英語本科畢業(yè)論文不同體裁對英語學(xué)習(xí)者的聽力理解影響的問題研究

1、摘要 本論文試圖回答不同體裁對英語學(xué)習(xí)者的聽力理解是否產(chǎn)生影響的問題。本研究以廣州某普通高校30名英語專業(yè)本科生為實驗對象，以全國高校英語專業(yè)四級2010年考試聽力理解部分的三篇會話和六則新聞為聽力測試材料?？疾閷W(xué)習(xí)著對整體問題和局部問題的理解結(jié)果。考查結(jié)果表明受試能更好地捕捉會話體裁的整體信息，卻能獲取更多新聞體裁的局部信息。本研究認為，會話和新聞的體裁特點導(dǎo)致受試在整體和局部問題上的聽力理解發(fā)生偏差，證實了不同體裁的確會對英語專業(yè)學(xué)生的聽力理解產(chǎn)生影響。因此，本文建議英語教學(xué)中，教師幫助學(xué)習(xí)這熟悉各種體裁的典型特點，以便產(chǎn)生更好的理解結(jié)果。關(guān)鍵詞 英語聽力理解； 體裁；聽力輸入； 新聞體裁

2、；會話體裁 abstract in order to answer the question “does genre of the listening input affect the listening comprehension?”, the study examined participants performance on the global questions and local questions by taking 30 english majors from a university in guangzhou as the participants and taking 3

3、conversation and 6 pieces of news broadcast extracted from the listening comprehension part of tem-4 2010 as the listening input of the test. the result showed that participants had better performance on the global questions of conversation while they had better results in answering the local questi

4、ons. therefore, this study claimed that the distinct generic characteristics of conversation and news broadcast led to the deviation of participants listening comprehension on the global and local questions. that was to say, genres had effect on english majors listening comprehension. hence, it was

5、suggested that in english teaching, teachers should help learners to learn more knowledge about the typical generic characteristics of different genres so that learners can comprehend different genres better. key words english listening comprehension; genre; listening input; news; conversationconten

6、tsabstract in chineseabstract in english11. introduction12. literature review32.1 the definition of genre32.2 the genre theory32.3 previous research on genre and listening comprehension43. the study53.1 research questions53.2 participants53.3 instruments63.4 procedures73.4.1 pre-test73.4.2 test83.5

7、data collection and results83.5.1 the test questions on tem-4 listening comprehension84. discussions and implication114.1 discussions114.2 implication165. conclusions16references171. introductiongenre is originally a french word means kind and type. in english, the term refers to classification of t

8、he literary works. in order to achieve certain social purpose, a genre of text has its own typical and particular structure and textual feature. that is to say, the social function of the genre of a text can be reflected in the macrostructure of the text. is it possible that genre is among the facto

9、rs that affect english learners listening comprehension since the listening process involves the “top-down process” which deals with the information process of the macrostructure? besides, according to “genre analysis theory” (秦秀白, 1997:8-15) , the typical generic characteristics of a genre of text

10、consist of three factors include the linguistic factor, the generic factors and the register factors. and the three factors should be paid attention to when analyzing a genre of text. as each genre has its own particular generic characteristics, do the typical generic characteristics of listening in

11、put influence english learners listening comprehension? the main concern of this paper is to answer the question “does genre of listening input affect the listening comprehension?”. the rest of this thesis consists of four parts: section two is a related literature review; section three describes th

12、e methodology and result of data analysis; section four presents the discussions and implications; and the last section is devoted to conclusions. 2. literature review 2.1 the definition of genreas the genre theory did not arouse linguistic scholars interest to employ this term in the field of disco

13、urse analysis until 1970s, the definition of genre has not come to an agreement. there are two schools studying the genre theory, the swalesian school which is represented by j m. swales, and the australian school which is represented by j r. martin (秦秀白 2000:42-46). based on the study of many lingu

14、ists, chinese linguists made an interpretation: first, types of spoken and written discourse are classified into different genres according to the social communicative purpose of the social intercourse. second, the pattern of one genre is variable. third, the social communicative purpose retrains th

15、e content and the format of the text. and the content and the format of the text are conventional, stable, repetitive and habitual. fourth, genre is closely related to cultural background and contextual configuration. under certain cultural context, the communicative purpose of a social intercourse

16、is usually achieved by several conventional stages, the characteristic of one particular genre will be presented in the particular structure and the language style which are determined by its social communicative purpose. hence to attain certain social communicative purpose, we have to construct a p

17、articular discourse in typical structure and textual configuration in order to make the relevant community understand.（梁文花、秦洪武, 2009:44-48）2.2 the genre theoryunder certain cultural context, in order to achieve the communicative purpose, a social intercourse is constructed in certain conventional st

18、ages and in particular language style. hence it is necessary to focus on the macrostructure, the textual features or the rhetorical devices and the register of a genre of discourse. according to qin xiubai (秦秀白，1997：8-15), the analysis of a genre of discourse should be analyzed from the following th

19、ree aspects. firstly, textual analysis such as linguistic description and the communicators appropriate employment of language. secondly, the analysis of the context of situation which consists of field, tenor and mode of the text. as a particular genre of discourse is produced under certain context

20、, one would produce discourse in tactful language according to the social reality. thirdly, the analysis of the moves that construct the macrostructure of a genre. according to bhatia, an application letter in english obviously is a particular genre, and in order to gain the opportunity to get the j

21、ob, the candidate should constructed the letter in certain stable moves that are accepted and understood by the employee and the candidate (bhatia 1993, qtd. in 秦秀白 1997). hence, it is known that a particular genre is constructed in certain typical moves.in this paper, qin xiubais viewpoint will be

22、employed to analyze the test materials which contain the genres of news broadcast and conversation for it emphasizes on the whole analysis of the text of one particular genre.2.3 previous research on genre and listening comprehensionthere are a few studies concerning the influence of different genre

23、s on english learners listening comprehension. elana shohamy and ofra inbar (1991:23-40) investigated the effect of both texts and question types on participants scores of listening comprehension tests by taking 150 efl learners who were from hebrew as the subjects. the test material consisted of th

24、ree text types, i.e. news broadcast, mini-lecture and consultative dialogue, which were of the same topic and vocabulary size but the different literary style. the consultative dialogue was oral-oriented and was characterized by simple expression, spontaneous language and many redundancies and repet

25、itions, while the news broadcast was literature-oriented and was characterized by complex sentences, specialized language and a lack of redundancies, and the reporter did not interact with the audience (berne, 1992: 6-7). it was found out that the degree of orality affected participants performance.

26、 the result showed the more one text contained listenable features, the better the subjects performed. that was to say, news broadcast was the most difficult to comprehend for it was literature-oriented, followed by mini-lecture and followed then by consultative dialogue. moreover, the questions wer

27、e classified into global and local type to explore how the question types affected the participants performance. the result showed that local questions were easier than global questions because it was more difficult to deduce and construct the whole meaning of the text than to locate the detail info

28、rmation in the text. the subjects of shohamys experiment were hebrew. hebrew shares the similar language system with english, so the difference between hebrew and english is lower than that between chinese and english. therefore, in order to check whether the result would be the same as shohamys, th

29、is paper aims at the investigation of the effect of different genres on the listening comprehension of english majors who are from china, and the question types are global and local questions just as shohamys. 3. the studyin this study, an experimental design is used to test the effect of the genres

30、 of news broadcast and conversation on 30 english majors listening comprehension. and the connection between the generic characteristics of news broadcast and conversation and the factors lead to the deviation of english majors listening comprehension will be verified. in this section, the participa

31、nts, instruments, procedures and data collection and analysis will be described.3.1 research questionsfrom section two, it is obvious that different genres have their own characteristics due to their social communicative purpose. and the research question addressed by the study is as follow: do the

32、participants have different performance on different generic input of the listening comprehension test?3.2 participantsthe participants of this study are english majors from grade 2009 of the school of foreign language, guangzhou university. a total of 30 students are chosen to participate in the li

33、stening test because they got the scores from 60 to 65 in the pre-test, which qualifies the participants are at the same level. and as they are all at the average level, more typical mistakes can be seen in their performance, and it helps to study the research questions.3.3 instrumentsthe pre-test m

34、aterial is in fact the final examination of an integrated english course which is the english course for english majors of guangzhou university. students are asked to finish multiple choice questions of the problems include general knowledge and reading comprehension and open-ended questions of four

35、 types of problems include paraphrase, correcting errors, translation and writing in the final examination. the total score of the examination is 100, the multiple choice questions worth 40 points (1 point per multiple-choice question) and the open-ended questions such as translation and writing wor

36、th 60 points (20 points per open-ended question). the aim of the examination is to check up on english majors comprehensive ability of english, so it is a standard criterion to evaluate students english level in order to choose the participants.the test material is three conversations and six pieces

37、 of news extracted from the listening comprehension part in tem-4 (test for english major-4) in 2010. tem-4 is of great significance to english majors because it is an examination officially accepted by china education ministry and the aim of it is examine english majors capacity for overall english

38、 skills and mastering of grammar structure and vocabulary. participants are asked to finish the multiple choice questions of the conversation section and the news broadcast section of listening comprehension and there were both 10 questions in news broadcast and conversation. but only 8 of these 10

39、questions would be chosen as the global and local questions. and in conversation section, participants will totally listen to 3 conversation items and they will finish 3 or 4 questions that are based on one conversation item at each time. then in news broadcast section, participants will listen to t

40、otal 6 news items and they will finish 1 or 2 questions that are based on one news item at each time.the global question refers to those which participants need to answer by understanding the main idea and the causation of the conversation or news items. and a global question may like what is the ne

41、ws item about. but as there is not a typical global question in the questions of conversation, a why-question is chosen to be the global question of conversation as participants had to deduce the answer according to their summary of the information they got. and the local question is those which par

42、ticipants need to answer by locating the detail information and recognizing the information of the conversation or news items, and it may like how many people were rescued from the apartment building. hence in this paper, each 7 questions will be employed as the local questions of conversation and n

43、ews broadcast and each 1 question will be employed as the global questions of conversation and news broadcast. the measurement is to count the total number of the participants correct answers to the local and global questions.3.4 proceduresthe test is consisted of two parts. in the first part, a pre

44、-test is done to decide who will be the participants so that the participants are at the same level; the second part is the test about how the texts of news broadcast and conversation affect the participants listening comprehension.3.4.1 pre-testthe aim of this part is to evaluate the students engli

45、sh level to determine which one can be the participants of the test. because the typical mistakes are more tend to be seen in average students. and due to the practical factors, the results of english majors final examination were employed as the criterion to decide who would be the participants for

46、 it is authoritative. with class for the unit, all of the english majors in grade 2009 were required to have the final examination on a particular day at the end of the term. during the final examination, the participants had to finish the exam independently and there were two teachers monitoring on

47、e class to have examination. and the duration of the examination was 2 hours. moreover the exam papers were revised by the english teachers of guangzhou university according to the model answer given by the teacher who set the exam papers.3.4.2 testthe test was conducted in the form of quiz in a ran

48、dom ordinary classroom. the researcher firstly copied the clips of the 3 conversation items and 6 news items to a personal computer and then brought the computer to the classroom. the 30 participants were gathered and instructed to listen to the test material carefully. before that, the participants

49、 were issued the answer sheets, and then they were required to go over the questions on the answer sheets first. after that, the researcher played the clips of the test material one by one. all of the clips were played once only. and after each clip was played, one minute was given to participants t

50、o answer a series of questions based on the clip of conversation or news broadcast. then the clips were played in order until the tape came to an end. and the participants finished the questions independently and were monitored by the researcher and another person. after the participants finished, t

51、hey were required to hand in their answer sheets and the researcher graded the answer sheets of the participants according to the model answer from the exercise book tests with advice on how to prepare tem-4.3.5 data collection and results 3.5.1 the test questions on tem-4 listening comprehensionthe

52、re were 7 local questions and 1 global question in the test material of conversation and news broadcast.table 1 comparison of the accurate rates of global questions of conversation and newsaccording to the table, the accuracy of the global question of conversation was higher. that was to say, more p

53、articipants could answer the global question of conversation correctly. there was each one global question in conversation part and in news broadcast part and the global question of conversation was question number 10 and that of news broadcast was question number 27. according to the table above, t

54、here were 24 right answers of participants in conversation part while there were 21 right answers of participants in the news part. and the accurate rate of conversation was 80% while that of news broadcast was 70%, that was to say, the global question of conversation and that of news broadcast were

55、 not difficult to the participants. but generally speaking, the accurate rate of conversation was10 percent higher than that of news broadcast.table 2 comparison of the overall accurate rates of the local questions of conversation and newsfrom the table, the accuracy of news broadcast was higher. th

56、at was to say, more participants could answer the local questions of news broadcast correctly. there were each 7 local questions in conversation part and in news part. according to table 2, there were total 117 right answers to the 7 local questions of conversation, however there were 129 right answ

57、ers to the local questions of news part. in consequence, the accurate rate of news broadcast was 61%, which was 5% higher than that of conversation.table 3 accurate rates of the 7 local questions of conversationquestion number1245678summarynumber of right answers 182769121827117number of participant

58、s30303030303030210the accurate rate60%90%20%30%40%60%90%56%according to the table above, question number 4 had the lowest accuracy, which was 20%. question number 5 had the second lowest accuracy, which was 30%, and question number 6 had the third lowest accuracy, which was 40%. moreover, as mentioned in the instruments part, question number 4 to 7 were based on the second conversation, and apparently, the second conversation had the fewest right answers. that was