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2.2 Bad Listening Habits The main purposeof listening is to understand the general idea. But the bad habits in theprocess of listening comprehension prevent some students from catching themajor content. For example, they always try their best to get the meaning ofevery word, every sentence, once they meet a new word or a difficult sentence,they will stop to think them over, and in this case they cannot catch up with thespeaker any more. “Still some students cannot directly understand Englishmaterials; they are used to translating English into Chinese while listening.”(池涌2004:44) Also many students are passivelisteners, and they never read the topic before sound signals come, and theyare not used to predicting the following contents, and they always sit there towait for the following contents after finishing listening one sentence or oneparagraph. The worse is that some students take listening comprehension for granted;they never pay attention to listening and think it is unimportant to them. Allthese bad habits, in a sense, are the main factors affecting their listeningcomprehension. In fact, it is unnecessary to know every word and sentence, youonly should catch the main idea, grasp the major points, which are enough. Ifstudents concentrate on ‘Heart Translation’ while listening, and they cannotcatch up with the speaker, and also that’s why you have no time to attend tothe main content, let alone seize the implication of it. So students must getrid of these bad habits for their improvements in listening comprehension. 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com 2.3 Psychological Factors copyright paper51.com Listeningcomprehension is closely related to psychological factors. The process oflistening comprehension is a very complicated psychological one. It is easy forstudents to become frightened when they are at their nervousness. If they meetsome words or sentences they do not know, they will feel fidgety. Even somestudents are afraid of listening at the very beginning, and others cannotconcentrate their attentions on the listening, and other things will drawstudents’ attentions while having listening class. Thus most students canhardly learn anything in class, and listening comprehension is a painful thingto them. copyright paper51.com 2.4 Memory Barriers http://www.paper51.com Memory plays anessential part in the process of listening. “Memory is the premise of comprehension,while comprehension is the sublimation of memory. In some sense, quality ofmemory is the degree of understanding.”(Wang Dan,Wu Chunxue. 2004:19) Listeningis becoming more and more important, but students find it difficult to memorizesomething while listening, especially for some long passages. They often forgetthe preceding information that heard just now so that they cannot get thegeneral idea of the listening text. The memory is a serious problem; itdirectly affects the listening comprehension. http://www.paper51.com 3. Countermeasures to Deal with Non-LinguisticListening Obstacles paper51.com
3.1 Enriching Students’Background Knowledge 内容来自www.paper51.com Backgroundknowledge has a close relationship with listening comprehension. Students cantry the following methods to enrich their background knowledge: 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com
One isto read extensively, especially to read English books about theEnglish-speaking countries’ history, geography, customs, religion, sports,education and culture. Also students must be encouraged to touch English asmuch as possible, such as reading some English newspapers, magazines andoriginal novels, which contain a lot of information of English-speakingcountries. The more students read, the more knowledge they know. Theimprovement of reading ability will promote listening ability. The other is tomake full use of the English movies or TV programs to gain some backgroundknowledge. All these aim at making students familiar with those Englishspeaking culture and traditions besides what have been explained in theclassroom. During the process of the author’s doing practice teaching at amiddle school, the author found that the students who had enough background knowledgecould got a better result than those students who had little backgroundknowledge in listening comprehension. Thus, students must read widely, enlargecommon knowledge and pay attention to the currents and newest achievements ofscientific culture. Hence, it can create favorable conditions for understandingEnglish lecture, broadcast and conversation. 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com 3.2 Ways to Train Students’ Listening Skills and Develop Good Habits 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com Studentsonly have fruitful phonetic, vocabulary or background knowledge that is notenough, they must form good habits and master some listening skills. copyright paper51.com
3.2.1 Cultivating Students’ Ability of Catching Important Information http://www.paper51.com Studentsshould read the requirements before listening so as to catch some informationahead. That is to say, they should skim the exercises to seize any possiblehints about the passage and have a short memory on them. Then take notes whilelistening to strengthen their memory. During the process of listeningcomprehension, students’ attention should be focused on the key points of thelistening materials, but not on every word or sentence. The key points usuallycover “Ws”, when, where, who and how. For instance: paper51.com W: Youseem very confident about the job interview, don’t you? http://www.paper51.com
M: Yes, I feel ready for it.I brought a good suit in a clothing store. I had studied almost everythingabout finance and economics. 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com Q: Where is Jim probablygoing to work? paper51.com
A) In a school. http://www.paper51.com B) In a bank. 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com C) In a clothing store. copyright paper51.com D) In a barbershop. copyright paper51.com Ifstudents can catch the most important two words “finance” and “economics”, theywill realize the man is going to work in a bank. 内容来自论文无忧网 www.paper51.com 3.2.2 Cultivating Students’ Ability of Guessing 内容来自www.paper51.com Guessingis a very important skill for foreign language, especially for listening,because information only lasts for a short time. “Use the skill of guessing atunknown words and decide whether or not they are necessary in your effort tounderstand the sentence meaning.”(Ma Zhanxiang, 2002:98) Usually it isimpossible for students to catch everything. Therefore training their guessingability is very important. When students come across some new words inlistening, they cannot look up dictionary for their meaning. What they shoulddo is to guess the unknown words through the context. For example, “One newimportant use for computers is for entertainment. Many new games are…” whenstudents come across the new word “entertainment” they will pay all theirattentions to think what it is mean. If they do not mind and continue tolisten, they will find that the following contents are all talking aboutcomputer games, so they can easily guess it means “enjoyment”. But moststudents are too nervous when they meet an unfamiliar word and will beat theirbrains to think the meaning of the new word so that they can’t catch the majorpoints, which will affect the understanding of the whole passage. An effectivemethod to train students’ guessing ability is that we play a short conversationor a passage, give pauses in the middle, and ask students to guess who thespeakers are, where the conversation takes place, what the speakers talk aboutand what is the speaker’s attitude. Students are encouraged to develop thisskill for their improvement in listening comprehension. 内容来自www.paper51.com 3.2.3 Cultivating Students’ Predicting Skill paper51.com A goodlistener is a person who can predict what the dialogue or passage is aboutafter have a fast reading of the requirements and a person who will predictwhat the speaker is going to say. paper51.com Aneffective listener is constantly setting up hypothesis in his mind.. Theprocess of understanding the text is the process of seeing how the content ofthe text matches up to these predictions.(Liu Hong,1998:87) copyright paper51.com
Forinstance, before students listen to a passage about doing an experiment in thelab, teachers should give some brainstorm questions to students, such as “Whatcan you do and what can’t you do in the lab?”, then students will use theircommon knowledge to predict what the listening material is about. Teachers canalso ask students to predict the listening text according to the title. Duringthe process of listening students will concentrate all their attentions onlistening to check their predictions. There is another good method to trainstudents’ predicting skill, that is, teachers state the first part of thecontext and let the students predict what the next part of the context isabout. Whether the prediction is right or not, it will be of great use to thelistening comprehension. So prediction is an effective method in listeningcomprehension. I t can stimulate students’ interest and curiosity; arouse theenthusiasm of the students. http://www.paper51.com |