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【Abstract】Listening is very important for English learners and a number of activities involve learners in listening with a specific purpose, but the students often feel very difficult to master it. The author of this paper centers on some practical listening activities, such as how to train the students and how to develop listening skills in practical ways to improve their’ listening. The emphasis in the discussion has been on activities where the communicative purpose is practical.
【Key Words】listening; information; activity; skill
【中图分类号】G252.24 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128(2010)10-0056-02
Listening is a critical element in the competent language performance of second language learners. Through the normal course of a day, listening is used twice as much as speaking and four or five times as much as reading and writing.[1] Yet listening remains to be one of the least understood processes in language learning despite the recognition of the critical role it plays both in communication and language acquisition.[2] As language teaching has moved toward comprehension-based approaches, learning to listening has become an important element in the English at a second language classroom.[3]
I. The necessity of developing listening skills
Listening is one of the most important skills of English learning. We can learn a lot through listening and it is our prime source of information. Students who are not good at listening can not get information into their minds, so they will have more difficulties to think. Unless something is done to radically improve their listening skills, their cognitive and language development will be slow down. One of the most obvious signs that a student is having difficulty with listening is that he can not follow the instructions. If this situation lasts long, it will lead the problems with reading and spelling. So, it is necessary to develop listening skills.
When a student is speaking, he himself can select the language that is used, he can make up for the disadvantages in his talk, or he can use other phrases to simplify his message; but when he is listening, however, he can not control the language that is used, he must be prepared to understand meanings, from whatever is spoken to him. So, for him, it is not enough to understand the same range of language that he can speak. In addition, he must be prepared to cope with a wide range of situational and performance factors which are outside his control: he will need to understand speech in situations where communication is made difficult by physical factors such as background noises, distance; he must become accustomed to speech which is not perfectly planned, but contains the false starts, hesitations and so on which characterize most everyday speech; he will need to understand speakers who vary in tempo of speech, clarity of articulation and regional accent. So, it is quite necessary to develop listening skills.
II. Ways to develop listening skills
A. Listening with a purpose.
The active nature of listening means that not only in speaking, the student must be motivated by a communicative purpose. This purpose determines to a large extent what meanings he must listen for and which parts of the spoken text are most important to him. For example, there may be parts where he does not need to understand every detail, but only to listen for the general gist. There may be other parts where a topic of special significance arises, requiring him to listen for more detailed information, so that he can report about the topic to other members of a group. At other times, a task may require him to listen for specific pieces of information distributed throughout the text.
The most familiar technique for providing a purpose for listening is by means of questions, which prompt students to listen for specific factors or to make inferences from what they hear. Here, I will talk about other kinds of activity through which learners can be helped to develop their listening skills.
The nature of the learner’s response is important for three main reasons. First, it is the need to produce an overt response that provides students with their immediate motivation for listening. Second, it orients them toward certain kinds of meaning and thus helps them to structure their listening activities. Third, some kinds of response provide learners with a framework for conceptualizing the central meanings of the text and for relating them to each other; however, this immediate response will not necessarily be the ultimate purpose of the listening. It may also serve as a preliminary to some other activity. For example, the information which students obtain may serve as a basis for discussion, oral reports or writing. It is when the results of successful listening contribute to some further purpose that the students are most strongly and realistically motivated.
B. Performing physical tasks.
Through the activities described under this title, the student is alerted to look for specific meanings, related to a task which he must perform. This encourages him to listen selectively, extracting only information which is relevant to the task. In turn, this accustoms him to the idea that the criterion for success in listening is not whether he understood every word, but whether he was constructed enough of the meanings in order to satisfy his own communicative purpose. In these activities, success is measured in a purely way: whether the nonlinguistic task is performed correctly or not.
C. Reformulating and evaluating information.
The teacher may decide to give learners a global task, oriented towards the text as a whole. For example, a natural development of the information-transfer activities is that students should be asked to reformulate the important content in their own words, in the form of notes or a summary. Alternatively, students may be required to evaluate the information contained in the spoken text, which may thus serve as a stimulus for written argument or group discussion. Again, these activities may be further motivated by their function in a broader context of activity, such as a role-playing exercise.
D. Listening for social meaning.
It is important that students should develop an awareness of the social implications of language forms.
The clues could be provided not so much by the content as by the forms which the speakers select. Thus, after having two short extracts in which people greet each other with different degrees of formality, students might be asked to match them with two situations in which other clues also suggest different degrees of formality. Since many of the features relevant to social meaning can not be presented visually, the teacher may prefer to provide a verbal outline of the situation and the relationship between the people. It is important , however, to avoid creating stereotypes in students’ minds, such as ‘rich ladies always talk like that’, ‘if he says that, he must be a student’, and so on. Rather, it is necessary to stress that social appropriacy is a fluid quality, without black and white distinctions.
III. Conclusion.
Students who are in the development of listening comprehension are facing a challenge. It is a challenge that demands both the teacher’s and the student’s attention because of the critical role that listening plays, not only in communication, but also in the acquisition of the language. Knowledge of the listening process and factors that affect listening enable teachers to select or create listening texts and activities that meet the need of the second language learners. Teachers then must weave these listening activities into the curriculum to create a balance that mirrors the real-world integration of listening with speaking, reading and writing.
In this paper, the author has talked about something about listening comprehension and different listening skills. For the students, listening with a purpose, transferring information, reformulating and evaluating information, these methods are suitable for them; It is hoped by the author that the listening skills of the students can be greatly improved by this paper.
Bibliography
[1] Rivers, W.M. (1981). Teaching foreign language skills (2nd Ed.) [M]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
[2] Morely, J. (1991). Listening comprehension in second/foreign language instruction. In M.Celce-Murcia (Ed.) [M]. Teaching English as a second or foreign language (2nd Ed.) (pp. 81 106). Boston: Heinle and Heinle
[3] Lund, R.J. (1990). A taxonomy for teaching second language listening. Foreign Language Annals, 23, 105-115
【Key Words】listening; information; activity; skill
【中图分类号】G252.24 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128(2010)10-0056-02
Listening is a critical element in the competent language performance of second language learners. Through the normal course of a day, listening is used twice as much as speaking and four or five times as much as reading and writing.[1] Yet listening remains to be one of the least understood processes in language learning despite the recognition of the critical role it plays both in communication and language acquisition.[2] As language teaching has moved toward comprehension-based approaches, learning to listening has become an important element in the English at a second language classroom.[3]
I. The necessity of developing listening skills
Listening is one of the most important skills of English learning. We can learn a lot through listening and it is our prime source of information. Students who are not good at listening can not get information into their minds, so they will have more difficulties to think. Unless something is done to radically improve their listening skills, their cognitive and language development will be slow down. One of the most obvious signs that a student is having difficulty with listening is that he can not follow the instructions. If this situation lasts long, it will lead the problems with reading and spelling. So, it is necessary to develop listening skills.
When a student is speaking, he himself can select the language that is used, he can make up for the disadvantages in his talk, or he can use other phrases to simplify his message; but when he is listening, however, he can not control the language that is used, he must be prepared to understand meanings, from whatever is spoken to him. So, for him, it is not enough to understand the same range of language that he can speak. In addition, he must be prepared to cope with a wide range of situational and performance factors which are outside his control: he will need to understand speech in situations where communication is made difficult by physical factors such as background noises, distance; he must become accustomed to speech which is not perfectly planned, but contains the false starts, hesitations and so on which characterize most everyday speech; he will need to understand speakers who vary in tempo of speech, clarity of articulation and regional accent. So, it is quite necessary to develop listening skills.
II. Ways to develop listening skills
A. Listening with a purpose.
The active nature of listening means that not only in speaking, the student must be motivated by a communicative purpose. This purpose determines to a large extent what meanings he must listen for and which parts of the spoken text are most important to him. For example, there may be parts where he does not need to understand every detail, but only to listen for the general gist. There may be other parts where a topic of special significance arises, requiring him to listen for more detailed information, so that he can report about the topic to other members of a group. At other times, a task may require him to listen for specific pieces of information distributed throughout the text.
The most familiar technique for providing a purpose for listening is by means of questions, which prompt students to listen for specific factors or to make inferences from what they hear. Here, I will talk about other kinds of activity through which learners can be helped to develop their listening skills.
The nature of the learner’s response is important for three main reasons. First, it is the need to produce an overt response that provides students with their immediate motivation for listening. Second, it orients them toward certain kinds of meaning and thus helps them to structure their listening activities. Third, some kinds of response provide learners with a framework for conceptualizing the central meanings of the text and for relating them to each other; however, this immediate response will not necessarily be the ultimate purpose of the listening. It may also serve as a preliminary to some other activity. For example, the information which students obtain may serve as a basis for discussion, oral reports or writing. It is when the results of successful listening contribute to some further purpose that the students are most strongly and realistically motivated.
B. Performing physical tasks.
Through the activities described under this title, the student is alerted to look for specific meanings, related to a task which he must perform. This encourages him to listen selectively, extracting only information which is relevant to the task. In turn, this accustoms him to the idea that the criterion for success in listening is not whether he understood every word, but whether he was constructed enough of the meanings in order to satisfy his own communicative purpose. In these activities, success is measured in a purely way: whether the nonlinguistic task is performed correctly or not.
C. Reformulating and evaluating information.
The teacher may decide to give learners a global task, oriented towards the text as a whole. For example, a natural development of the information-transfer activities is that students should be asked to reformulate the important content in their own words, in the form of notes or a summary. Alternatively, students may be required to evaluate the information contained in the spoken text, which may thus serve as a stimulus for written argument or group discussion. Again, these activities may be further motivated by their function in a broader context of activity, such as a role-playing exercise.
D. Listening for social meaning.
It is important that students should develop an awareness of the social implications of language forms.
The clues could be provided not so much by the content as by the forms which the speakers select. Thus, after having two short extracts in which people greet each other with different degrees of formality, students might be asked to match them with two situations in which other clues also suggest different degrees of formality. Since many of the features relevant to social meaning can not be presented visually, the teacher may prefer to provide a verbal outline of the situation and the relationship between the people. It is important , however, to avoid creating stereotypes in students’ minds, such as ‘rich ladies always talk like that’, ‘if he says that, he must be a student’, and so on. Rather, it is necessary to stress that social appropriacy is a fluid quality, without black and white distinctions.
III. Conclusion.
Students who are in the development of listening comprehension are facing a challenge. It is a challenge that demands both the teacher’s and the student’s attention because of the critical role that listening plays, not only in communication, but also in the acquisition of the language. Knowledge of the listening process and factors that affect listening enable teachers to select or create listening texts and activities that meet the need of the second language learners. Teachers then must weave these listening activities into the curriculum to create a balance that mirrors the real-world integration of listening with speaking, reading and writing.
In this paper, the author has talked about something about listening comprehension and different listening skills. For the students, listening with a purpose, transferring information, reformulating and evaluating information, these methods are suitable for them; It is hoped by the author that the listening skills of the students can be greatly improved by this paper.
Bibliography
[1] Rivers, W.M. (1981). Teaching foreign language skills (2nd Ed.) [M]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
[2] Morely, J. (1991). Listening comprehension in second/foreign language instruction. In M.Celce-Murcia (Ed.) [M]. Teaching English as a second or foreign language (2nd Ed.) (pp. 81 106). Boston: Heinle and Heinle
[3] Lund, R.J. (1990). A taxonomy for teaching second language listening. Foreign Language Annals, 23, 105-115