高中英语课堂中听力教学手段多样性研究

         Abstract

           English is an international language which is widely used in the world. It consists of four parts: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Learning English is a difficult task, especially the English listening which is always the hardest part for Chinese students. Under the traditional English teaching methods in high school, most of the students can't communicate in English. Since quality education advocated, some achievements have been made, but in general, far from enough, especially in listening comprehension. It is the weak point for the students. They still have some obstacles, some of which are from the objective reasons, such as the lack of suitable material, the large-scale classroom teaching and the teacher's inappropriate teaching methods, while some are from the subjective reasons, such as the lack of interests and practices of the students and so on. Therefore, it is urgent to search for some scientific and efficient teaching methods. This paper will discuss the problems in English listening and to put forward some practical tactics on English listening teaching from three periods: before listening, while listening and post listening.
Key words: English teaching,listening problems of high school students, teaching methods

          Chapter 1   Introduction

          Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four basic skills that English learners in high school should develop. And listening ranks first among these four skills. Rivers investigates that listening contributes 45% of the actual situation of language application. Obviously it is an important means of communication and an important channel of knowledge and information acquisition. The improvement of junior high school students’ listening ability is very helpful to the development of their abilities of speaking, reading and writing. Therefore, great importance should be attached to the improvement of students’ listening ability in English teaching in high school. However, the training of listening has not been placed in its proper position in traditional teaching for a long time and hence listening has long been a weak point. Many students think that listening is one of the most difficult things in English study, and even some of them have difficulty in understanding what their teachers teach in English. As the development of students’ listening ability has become the demand of middle school’s New English Curriculum Standard, nowadays the training of listening has drawn unprecedented attention than before. How to increase the students’ ability in listening and how to improve students’ listening comprehension in the examination has been the common concern of many English teachers’.

           1.1   Research Background

            The teaching of listening in high school has attracted a greater level of interest in recent years than it did in the past. Now, university entrance exams, exit exams, and other examinations often include a listening component, acknowledging that listening skills are a core component of second-language proficiency, and also reflecting the assumption that if listening isn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it. Earlier views of listening showed it as the mastery of discrete skills or microskills, such as recognizing reduced forms of words, recognizing cohesive devices in texts, and identifying key words in a text, and that these skills should form the focus of teaching. Later views of listening drew on the field of cognitive psychology, which introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and brought attention to the role of prior knowledge and schema in comprehension. Listening came to be seen as an interpretive process. At the same time, the fields of discourse analysis and conversational analysis revealed a great deal about the nature and organization of spoken discourse and led to a realization that reading written texts aloud could not provide a suitable basis for developing the abilities needed to process real-time authentic discourse. Hence, current views of listening emphasize the role of the listener, who is seen as an active participant in listening, employing strategies to facilitate, monitor, and evaluate his or her listening.
            In recent years, listening has also been examined in relation not only to comprehension but also to language learning. Since listening can provide much of the input and data that learners receive in language learning, an important question is: How can attention to the language the listener hears facilitate second language learning? This raises the issue of the role "noticing" and conscious awareness of language form play, and how noticing can be part of the process by which learners can incorporate new word forms and structures into their developing communicative competence.
In contrast to reading, less definitive scientific research is available on the other three language skills discussed. For this reason, the limited research is supplemented here with the insights of experts and educators with long and varied experience in the teaching of language skills.

            1.2   Research Purpose

             English is an international language which is widely used in the world. It consists of four parts: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Learning English is a difficult task, especially the English listening which is always the hardest part for Chinese students. Under the traditional English teaching methods in high school, most of the students can't communicate in English. Since quality education advocated, some achievements have been made, but in general, far from enough, especially in listening comprehension. It is the weak point for the students. They still have some obstacles, some of which are from the objective reasons, such as the lack of suitable material, the large-scale classroom teaching and the teacher's inappropriate teaching methods, while some are from the subjective reasons, such as the lack of interests and practices of the students and so on. Therefore, it is urgent to search for some scientific and efficient teaching methods. This paper will discuss the problems in English listening and to put forward some practical tactics on English listening teaching from three periods: before listening, while listening and post listening.
            The whole paper consists of five chapters: Chapter One is research background and the purpose of the paper; Chapter Two introduces problems in teaching of English listening, including two main parts from the aspects of objective and subjective independently; Chapter three deals with tactics, including even aspects, too. Chapter four will give a brief conclusion.

          Chapter 2   Problems in English Listening Teaching

             In the context of chinese current education, there is an urgent problem placed in front of English teachers, which is to improve student's ability of listening comprehension and doing examination as well. In practical teaching, only by studying and analyzing the various problems existing in listening comprehension of high school English teaching deeply can we take effective measures to solve problems in listening. We will analyse the current situation of teaching listening from the aspects of objective factors and subjective factors in this paper.

              2.1   Characteristics of High School English Listening Class

              Generally speaking, there are three main objective problems in the English listening teaching: lack of suitable material, large scale classroom and inappropriate teaching methods.
             2.1.1   Lack of Suitable Material
             First, it is a problem of the lack of suitable material. Currently, the listening material in high school English class, mainly provided by the textbooks and examination papers. Among them the contents of listening exercises in teaching materials which go with the text is relatively difficult, it is no gradual difficult, it is hard to meet the requirements of improving students' listening skills. At the same time, lots of listening materials are mostly concerned about various tests. However the requirements of listening teaching materials should be that the level of difficulty graded from easy to hard, from simple to complex.  the listening material transmitted to everyone in the class with the same speed, the rhythm of the listening material is already set. Listener can not control the speed of the input and at the same time are required to understand the material and respond at once.
           listening materials are mostly oral English, in particular, the informal oral English. There are many incomplete sentences and have features of repetition and indecision. Various kinds of language use and degree of familiarity with themes and different pronunciation also will increase the difficulty in listening comprehension. In addition, oral English has many redundant information. Listener must be good at picking up the main idea from the redundant information.
              2.1.2   Large Scale Classroom Teaching
           On the other hand, it is a problem of large scale classroom teaching. It is really a typical teaching style of Chinese. In most schools, the number of students per class reaches 40 to 50. Although students in the same class are not the same age groups, the development process of them shows differences. The traditional English teaching mode mainly focus on the average students and it is very hard to reaching the teaching purposes of improving excellent students and supplementing the poor.  This traditional teaching mode limits the number of students listening development.
            2.1.3   Inappropriate Teaching Methods
           In terms of teaching. Many teachers assume that listening is a passive skill and therefore quite easy, so it is not actually taught in classroom. In many classroom teaching of high school, English teachers just notice the importance of reading, and they arrange a little time of listening, some even ignore listening and just arrange it as homework after class, teachers focus on the correcting students' mistakes. Teacher enhance the students' capacity of achieving high mark by making intensive training, but seldom teach students the correct method of listening. Students are not active in learning but driven by listening. In the long run, they would have been tired of listening.
          2.2 Features of High School Students
           many students in the classroom listening activities start to panic easily. Due to its first feature, when student fail to understand a word or sentence, they have no time to stop o think. Once they lose one point, they may feel panic at once, which will bring barriers to understanding the following parts, and ultimately lead to the total failure of the listening activity.
The contents of English listening cover various fields, such as Astronomy, Geography, History,, and so on. It is difficult for students to master so plenty of knowledge. What is a worse, student would understand the western culture or other things in Chinese way. In this way, they are likely to get a half understanding of the listening, even total unknown.
         When students do listening, they always translate what they have heard to Chinese, and then think about their meaning in Chinese way. They can not do listening, understanding, reciting at the same time, even getting a connectional reciting. In addition, few students develop the habit of listening to English tapes, watching the television or video-graphic. Because of not enough input, the improvement of listening will come to bubble.

        Chapter 3   Various Teaching Methods

         Listening refers to English language and understanding, and writing in English. It is crucial to learn English, as Rivers Tenderly said: "It is based on knowledge of language knowledge, semantic and syntactic three aspects. It is the most widely used form in active, social activities.A typical lesson in current teaching materials involves a three-part sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening and contains activities that link bottom-up and top-down listening (Field, 1998).
        The pre-listening phase prepares students for both top-down and bottom-up processing through activities involving activating prior knowledge, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary. The while-listening phase focuses on comprehension through exercises that require selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, etc. The post-listening phase typically involves a response to comprehension and may require students to give opinions about a topic. However, it can also include a bottom-up focus if the teacher and the listeners examine the texts or parts of the text in detail, focusing on sections that students could not follow. This may involve a microanalysis of sections of the text to enable students to recognize such features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken discourse that they were unable to process or recognize.

              3.1   Pre-listening

          In the aural teaching, teachers should pay attention to the hearing of training, because the hearing is to improve the students' understanding. Hearing understanding is the effective measure to make a positive mental cognitive process, and it is the result of many languages' ability, background knowledge and ability of thinking. Cello-Murcia (1995) understands hearing, starting from two information processing- listening comprehension of the mental process for the listener in the aural process to use the corresponding strategies and policies. Forecast strategy is a very important one. The forecast is based on what had been a clue to the "that may appear" behind the message content. Theoretically, 50% of listening skills related to forecasts ; in a language understanding, that is the way.
            3.1.1 Do Some Preparation
             Well-prepared pre-listening strategies can help build up confidence and facilitate listening comprehension. Chang (2008) stated that previewing the questions before the text was helpful to the learner’s comprehension. From statement 1 to 3, we could conclude that most students could prepare their mind to concentrate and requested themselves to make progress rather than clarify the objectives and propose strategies. However, for learners, their lack of knowledge of grammar and vocabulary would definitely affect their listening comprehension, and thus reduced their confidence (Yan, 2006). Wang (2005) suggested teachers list the new vocabulary on the board and offered the pictures to help the students predict the listing questions. Nevertheless, Chang and Read (2006) considered that pre-teaching vocabulary before listening might negatively influenced the student’s strategy using because the students might focus on clues and not pay attention to understand the whole content.
             3.1.2 Improve Motivation
           Enthusiasm has the similar meaning of interest. Interest is the motivation in studying. If you are into the listening, you will have a positive learning, which leads to a better efficient result. Therefore, teachers ought to size every opportunity to improve motivation. Taking use of broadcast in school, build up an English column with a quarter or half an hour in a day, which provides a chance for students to listen to English out of class. In this way, students gradually like listening English.
            3.1.3 Setting Questions before Listening
           Listening skills are essential for learning since they enable students to acquire insights and information, and to achieve success in communicating with others. Life within and outside school affords many listening opportunities, but some students fail to seize them because they let their minds wander or they may concentrate on what they want to say themselves rather than on what a speaker is saying. Teachers can show students why good listening is useful and even crucial in some situations. Poor listening can lead to unnecessary arguments and problems. As in the case of doctors, careful listening and questioning might even save lives.
             Students’ listening skills may be enhanced and tested by asking them questions about what they have heard. They may be given practice in note-taking and could be asked questions about the facts and inferences that may be made from their notes. They can be taught to recognize the difference between the main points and incidental or less relevant ideas and information. Learners can also benefit from practice in recognizing the purpose of presentations and other information they hear. It can be useful if they are taught to set goals for what they want to learn from a presentation and to monitor how well they accomplish their goals.
            Students can be taught to listen selectively for specific kinds of information, such as the main purpose, the themes, the details and any implications. They can even be tested for their ability to identify the essential information in the presence of irrelevant material and distractions, as is the case in much of adult life.

           3.2   While-Listening

           While listening, most students were aware that they did not concentrate on listening, and correct it immediately . However, the speakers’ accent, stress and speed would influence their mind. Yan’s (2006) study reported that there were 66.25% of learners influenced by speakers’ accent. The unfamiliar accents might hinder listeners from understanding the contents. however, as English is an international language used by variety of nations around the world now, different accents of materials should be introduced in accessing listening exercises in the classroom. 
               3.2.1    Cultivate a Good Habit in Listening
              It aims at a good habit in registering. Having made a preview of what you will hear, guess what you will listen to, and make a decent preparation. If you could not read all subjects before listening, you should have a quick look and give answer during listening. By means of a phrase for based, not word for word or Italian group is to understand the overall.
             Comparatively, students showed low interests if they were willing to check the parts they didn’t understand and did not often check again their answers when they finished the test either. As different types of materials can cause different barriers for variety of listeners, Yan (2006) stated that 87.5% of students thought news was the most difficult listening materials while 85% of students suppose short conversation was somewhat easier. In this statement, students were not used to look over their answers again. Some possible explanation might result from their losing patience, out of time etc. Yet, Bacon (1992) suggested that teachers should provide “a variety of text, tasks, strategies, and overt practices in order to help listeners develop that unique compound that is most effective for them as individuals.”
             In Hsu’s (2005) study, subjects frequently practiced English by watching films or TV programs, listening to English songs, radio programs, and English lectures and interesting topics and some popular songs could attract students’ learning motivation. Yet, Lin (2000) found most of the subjects in his research did not receive proper training in English listening comprehension. The data indicated that 86.4% of them accessed their listening ability by their teachers’ pronunciation of vocabulary, and phrases or oral reading of sentences and passages, and only 28.7% of the students practiced listening through audiotapes. In this study, the result illustrated that most students only studied in the English classroom, and were lack of passion to utilize any facilities around them to improve their listening comprehension.
            3.2.2 Taking Notes in Listening Process
     Listening to the material and making the simple records are to wake memory. To record the persons, places, time and time, etc. Recording numbers ought to have focal points and skills, such as figures in the Arabic numeral, place, names, stands for the long sentences or with words on the main point, in order to answer as a reference.
     Actually, for applying of bottom-up processing, it is necessary to learn how to break the content down into its components and combine together. However, learners need a large vocabulary and good working knowledge of sentence structure to process texts bottom-up. Traditionally, the exercises of dictation, cloze listening, the use of multiple-choice questions after the texts etc. are applied to process the bottom-up strategy. Richards (2008) pointed out that the recognition of key words, transition in a discourse, grammatical relationships between elements in sentences, and use stress, intonation to identify word and sentence functions were the essential elements in processing bottom-up strategy.
          3.2.3 Staying Clam While Listening
        If there is not understanding in some points, maintain stability; don't be nervous. If you can not answer, lay aside and not to ruminate, and keep readjustment for the next point. Oth erwise, probably because thinking about a problem will miss the next point, even his visionary gaze for several questions.
         In real-world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing generally occur together. The extent to which one or the other dominates depends on the listener’s familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the density of information in a text, the text type, and the listener’s purpose in listening.
      For example, an experienced cook might listen to a radio chef describing a recipe for cooking chicken to compare the chef’s recipe with her own. She has a precise schema to apply to the task and listens to register similarities and differences. She makes more use of top-down processing. However, a novice cook listening to the same program might listen with much greater attention trying to identify each step in order to write down the recipe. Here, far more bottom-up processing is needed.

          3.3   After Listening

          For, post-listening evaluation strategies, having a large lexicon could help EFL learners improve their listening comprehension (Yang, 2002). Most of the listeners had problems of poor vocabulary. When they heard some words they could not figure out, they would feel confused. How to expand the vocabulary was an important issue in language learning (Chu, 2004). In Lin’s (2000) research, it indicated that most subjects looked up the unknown vocabulary in the dictionary. Yet, in this study, almost half of the subjects did not look up the unknown vocabulary in the dictionary. Actually, many It is essential for instructors to stimulate students’ learning autonomy in problem-solving while designing instruction.
            3.3.1   More Practice
           Bacon (1992) suggested that learners could use the authentic text to practice their listening skill, and build their confidence in future real conversation with foreigners. Nevertheless, the authentic materials such as the real dialogues in the video, are different from reading textbooks used in the classroom. They usually talk in faster speed, linking sounds, different accents and full of words with different meanings. Chu (2004) stated that students tended to be panic in listening the real materials since authentic materials were faster in speaking speed. After all, instead of giving listening tests, the instructor might consider to create an authentic and friendly listening environment for promoting students’ learning motivation.
             3.3.2   Combine Listening and Speaking
             Listening and speaking are said to be an indivisible whole. In order to speak well, we must understand what we have listened, and speak continually. Therefore, the teacher will take active part in organizing student to size every chance to speak English, and express what you want to say in English. We should make full use of "English Corner", finding the British and American people to practice spoken English. Therefore, that can improve listening, and speak well.
        To listen combines with speaking. Listening and reading together are making more multi-language flu and to help identify language flow. Listen and read with the words out of shape, and in the memory of the rapid reduction of judgment error should be consolidated and expanded. The good of listening depends on how much your reading put. The fields of the commonly used phrases will be more familiar and listening to English may be waived when translated into Chinese to understand this translation of a heart and go direct apprehended.
          It's a combination of listening and writing that is essential to improve the level of hearing. On the combination, students have not only understood the meaning of what had listened, but also are able to have a full record.  At the beginning, it’s time to start at the basic words and simple sentences of dictating text, and in the end, it's time to dictate a text with 100 to 150 words. When a student can write down what he had heard, he has no problem of understanding the text.
            3.3.3 Follow Teacher's Guide
           Among social strategies utilized by students, they seemed to rely more on teacher’s instruction in improving their learning outcome , and asked English-speaking persons to repeat what they didn’t understand . Actually, researches proved that after the strategy training, subjects used significantly more affective strategies on lowering one’ anxiety, encouraging oneself, and taking one’s emotional temperature (Nakata,1999; Teng, 2003). For statement 27, students showed their conservative attitude in actively asking classmates or teachers questions when they didn’t understand. In Teng’s (2003) research, she found that in social strategy, asking questions from others involved more linguistic knowledge, and the subjects who were low-intermediate EFL learners found it was somewhat difficult to use this strategy even after the strategy instruction. Yet, Teng (2003) also indicated that subjects used more social strategies on cooperating and empathizing with others after they received listening strategy training.

           Chapter 4   Conclusion

             No matter how society develops, English will be not out of our life. Listening is the primary step of English learning, which means English listening playing a main role in our life. As a matter of fact, more and more people have realized the power of English learning; but how many people have realized the power of English listening. We should not only learn how to learn English well, but also learn how to learn English listening well.
              No matter how society develops, English will be not out of our life. Listening is the primary step of English learning, which means English listening playing a main role in our life. As a matter of fact, more and more people have realized the power of English learning; but how many people have realized the power of English listening. We should not only learn how to learn English well, but also learn how to learn English listening well.
              Looking back on the paper, this paper deals with problems from two angles: subjective and objective. For the tactics, it pays main attention to listening skills in the long-term process of training English listening learning, including the physical hard-working and psychological diathesis. Problems and tactics are a unit. Tactics covers information according to the problems.
              This essay sums up a large volume of problems, which are commonly exiting in the teaching of English listening. However, teaching strategies are changeable, because there are so many factors in teaching, such as facilities, conditions, government policies, and so on. This is a limitation of this essay.

           References

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    APPENDIX 1

Open questions for the high school students from various schools online
Questions for the students
1. Do you like your English listening class?
2. Do you think that English listening skill is very important?or more important than written or reading English?
3. What kind of problems do you have in English listening class?
4. Do you think which one is the most difficult one?
5. What kind of listening material do you want to see in the English book?
6. Do you have any idea to improve your English listening skill 
The results of the survey
Question 1:

Question 2:

Question 3 and 4:

 
Question 5:

 
Question 6: