对他们的回忆历久弥新 但是，也有一些人，当他们离开座位时，却没有人察觉。10. 有时候，对你来说情深义重的旅伴却坐到了另一节车厢。你只得远离他，继续你的旅程。11. 当然，在旅途中，你也可以摇摇晃晃地穿过自己的车厢

44、，去别的车厢找他 12. 可惜，你再也无法坐在他身旁，因为这个位置已经让别人给占了 .13. 没关系。旅途充满挑战、梦想、希望、离别 就是不能回头。因此，尽量使旅途愉快吧！14. 善待旅途上遇见的所有旅客，找出人们身上的闪光点。15. 永远记住，在某一段旅程中，有人会犹豫彷徨，因为我们自己也会犹豫彷徨。16. 我们要理解他人，因为我们需要他人的理解。17. 生命之谜就是：我们在什么地方下车？坐在身旁的伴侣在什么地方下车？我们的朋友在什么地方下车？我们无从知晓 18. 我时常这样想：到我该下车的时候，我会留恋吗？我想我还是会的。和我的朋友分离，我会痛苦。让我的孩子孤独地前行，我会悲伤。 我执著地

45、希望在我们大家都要到达的那个终点站，我们还会相聚 19. 我的孩子们上车时没有什么行李，如果我能在他们的行囊中留下美好的回忆，我会感到幸福。20. 我下车后，和我同行的旅客都还能记得我，想念我，我将感到快慰。21. 献给你, 我生命列车上的同行者, 祝您旅途愉快!1. Not long ago, I read a book, in which a mans life was compared to a journey.2. The life of a man is just like a hitchhiking，during which many times we go up and down

46、. Now and then things will happen accidently, some of which are to be unexpected excitement，while some heart-breaking sorrows. 3. When first embraced the world，we are already on the train of life. We take it for granted that the first two persons, our parents, whom we are encountered with, will acco

47、mpany us all the way.4. Sadly，things do not go on as we thought.Our parents will get off the train at a certain station，leaving us, bereft and helpless.Their love and emotion to us and their irreplaceable company can be found in nowhere.5. However，there will be somebody else who will get on the trai

48、n. Some of them will have special meaning to us.6. Some of them may be our siblings , relatives and friends, and we will also expereince the imperishable love.7. Some of our travelling companions are quite light-hearted on the way.8. While some may bear immense sorrow.Still some ,back and forth, are

49、 ready to hold out their hands for others who need help.9. Some people alight off the train, yet they are still kept in the mind of the other passengers for long;some, to the opposite, leave their seats without being noticed.10. Sometimes, the one,who is dear to your heart, has huddled into another carriage. Nothing but one