How to Improve the Listening Ability of the Students in Middle School
I. The Definition of Listening
In the English class,listening, speaking, reading and writing are four basic abilities and it is important to improve and develop them. Among these four basic skills, the training of listening is most easily overlooked.It also gives many students a lot of invisible pressure, especially in rural middle schools. It is a kind of aggressive communication behaviour, which plays an active and important part.
Among the four basic skills , listening is essential enough.It acts an important role in people's daily life, especially in oral communication. Firstly，children obtain the language from the society only through listening . It is the first means that they contact language in person. According to statistics,during the communication in daily life, it takes people 45% of their time to listen(speaking30%,reading 16%,writing 9%).Listening and speaking have a mutual close connection in daily life. The speaker will only get information through listening. At the same time ,handling the information actively always helps people to master it freely and easily . Finally ,it comes to feedback(spoken language and non spoken language ).Thus,the process of communication has been completed in the end, so it gets the communicative purpose.Therefore,listening is not only a kind of social behavior to communication, but also a social positive behavior indeed.
In English study ,listening training relys on listening class in middle school. But listening here does not only equate with its root in dictionary (try to hear ,pay attention to ),but it should refer to the total meanings:listen, hear (perceive sound with the ears )and comprehend (understand fully ).
II. The Existence and Present Situation of the English Listening Teaching in Middle School.
2.1. Dull Class Atmosphere
As to traditional teaching methods, the listening training includes dealing with sentence pattern or comprehensive teaching which centers on the text, emphasizing the recognition and memory of the language form .Recently, people have known the importance that the activity aims at mastering the whole content of the context and the skills for special listening training which lead to forming the advanced listening ability .All the teachers begin to turn their views towards this scientific aspect.While in some listening class, a simple patter occurs obviously ---the teacher plays the recorder, then ,comes to the students' comprehension of the listening materials, at last ,checks the answers one by one, not much else.Because of the limited time for the class and some other aspects in class ,most teachers do not pay much attention to the special, systematic training for the students.Meanwhile,they adopt an intensive training using the methods above hurriedly before the test .In fact , it is a kind of listening teaching rather than a kind of listening test.
2.2 Lack of Phonetic Knowledge
How to deal with some difficult words which the students have not learned, how to tell the words pronunced in American or Britain ways apart, how to deal with words polysyllable and some other language knowledge make many teachers and students puzzled and tired entirely.Thus, the students feel it difficult to make a good choice and grasp some key words while listening, such as polysemic words, suprasemental features---stress,tone, intonation, unaspirated words etc.Examples are easily available:
(1)im'port v.-----‘import n.
(2)They are' cooking apples---(Some people are cooking apples)
They are ‘cooking apples-----(These are apples for cooking)
(3) eye concrete meaning---just one of the organ in body abstract meaning---sometimes, a kind of quality to ones's eye in judgement
So, if the teachers stop to give some simple explanations to it which clarifies above, there will be an effective result of getting twice the result with half the effort.
2.3 Inappropriate Materials
Because of various reasons, the requirement of the English lesson according to the basic principle of learning English in middle school can be completed freely. Teachers always feel that the time for teaching during the whole term is too short and tense , only to give up listening training now and then; so, a few teachers take it for granted that listening used as a certain teaching content makes up the whole class;meanwhile ,adopt the listening materials without any hesitation at times --using a total test paper for listening.And they will not choose the listening materials with caution which is not objective and systematic, making normally the listening training look so scrappy and inefficient.
It is clear that the listening material also affects. About 43% of the students thought that the material was read too fast and they couldn't follow.A lot of students have their own listening habits. Some students often try to understand each word or each sentence. They will think hard when they meet some difficult words or sentences, and a great many students could understand the material directly, They often translate the English into Chinese in their heart, thinking that only in this way can the sentence be understood. This is also a reason, trying to understand each word is difficult, and it is not necessary at all. You should catch the most important points.
III. Factors to the Development of Students' Listening Ability
According to neurologic linguistcs, the sense of the listeners' feeling consists of 4 aspects: the physical properties of the speech sounds, message, context and the intention of the speaker.People who want to transfer the stimulus of the external sound signal not only need some other various language knowledge, but also pragmatics knowledge, careful observation, thoughts and imagination abilities, as well as transfering the experience of their own and various strategies given by teachers.Therefore, there are many factors that influence listening.
3.1 Language Knowledge
Language knowage is the foundation of listening comprehension.Phonetics is the surface beyond the objects in nature.Every phoneme, syllable, word and sentence does not exist isolatedly; it changes in a fluent speech act naturally. Listeners need to combine certain vocabulary with grammar knowledge, giving these sounds special meaning. Likewise, different pronunciation features from different people, intonation, aspirated manners, stress and the speed of speech are different here and there. For example, the pronunciations to some phonemes are different among them. Meanwhile, it is the same with pronouncing the vowels strongly or slightly, stress and some other factors. In addition , even if one person pronounces the same word, the sense of the word changes obviously, due to the change of the stress, intonation, and the rhythm changing. As a result , it expresses different attitudes and feelings.
3.2 Background Knowledge
In fact, background knowledge refers to the conversational situation in listening materials, the cultural background of the theme, customs, life style and the attitude towards value. At the same time, the active and accurate grasping of the theme is another basic sense. Sometimes, the student has caught up with all the sentences, but can not understand the meaning of an entire passage. Obviously, the reason is that the students are not familiar with the relevant background knowledge. The background knowledge main function lies in it to provide the basis for the listener who makes the judgement, the inference, the guess and so on. It can affect the accuracy of forecast and inference. Generally speaking, apart from the accumulation of background knowledge, along with listening and writing, it needs more summary and instruction from the teacher anyway.
3.3 Cognitive Strategies
Cognitive strategies refer to the forecast, the judgement, the inference and guessing of the possible meaning.etc. It gives positive imagination and retreatment upon the language message which is absorbed during the procedure of communication. In fact, it is a kind of listening skill. Then comes to the chief basis when using this kind of strategy namely concrete linguistic environment., the comprehension of the theme and topic, and some grammar logic relations in the text. Among them ,the character, the situation,the subject constitute the specific linguistic environment.The different people，as a result of the status,the mutual relations and the different situation, select the words in all kinds of means. Even if it is the same sentence, the sense will change because of various period and different situation. Therefore, the listener can not only forecast the conversational implication according to the age of the speakers,the status and mutual relation, but also judge the status of the speakers,deeply into the attitude and opinion of the speaker according to the conversational implication and situation. The listener, who is extremely familiar with the subject of the conversation, has no difficulty in understanding the intention of the speaker.
Moreover，good grammar logic relations in article benefit the students quite a lot, as follows: comparison, concession, reason and result, coordination and condition, etc; they are obvious symbols of language. Such as,when hearing for example, it means using example to prove; when hearing if, it belongs to condition; what about however?
3.4 Emotion Factors
The emotion factor is one kind of psychological factors, which directly affects the understanding of the listening materials in different aspects. While listening, the students are in anxious, bored state with much constraint,and their psychological activity process is constrained enough. As a result , the thought also changes slowly, resulting in not displaying the students normal listening ability; meanwhile, the original listening material mastered before turning a difficult task for them. So the more the students listen, the more disappointed they feel. On the contrary, it can form the good circulation for listening. And during the process of listening, the students may make varieties of mistakes, of which they are not conscious.
There are two forms of feedback---emotion feedback and congition feedback.(Vigil& Oller, 1976). So long as the emotion feedback is in negative state, the learner always does not want to communicate with others ; in other words, they have no motive and interests in doing so. As a teacher in middle school, he chooses the suitable methods to avoid the interference.
IV. Approaches to developing students' listening ability
4.1 Basic Skills of the Listening Training Should be Strengthened.
First of all, the listening basic skills are very important, including certain knowledge of reading, like the syllable, the stress, pronunciation unstressed, context, stops and deletion etc. Sometimes, whether the stops of the sentence is right or not affects the students to grasp the main meaning of the sentence or passage. At the same time, learning about the words meaning in different aspects makes it easier for students to keep pace with the speaker. So ,as a teacher, providing enough presentation for some words makes a great difference all in all.
4.2 The Listening Materials Should be Chosen Carefully.
According to the students' ability and level in English study at present, the teacher selects the suitable materials carefully, which does much good to the students. When choosing the materials, do not forget to pay much attention to several points as follows:
Select series of materials which are from the element to the advanced,gradully.
Select some materials, strongly operational and objective.
Select the materials which suit the new teaching textbooks.
Select some oral and original materials aimed at communicating.
Every language study has a long and gradual procedure, so does the listening. Many experienced teachers divide the total time into three periods, and different period needs various teaching methods.During the first period(Grade 1), it is necessary for the teacher to help the students with pronunciation, stress, intonation and so on;in middle period(Grade 2), improve the input gradully, at the same time , hold several listening exames for checking; the last period(Grade 3), the teacher should pay much attention to the listening training, giving more practice with scientific manners every day. After the training, the students can obtain a relaxing mood for the test.
4.3 Careful Preparation for Listening Class
Before listening to the tape, it is useful for the teachers to write the title and some clues on the blackboard; next, pair work or group work; meanwhile,the teacher encourages the students to forecast the main meaning and some results of the listening materials actively, which keeps the students in a good state of mind. Of course, developing the ability above is a must in listening class. In order to improve its accuracy of their judgement, let the students listen with some easy questions attached to the listening materials. While listening, they can make the best choice easily. Sometimes, some key words are useful enough, which the students can use to listening.
4.4 Other Suggestions
During the teaching procedure,there are various methods for the teachers to adopt.In many schools,many teachers use some visual aids in class,such as picture, slide show, video,Tv set and recording etc.There is no doubt that it helps the students to grasp the meaning quickly, more active and lively. In addition,developing a good habit of listening and emphasizing the instruction of listening skills are very important. During the course of listening, the teacher should ask the students to use English firstly for thinking; meanwhile, avoid the mother tongue intererence,. Some listening skills for students: scan the questions quickly to hunt some useful message in the passage；write it down while listening, paying attention to the record; the key and main points come first, then to the others; master the materials in whole. etc.
At last ,do not ignore the development of the students＇good psychological quality in class. As is known,the students who are absent-minded must not get good results obviously.
V. Conclusion
Above all, listening is a most important ability for the middle-school students. To the teachers in middle school, how to improve the students＇listening ability is a hard and difficult task.. For the students and teachers, it is necessary to improve it day by day.By means of listening teaching, it is an effective method for the students to improve their listening. They can understand and also accept the methods. As a result, when they can use English to communicate with each other in their daily life,it is possible for them to improve their listening ability.
Works Cited:
1 Carroll, D.W.1999,Psychology of Language. Monterey, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company (the 3rd Edition),P321-345.
2汪榕培 卢晓娟，1998，英语词汇学教程，P135-164.
3上海外国语教育出版社，1997，简明英语语言学教程（修订版）。戴伟栋，华钧，P89-107.
4 内蒙古大学出版社，1999，中学英语课堂教学方法实用全书。 王坦，冯克诚等，P345-396.
王菊卿