How to Improve the Students’ Listening Ability

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：聽力教學是項綜合性較強的技能，自從學生了解到成功的交際英語是取決于聽并領(lǐng)會他人的意思之后，當今大學生越來越關(guān)注英語聽力在他們學英語的兩年期間，但是聽力技巧較難掌握,因此提高聽力不僅要學生自身的努力,而且還要英語教師進行有效的教導。聽力是一個過程，其中存在很多困難，例如：語音、詞匯，句子結(jié)構(gòu)，找出大概意思和推斷等等。找出相應的解決方法是必須的。這些

5、問題教師如何靈活地在課堂在解決。怎樣有效提高聽力這門課程一項艱巨任務(wù)落在我們聽力老師身上,關(guān)鍵詞：聽力理解；語音；詞匯；句子結(jié)構(gòu)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

11、 the meaning 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

12、 do these 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

13、have heard.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 comprehensi

14、on depends 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

15、treat each 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, voca

16、bulary and 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 the

17、m, they may 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 differe

18、nt from the ones clearly enunciated by their teachers in middle schools 4. They don't 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 pronunc

19、iation, first of 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

20、 failure to understand 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: It's terrible bad, the players are fight.B: What's happen?A: They are contest for marks.Directions: listen to the tap and fill in the blan

21、ks with the words you have heard. It's 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 don

22、9;t distinguish the position stress, they can't 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. Ina

23、bility to process the sounds into meaning words at the 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 work

24、ing out the meaning of .the word and could no longer concentrate 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 ha

25、bit, which needs to be eliminated. "Students need to develop the skill 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 studen

26、ts' can't know the meaning of text by their unfamiliarity with the sentence structure. Following are examples.Mary: Hello may I speak to Rose?Pat: oh. I'm sorry, she is out.err .well: could you leave a message for her?Mary: sure I'm supposed to be meeting Rose for party. Would you as

27、k her to see if she has my hat? If she has, tell her to bring if along.Pat: I'll tell herDirections: listen 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 wil

28、l choose a, which suggests that they did not understand the meaning of the sentence " I'm supposed to be meeting 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

29、 party. Once the meaning of this sentence structure had been explained, they can know right answer is b.There is a tendency 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

30、the topicThe most difficult is finding out the main idea or the topic for most students after listening, facing such a task, 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

31、. When you worry about needing sleep and twist around to find the comfortable position, you are probably only making matters worse.Any or all of these factors might be leading to your sleeplessness by disrupting your body's natural rhythm. What should you do then, on sleepless nights?Don't b

32、other sleeping pills. The best thing to do is drink milk or eats cheese or tuna fish-they'll help to pro-duce the brain signal that induces sleep.Until tomorrow's broadcast, this has been another in the series. Hint For Good Health.Question: where is the talk most probably being given mainly

33、?a: At the radio stationb: In a lecture hall c: a biology labd: At the doctor's officeIn class, some students will choose b as an answer to the above of question. Actually, the text is about health. At first we don't know where it take place, every place is possible so we should catch the ma

34、in information. Take this dialogue for example, the last sentence "until tomorrow's broadcast" From this we can guess the main place is a.This kind of task is difficult because students have to evaluate which -items of information are important and-which are less essential. On the basi

35、s 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 inferences Students, especially those who have just begun to learn to listen, tend to interpret each sentence in isolation in lis

36、tening to dialogues or passages without referring to the context. 6 Should also known translate English to English that impossible.W: I'd like to buy a copy of Professor Franklin's book on seashells. M: Tm sorry. That book has been out of print for some time.Question: What does the man say a

37、bout the book?a: It is to longer available b: It has been reprinted four times c: The store doesn't have it now, but will have it soon d: The information in the book is out of dateAt the first time, students don't known which answer is right. According to this, there is no information in the

38、 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 of print". The problem is that the meaning of it. “Out” imply away from no

39、t in”, we can inferences “out of print,”just as no longer available If students don's know how to inferences, may be choose the wrong.3. The causes of listening problems As mentioned above, what brings about success in listening comprehension is the interaction of “bottom-up” and “top-down” proc

40、esses. 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 unconsciously need to be learned consciously for the foreign learner

41、. 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, at the same time, help them build up background knowledge to do “t

42、op-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 learn International Phonetic Alphabet so that can pronunciation clearl

43、y. 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 necessary. When students are asked to recognize cases of liaison, loss of pl

44、osion, weak forms, assimilation, est., they should be also asked to practice reading in order to be sensitive to these phonetic phenomena. Therefore don't tend to be insensitive to features of spoken English such as liaison, s rhythm, assimilation, etc. Whenever the teacher finds that student

45、9;s 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 finished within the allotted time. After the fixed period of time

46、, 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 where they practice listening at a higher level with a mo

47、re advanced function or greater accuracy. To a certain degree, dictation in this way can also improve students pronunciation.3.1.2 In listening to dialoguesIn listening to dialogues or passages, whenever necessary, teachers had be write out on the blackboard the sentences or phrases which may cause

48、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 li

49、stening materials like assimilation, elision and weak forms.3.2 Problems caused by vocabularyThere are generally two approaches to the study of words, namely synchronic and diachronic. From a synchronic and diachronic. From a synchronic point view, words can be studied at a point in time, disregardi

50、ng whatever changes might be taking place. For example, the word wife now means 'a married woman, esp. in relation her husband. This is the current meaning. It has an obsolete meaning woman, if we take a diachronic perspective, we will consider the word historically, looking into its origin and

51、changes in form and meaning. In this light, the word wife evolved from the Old English form wife, meaning 'woman', but later it became specialized in the course of development to the modem meaning a married woman. In our linguistic inquiry into the English vocabulary, though our focus is on

52、the synchronic description of words, we need the diachronic approach, as a supplement for knowledge of historical development of the vocabulary will definitely be of great help to us in our language study. 3.3 Problems caused by sentence structureMainly there are two kinds of sentences that students

53、 feel difficult to understand. One is the type that is quite different from that of their mother tongue and unfamiliar to them; the other is the type, which is long and complicated. To the first type, teachers should pick it out from the listening text and give further examples to show the meaning o

54、f the structure in question. For the second type, teachers should remind students to pay adequate attention to conjunctions, which show the relationship between clauses and are important in decoding the message. 3.4 Problems caused by making inferences and the main ideaTo answer questions like "

55、;What can you infer from the dialogue?" and "which of the following topics is discussed in the passage?” students need to have a global understanding of the listening text, which requires the memorization of the content of the listening text.In teaching the students to listen to the dialog

56、ue, ask them to find out the subtopics in the dialogue by designing pre-listening questions aimed at helping them to understand the organization of the dialogue and consequently interpret and remember the dialogue, including details. After the dialogue “hows the Family?” there is such a question:Wha

57、t can you infer from the dialogue?A: Mary was sick.B: Mary and her family usually visited her parents in summer.C: Mary didnt often visit her parents.D: Two of Marys children were part-time students.To answer this question, students must remember Marys words to her father at the beginning of the dia

58、logue. “Its been quite a while since I saw you last.” And the talk between her and her father:Father: when are you coming for a visit?Mary: Not for a few months, Im afraid.The two details mentioned above just separately fall into the first subtopic: greeting each other and Marys purpose in making the phone call and the last subtopic: Marys plan for visiting her parents.As it is said, to find out the main idea depends on the understanding of the listeni