Abstract :
Nowadays there are many obstacles to English learning ,especially listening English at college .Many traditional methods have many disadvantages , so our students' listening English level is not good on average .Here ,I will give some suggestions on it :preparatory measures , replenishing appropriately relevant phonetics knowledge ,listening more , and change and adjust the forms and demands of listening usually , the social and cultural background of western countries , campus audio-visual network’s using , the motivation of learning .I hope my suggestions helpful to our English listening teaching .
Key Words :
College English teaching; English listening; suggestion
摘要 ：
现在英语学习中存在着很多障碍，尤其是大学英语听力的学习。由于我们的传统教学法
存在着很多弊端，因此学生的平均听力水平不高。这里，我将就此谈谈我的建议：准备工作适当补充有关语音知识，多听，同时经常交换和调整听的形式和要求，介绍英美等西方国家的社会文化背景知识，利用校园视听网络，培养学生的学习动机。希望这些建议对我们英语听力的教学有帮助。
关键词 ：
大学英语教学；英语听力；建议
1. Introduction
American psycholinguistic professor Krash considers that the only way to learn language is to understand information, or to accept understandable input. It can reflect the importance of English listening teaching, though it’s probably a little extreme to some degree. Well, we all know when anyone learns a kind of language, if he just can read and write, but can not listen well and speak out, he will not able to express himself, because he can not understand the speaker .So even though having read a lot of books, and translated some works, he still can not extricate himself from deaf and dumb, for he can not understand the speaker, how can he express himself?
2. Importance of college English listening teaching
Byrns thinks listening comprehension should be given top priority over any other things in language learning, and if we didn’t accept language input through listening and still can understand them, we won’t have the input of the language, consequently, English listening teaching is the crucial and unneglectable step in language teaching.
3. Analysis of some universal English listening teaching methods
3.1 Analysis of factors that influence our listening comprehension
Generally speaking, freshmen’s scores of English are usually high, but later most of them become deaf and dumb when we communicate with them in English. Why? What’s the matter? From today’s system of education’s aspect : First , for a long time , language teaching in middle school is influenced by the proportion of students entering schools of a higher grade , and traditional teaching methods , so what the teachers pay attention to is passing on knowledge , just passing on knowledge , not training the students’ learning abilities . They take the examines as batons , asking students to sit in the middle of exercises all day long , and finally make their students struggling in the invisible prison hour by hour , day by day . Secondly, schools and families didn’t create such good conditions that students can listen more and exercise more. Thirdly, teaching materials are always out-dated, and the scope is limited .From the students’ aspect, there are two main factors which affect their English listening. First, poor elementary phonetic knowledge, weak grammar and poor background knowledge influence badly their listening comprehension. Secondly, students didn’t pay enough attention to English listening, nowadays many many students use walkmans; however, just a few of them listen to English with these devices. Thirdly, the students haven't enough vocabulary. I have done an investigation. About 43.2% of the students think that the most bothering and most difficult thing is listening comprehension, and even some of them have difficulty in understanding their teacher who gives lessons in English.
Without question, it is difficult for a Chinese student, especially a freshman, to understand the listening material, if he hasn't enough vocabulary and the ability of telling the grammar construction. In my investigation, about 35% of the students with low listening comprehension this is because they don't understand or don’t know the knowledge about linguistic; they are not able to tell the means of what they have heard. In another investigation, students were asked to listen to a dialogue of 244 words, in which the words and grammar have already been learned. But 80% of them thought it was too difficult. Then, using the same dialogue as a reading comprehension material, I found only 5% of them thought it’s a little difficult. On the other hand, the response ability is also another reason. Besides, there is an indispensable aspect: the training of students’ learning language’s psychological factor. American psycholinguistic professor Krash points out: There are two problems to solve concentrately when learning language, one is input understandingly, and the other is solving psychological problems. Let’s analyse the psychological problems that affect students’ listening. (1) When facing high- speech listening materials, students always can not understand, and if there are new words at this time, they’ll become anxious, and then lose heart. (2) The atmosphere of the class also affects students’ psychology directly. When teachers do high-rhythm and high-efficiency exercise, if they didn’t prepare enough and didn’t explain or guide their students timely on difficult points at that time, students surely turn to be nervous psychologically. However, many teachers think English listening teaching is an easy job; it isn’t beyond the scope of listening to the records and answering questions. They are definitely wrong! It’s not an easy job, there are many factors influencing students’ listening results, such as students’ feedback and the length of the time of their every-time listening.
3.2 Examples of universal English listening teaching methods at present and their advantages and disadvantages
Following are some universal English listening teaching methods at present: Top-down Listening Teaching Method , which uses forecasting , deducing and guessing after understanding the main points , is popular nowadays ,But some questionnaire statistics show that low-level students often rely on this one , while the results are not good ,For they are always wrong when they do the guesswork , New Eastern famous professor’s ¨M7〃Audio-Visual Teaching Method : Maintain your composure and your confidence , Make pictures and images ,Model everything we heard Before , Multiply the meaning and usage of the words and patterns , Mine the cultural background and the way of English thinking behind the language , Memorize them , Just like a Miracle ! From above, we can see that the seven steps are linked together, and supplement and complement each other. Next , let’s see another one , ¨4L〃 Listening Teaching Method , ¨4L〃 stands for :Pre-Listening, listen attentively, Post-Listening and Re-Listening. Through this method, teachers set the aims and tasks according to the content of listening, and then create proper situations, introduce ingeniously, lead students to participate actively and try something on their own initiative, guide them according to their oral and written feedbacks, and finally make the students finish relevant listening tasks. The practice of the ¨4L〃 Listening Teaching Method , achieved good results . Take the creator’s two classes as an example, after one-year training, students became interested in listening learning, i.e. they really turned passive into active, so the atmosphere of the two classes enlived, the students could try boldly on their own initiative, and judged and even solved the problems independently which appeared during the listening process, responded quickly, judged precisely and finally their abilities of listening improved obviously. But there is an important problem, whether or not every teacher can do this job so successfully, The Answer is negative.
4. Suggestions about modern English teaching methods
Following are some suggestions about modern English Teaching Methods.
4.1 Preparatory measures
It includes two steps. One is choosing proper methods according to the level of students. Since our college students come form different areas, the education of their middle schools are certainly different form each other, it’s not abnormal that the basis of their English Listening are not the same, so we teachers can not pick up a method at random. We consider that we teachers should make some investigations on our students during the first class to know well students’ actual situations, and then choose a proper teaching method, which is suitable for most of students, to practise, in the light of the average level. The other is the choice of teaching materials is also an unneglectable problem .It’s important to decide what kind of materials should be chosen , and this even influence students’ enthusiasm and the students will lose heart . It’s not an easy job. The dry and dull listening materials just can turn into lullabies; even students could understand them, so it’s our responsibilities to choose such materials that are interesting and humorous but not lacking depth of culture, and to make our students gain something. What kind of materials should we choose on earth? Well , when we choose the materials , we should give consideration to all the various knowledge and choose the popularized ones to satisfy all kinds of learners and researchers , and the length and degree of difficulty should be taken into consideration , especially the following three aspects : vocabulary , form and content , the level of vocabulary should be appropriate : the low level of vocabulary is a barrier in listening comprehension , it’s necessary to heighten the level of the vocabulary in order to develop listening comprehension . But during a short time, especially as to the beginners, it’s impossible to enrich their vocabulary substantially, so we need to start from simple sentence patterns, simple sentences to uncomplicated conversations. At the very beginning, there should be few new words and no complicated sentences, in order to make it easy to learn, and the most important thing is train learner’s language abilities. Then conversations, passages, from the elementary to the profound, increase vocabulary gradually. During this time, we should avoid two or more new words appearing in the same sentences, let students know there are knowledge to learn, but not so difficult. Besides , form should be variety .For the sake of making the listening drilling not too drab , we should choose various teaching materials as possible as we can .For example , from simple sentences and conversations in preliminary stage to many people’s conversations , then news abstract , brief stories and so on , and also , we should use real materials as soon as possible ,such as on-the-spot recording , making a live broadcast of interview and similar programs such as Speaking the Plain Truth in TV or radio station ,to enrich students’ feelings for the language . And finally, content should be interesting, readability and not tasteless. As to the beginners, form is important, and so is subject if we want to stir the students’ interests, for wonderful content can promote the listening‘s development positively. In addition, the chosen content should relevant to our everyday life. For instance, somebody is inquired by customs officers when come out from airport, or talks to waiter when dining, bargains with landlord when renting an apartment, is interviewed by the officers of Ministry of personnel when applying for a job, because all the above make students feeling that they can put what they have learned into practice, they will work much harder.
4.2 Replenishing appropriately relevant phonetics
Replenishing appropriately relevant phonetics knowledge. I think the phonetic symbol is the base. A good intonation and phonetic depends on the base. Oral reading after a radio or a teacher is a good way at the beginning, Students should do much about it. Pay attention to the oral reading skill, It includes stress, strong form, weak form, intonation incomplete plosive consonant, affricate consonant, syllable and so on. Training and practicing the oral reading is not a day's word. The teacher must give correct information about it. There is no easy way .For instance; we can help our students’ master strong form and weak Form in pronunciation. Generally speaking , many function words have no sentence stress , most of which have two kinds of pronunciation usually , one is called strong form , the other is called weak form , which is used much frequently than the former , the rate of appearance , achieves are not used to this pronunciation , so they can’t understand the meanings of the sentences usually their listening process , especially those high-speech sentences . For example: The guests have arrived. Most students aren’t able to know its present perfect tense. Another example is, you should have gone. Many students don’t understand what it means. So it’s really necessary to introduce the weak forms of Auxiliary Verb , Linking Verb , Modal Verb , Pronoun , Preposition and Conjunction , in this way , we can help students improve the degree of understanding the meaning of the sentence , and write down the whole sentences during dictations .For instance , I hope he will come . The students will not write down a wrong sentence after the rules of weak forms: I hope he come .And also, they will write down one a two year. Instead of one or two years.
4.3 Listening more and more often, and change and adjust the forms and demands of listening
During the teaching process, the teachers often emphasize that students ought to listen, listen, and listen and listen .So some students listen to the radio or tapes for one or two hours a time ,and the second time they listen to the radio or tapes is one week or two later . The result is listening comprehension isn’t developed while time is already wasted. As a matter of fact, what the teachers mean is listen every day and a quarter to half an hour is ok. Besides , we should often change and adjust the forms and demands of listening .If the students listen with a clear aim , they will gain more information , this activity asks listeners to pay high attention to it ,remember more and response instantly . And of course, it shouldn’t continuously go on for a long time, but insert some entertaining and pleasant stories, music, or songs.
4.4 The introduction of the social and cultural background of western countries
According to the Feature of top-down information processing, the background knowledge we’re already known is the key to deal with the exercises. If this kind of knowledge is rich and correct, the students’ prediction will accord with the actual situations, the abilities of identity will be accelerated and the understanding will be enhanced. On the contrary, if their knowledge is poor and wrong, the ability of society will became sluggish; the understanding will not be smoothly. As we all know, the differences of society and culture between eastern and western countries are great, and it’s these differences that lead to the difference of language, behaviors, habits and customs .So students can’t develop their listening comprehension efficiently without knowing the western countries’ society, culture and knowledge, it’s one of the keys to break through the barriers of listening comprehension. In fact , there are many students in the university who lack this kind of knowledge badly , didn’t master the associated meaning ,social meaning or pragmatic meaning of some vocabulary , so they often don’t know what’s the words or the sentences’ meaning even they have already written down the words or the sentences correctly ,
For instance:
Little girl: I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty.
Father : OK, you go out and got a drink of water at the fountain.
“fountain” here means drinking-fountain , not the fountain in a pool . In America, people seldom drink hot water---There are these kinds of machine in office building or parks. If the students don’t know what’s the real meaning of “fountain” here or don’t know this situation , they’ll be puzzled . So the social culture and background knowledge have something to do with listening comprehension. In order to develop the listening comprehension , we teachers should help the students surmount obstacles caused by the cultural differences , acquaint themselves purposely with Britain ,America even the western culture , master westerners’ everyday behaviors and customs of speech , foster intentionally the ability of thinking in English , and work hard to eliminate interference of their native language . For example , when prepare our lessons , we can use all kinds of English dictionaries frequently , use the Internet , prepare to research western countries’ social culture or background knowledge at the same time , and find out the differences of culture ,habits and customs between eastern and western , then help students take the knowledge in , and really know the differences when we are teaching during the classes , deliberately create some information gap to encourage students to find out the answers by themselves , gradually get into the habit of accumulating and learning consciously and initiatively the cultural knowledge of different peoples and countries .And we can encourage the students to read something in their spare time about geography, history, culture, stories and so on. For example, there are two materials of the same difficulty. One explains something about China's Spring Festival; the other is about Thanks giving Day of the western countries. The former is easy to understand but the latter is more difficult. Why? It is clearly because the students know little about the latter.
4.5 Using of campus audio-visual network’
Here, we have at least five channels. (1) We can offer English audio-visual teaching which just lasts a quarter in the morning. For instance, broadcast Campus English Broadcasting and The Family Album of USA, to help students achieve a thorough understanding of language learning and knowledge gaining, help them know more about modern western society and culture, and make them grasping how to communicate in English properly and flexibly. (2)Encourage students to use Internet to know current affairs promptly, and drill and improve their listening comprehension at the same time. (3)Teach them using all kinds of information resource, because all kinds of mass media are resources of information, and have their own advantages .such as TV -choose their favourite programs and make regular appointments with them. Since familiarity with what is being talked about facilitates understanding, a good practice would be to watch news broadcasts on the English Channel after viewing the Chinese version. In so doing, they can pay maximum attention to how the news items are presented in English. Radio - even more handy than TV, particularly on campus. Listen to the Voice Of American. Internet-there is a lot listening materials on the internet. You can listen to them and also you can download them and practice them. You can enter some chat room to have the talk with others. Or go to Red candle English Web (http://red-candle .home.sohu.com/)21century English Listening Web (http: //www.tingli. com/) or Everyday English Web (http://english.chinaschool .net /), listen To the VOA Special English Program, VOA Standard English Program .BBC English Program or CCTV English Program on the Internet, or listen to English story, English Conversation, English Song, participate interesting English listening game, or enjoy English classical film. Films-select some English films from tapes and VCD and try to understand them. If there are Chinese subtitles, don't look at them first. Then you watch them again and scan those words on the screen.
4.6 Developing the motivation of learning
Teachers’ duty is not just passing on knowledge and fostering language skills, and also bringing out students’ desire and interests for knowledge, and enhancing their confidence, because their motivations for knowledge have the value of development, they can promote efficiently students to learn. Generally speaking, we should start with the following aspects. First, enhance the education of learning motivations, the right and clear-cut learning goals are the essential conditions to form and improve learning motivations. So we ought to teach students modern science and our country-development, making them connecting foreign language learning with country-development and welcoming the new challenges of new century, to stir students’ motivations for foreign language learning. Secondly, stir the knowledge for knowledge .During our foreign language teaching, our chosen materials ought to be vivid, interesting and fitted in with the reality, so we should deal with the materials and teach artistically, create strong teaching situations, and offer some simple exercises to low-level students to avoid the losing of their confidence. So we should often begin the listening classes with some simple but funny stories, poems, jokes, plays and so on. For example ,use a short poem Chess from the newly produced magazine Crazy English , which is so quite a good short poem that there is no new word , but beautiful music all the time , read by a lovely British child . After listening twice, let them repeat. Nobody would think it was a hard job. So they imitated and contend for speaking out to show that they had understood. Therefore, their interest was greatly aroused and their self-confidence increased. They are in such a cheerful mood that everybody can accept the harder listening materials going with SEFC. Step by step, their listening comprehension will be better and better. Or listening to English songs and let them write the words down, we type out the words of this song at first, leaving some newly studied or hard to write. While listening, they must write out these words as quickly as they can. Students will have great interest, and they will do it very carefully .After they finish filling these blanks. we let them listen and learn to sing it .They certainly feel that lesson was a good value .They will like this kind of teaching .After school, they may begin to stay in the bookstores ,in search of all kinds of English types ,which are necessary for good listening comprehension .You see, in this way ,listening was practiced . Thirdly, give expression to students’ status of a sovereign during the learning activities. Obviously, students’ motivations for knowledge belong to typical motivation, and internal motivation will be increased when the learners’ self-controlling and self-decision developed, so it demands teachers guide their students based on the premise of having enough consideration for students’ learning habits and aims, and assuring students’ decision-making power. Fourthly, the success of English listening classes has direct relation with teachers’ professional qualities and teaching methods. We teachers ought to be well prepared, then we can organize and control our teaching process with ease, and this will help foster and develop students’ language abilities.
5. Conclusion
The hearers accept information is not a passive mechanical process, but a complex psychological and active. Process. So we teachers can’t follow those traditional methods , our task is to organize and help students to prepare in all kinds of aspects , e.g. phonetic backgrounds knowledge and motivation , via all kinds of effective channels , for instance , Internet , to develop the level of students’ listening English .
References
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上海外国语大学主办 2004年2月20日出版 《外语电化教学》 上海外国语大学
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