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1、How to Improve the Students Listening AbilityAbstract: Listening skill is the comprehensive skill. Nowadays college students pay more attention to English listening during their study of English at college since they fully understand that the successful communications with others in English based be
2、ing able to listen and understand. But its difficult to master the skills of listening. In order to improve the listening ability, the students should study hard, of course the teachers should teach listening effectively. Listening is a process, there are many difficulties in that, for example: the
3、sounds, the vocabulary, the sentence structures, and find out the main idea or the topic and make inferences and so onIt is necessary to find out some methods and how to solute by teachers flexibility in class.Therefore a very challenging task that falls on teachers who teach English listening is ho
4、w to improve the students listening ability.Key words: Listening Comprehension, Sounds, Vocabulary, the Sentence Structure摘 要：听力教学是项综合性较强的技能，自从学生了解到成功的交际英语是取决于听并领会他人的意思之后，当今大学生越来越关注英语听力在他们学英语的两年期间，但是听力技巧较难掌握,因此提高听力不仅要学生自身的努力,而且还要英语教师进行有效的教导。听力是一个过程，其中存在很多困难，例如：语音、词汇，句子结构，找出大概意思和推断等等。找出相应的解决方法是必须的。这些
5、问题教师如何灵活地在课堂在解决。怎样有效提高听力这门课程一项艰巨任务落在我们听力老师身上,关键词：听力理解；语音；词汇；句子结构ContentsAbstracti摘要iiContentsiiiIntroduction11. Listening processes12. Listening Problems22.1 Problem in the Sounds32.2 Problem in the Vocabulary42.3 Problem in the sentence structure52.4 Problem in the main idea or the topic62.5 Proble
6、m in the inferences73. The causes of listening problems 83.1 Problems caused by sounds9 3.2 Problems caused by vocabulary11 3.3 Problems caused by sentence structure11 3.4 Problems caused by making inferences and the main idea12Conclusion 13Bibliography15Acknowledgement16IntroductionNow most of the
7、students do better in reading and writing in their English study, but they can hardly communicate. Listening is quite different from reading when they do reading. The students can understand the meaning of the words, but when they do listening, it is usually difficult for them to interpret the meani
8、ng of the words, phrases and sentences, because of the seed or different cultures. 1Therefore the main task for the teacher is to improve the students listening ability, we should make use of various effective methods to motivate the students interest, and let the students practice more in and out o
9、f class. What. discussed in the article will be helpful to English learners1. Listening processesTo help students to acquire the English listening ability, we need first to understand what happens when we listen. Mary Underwood (1989) points out that the listening process consists of three stages. 2
10、A: The sounds go into a sensory store, often called the echoic memory, and an organized in to meaningful units, according to the knowledge of the language the listener already has.B: Words or groups of words are checked and compared with information already held in the long-term memory and the meani
11、ng is extracted from them.C: After the listener has constructed a meaning from the utterance (which may or may not be the meaning that was intended by the speaker), he or she might transfer the information to the long-term memory for later use. It seems that generally listener who wants to do these
12、records the message and stores it in the long-term memory in a reduced form. The problem is that each of the three stages happen within a few seconds. Thus the foreign language learner may be unable to process the incoming stream fast enough and will fail to extract meaning from what they have heard
13、.At present, the process based on the receiving of acoustic signals is referred to as bottom-up processing while the process based on the application of background knowledge and contextual information to make predictions is known as top-down processing. The success in listening comprehension depends
14、 on the interaction of these processes. Neither can be lacking.2. Listening ProblemsTo help students to acquire the English listening ability, we need also to know their level and identify where their problems lie in listening. In listening to an extended passage or dialogue, they tend to treat each
15、 sentence in isolation and hence fail to make an inference, which needs to be drawn from the context. Very often they fail to distinguish the topic sentence from the development details and as a result they are uncertain about the main idea of the listening text they have heard. Also, vocabulary and
16、 the long and complicated sentence structure that is entirely different from that of their mother tongue present obstacles for them in understanding the listening text. If those students who have such problems are not encouraged to build up confidence and practice listening to overcome them, they ma
17、y remain throughout the four semesters. 3 Some of there problems reflect in doing listening comprehension in class related to the following aspects.2.1 Problem in the SoundsMany students in college find that the English words they have heard from the tape-recorder sound strange and different from th
18、e ones clearly enunciated by their teachers in middle schools 4. They dont know that pronunciation of a language is nowadays held to embrace three component factors, i.e., sounds, rhythm, intonation. As we all know, language learning begins with the ear, so in learning English pronunciation, first o
19、f all we should lean how to sounds. Little knowledge do they have about the fact that the pronunciation of words undergoes changes in the stream of speech. The problems are quite typical of foreign language learners. At the need, they fail to understand listening here is an example of failure to und
20、erstand is caused by stress. Listening text:A: Hi, a long time to hasnt seen you?B: Yes, by how about your basketball contest last week?A: Its terrible bad, the players are fight.B: Whats happen?A: They are contest for marks.Directions: listen to the tap and fill in the blanks with the words you hav
21、e heard. Its usually difficult for students to write contest. The reason is that the first contest is a noun, the stress is fall on the first syllable contest, and the second contest is a verb stress is fall on the second syllable contest. If students dont distinguish the position stress, they cant
22、write it correct.Stress is a feature of sounds that students tend to fail to notice in their listening. 2.2 Problem in the VocabularyIt cannot be doubted that lack of the necessary amount of vocabulary will 1 listening comprehension to failure. Inability to process the sounds into meaning words at t
23、he same time they are being perceived will have the same result. 5 Student said, Once I heard a word rob in a passage. I thought I had come aero before, but just could not remember its meaning right away. What I did next was keep on working out the meaning of .the word and could no longer concentrat
24、e my attention on the incoming information. As a result, nothing of the rest of the passage was comprehended. This is true of many other students if they are confronted with the same situation. As a matter of fact, this is a bad habit, which needs to be eliminated. Students need to develop the skill
25、 of keeping up with the speaker (even being ahead of the speaker) even this means letting go parts which they failed to sort out. (Mary Underwood 1989).2.3 Problem in the sentence structureIn listening, sometimes students cant know the meaning of text by their unfamiliarity with the sentence structu
26、re. Following are examples.Mary: Hello may I speak to Rose?Pat: oh. Im sorry, she is out.err .well: could you leave a message for her?Mary: sure Im supposed to be meeting Rose for party. Would you ask her to see if she has my hat? If she has, tell her to bring if along.Pat: Ill tell herDirections: l
27、isten to the dialogue and choose the right answer.Question: why is Mary calling?a: To invite Rose to party. b: To ask Rose to return her hat.c: Borrow a hat.To the above answer most students will choose a, which suggests that they did not understand the meaning of the sentence Im supposed to be meet
28、ing Rose for party The infinitive phrase to be meeting Rose for party hints that the action will happen according to the arrangement. So Rose must have known that she will have party. Once the meaning of this sentence structure had been explained, they can know right answer is b.There is a tendency
29、that the more greatly the sentence structure differs from that of their mother tongue, the more difficult it will be for students to understand.2.4 Problem in the main idea or the topicThe most difficult is finding out the main idea or the topic for most students after listening, facing such a task,
30、 they either felt uncertain about the answer or just made the wrong choice. Here is an example, listening text.Do you have trouble sleeping at night? Then maybe this is for you. When you worry about needing sleep and twist around to find the comfortable position, you are probably only making matters
31、 worse.Any or all of these factors might be leading to your sleeplessness by disrupting your bodys natural rhythm. What should you do then, on sleepless nights?Dont bother sleeping pills. The best thing to do is drink milk or eats cheese or tuna fish-theyll help to pro-duce the brain signal that ind
32、uces sleep.Until tomorrows broadcast, this has been another in the series. Hint For Good Health.Question: where is the talk most probably being given mainly?a: At the radio stationb: In a lecture hall c: a biology labd: At the doctors officeIn class, some students will choose b as an answer to the a
33、bove of question. Actually, the text is about health. At first we dont know where it take place, every place is possible so we should catch the main information. Take this dialogue for example, the last sentence until tomorrows broadcast From this we can guess the main place is a.This kind of task i
34、s difficult because students have to evaluate which -items of information are important and-which are less essential. On the basis of a general understanding of the dialogue or the passage, students have to judge what message the speaker wants to convey through the listening text.2.5 Problem in the
35、inferences Students, especially those who have just begun to learn to listen, tend to interpret each sentence in isolation in listening to dialogues or passages without referring to the context. 6 Should also known translate English to English that impossible.W: Id like to buy a copy of Professor Fr
36、anklins book on seashells. M: Tm sorry. That book has been out of print for some time.Question: What does the man say about the book?a: It is to longer available b: It has been reprinted four times c: The store doesnt have it now, but will have it soon d: The information in the book is out of dateAt
37、 the first time, students dont known which answer is right. According to this, there is no information in the answer. So we should making inferences. From this conversation we know the key word is out of print. The problem is that the meaning of it. Out imply away from not in, we can inferences out
38、of print. The problem is that the meaning of it. “Out” imply away from not in”, we can inferences “out of print,”just as no longer available If students dons know how to inferences, may be choose the wrong.3. The causes of listening problems As mentioned above, what brings about success in listening
39、 comprehension is the interaction of “bottom-up” and “top-down” processes. 7As for the foreign learner who begins to learn to listen, “bottom-up” processing is the foundation. Without this foundation, “top-down” alone w3ill not work. Many things that the native speaker acquires so automatically and
40、unconsciously need to be learned consciously for the foreign learner. The foreign learner needs also to be trained to overcome difficulties in order to acquire an intermediate level of competence as stated in the College English Syllabus. In helping students lay down this foundation, teachers should
41、, at the same time, help them build up background knowledge to do “top-down” processing, especially at a more advanced stage of listening when the listening material becomes extended.3.1 Problems caused by soundsAs for the foreign learner that who begins to learn to listen at the beginning should le
42、arn International Phonetic Alphabet so that can pronunciation clearly. It has been mentioned that most undergraduates had never been exposed to spoken English before they entered the university. In class, teachers should explain the correct articulation of certain vowels and consonants when necessar
43、y. When students are asked to recognize cases of liaison, loss of plosion, weak forms, assimilation, est., they should be also asked to practice reading in order to be sensitive to these phonetic phenomena. Therefore dont tend to be insensitive to features of spoken English such as liaison, s rhythm
44、, assimilation, etc. Whenever the teacher finds that students inability to understand may be cause by them, he or she had better offer scripts to show the problem lies. 3.1.1 DictationDictation is a way to have students sensitized to these phenomena. The dictation can be done after class and finishe
45、d within the allotted time. After the fixed period of time, written scripts can be distributed to them so that they can compare with their own dictated sentences and find out their problems. The important of distributing scripts can not be underestimate. Written scripts can boost students to a point
46、 where they practice listening at a higher level with a more advanced function or greater accuracy. To a certain degree, dictation in this way can also improve students pronunciation.待添加的隐藏文字内容23.1.2 In listening to dialoguesIn listening to dialogues or passages, whenever necessary, teachers had be
47、write out on the blackboard the sentences or phrases which may cause difficulty students to recognize because some sounds have been changed in the continuous speech. This is especially indispensable at the early stage of their learning to listen.Various phenomena of sound alterations need to be illustrated, especially those that students often come across in their listening materials like assimilation, elision and weak forms.3.2 Problems caused by vocabularyThere are generally two approaches to the study of wor
