A Consideration on Listening Teaching to College English

黎源 宋振华

摘 要 本文通過介绍听力过程以及当今听力教学的三大模式，针对当今听力教学现状，结合作者的教学实际，提出作者对听力教学的几点思考。

Abstract Based on the brief introduction to the nature of listening and three listening teaching models， this paper has brought about some considerations and suggestions of improving listening teaching with the writers own teaching experience， aiming to attract the SFL teachers and researchers to the practical significance of listening teaching.

Key words listening teaching， model， consideration

中图分类号：G424文献标识码：ADOI：10.16400/j.cnki.kjdkz.2015.10.059

1 Introduction

In modern society， social economy development， especially the requirements on qualified talents of English， brought great influences to college English teaching and teaching reform. Foreign language teaching in China have made great progress， however， there are also so many specific severe problems. Generally speaking， foreign language teaching methods are high-time consumed and low-effected， which can not catch up the development of our economy and social， especially for the requirements of Reform and Open.

For a long time， listening has been treated as an important part of the four micro-skills.？According to the data investigated by Rivers and Temperly（1978）， among the time an individual is engaged in communication， approximately 9% is devoted to writing， 16% to reading， 30% to speaking， and 45% to listening. The data indicates that effective listening comprehension is one of the guarantees to carry out successful communication and it should be considered as the most important in English teaching.？This paper focuses on exploring some listening comprehension problems during college English teaching with the combination of the authors teaching practice.

Listening skill is an integrative skill containing comprehensive ability， judgmental ability， logical thinking ability and summarized ability of vocabulary， sentence， and？context. In particular， listening teaching may put emphasis on three main skills： selective attention ability， predict and guess ability and note-taking ability. With the teaching in five classes in a college for two semesters， the author has some considerations about listening teaching.

2 Theories about listening teaching

Schematic listening compression pattern has further developed from “information- processing” pattern which involves “bottom-up processing” and “top-down processing”. While in the actual listening， listeners？always use the two models interactively， so there is the third？model—“interactive model”. In the following part， the three models of listening teaching will be discussed in detail.

2.1 Bottom-up model

The bottom-up model put emphasis on the role of listeners background in listening procedure. Listening starts with the knowledge of phonetic ，words， sentences and the whole context from listeners. In order to finish the procedure ，listeners combine all the phonetics， words， sentences and context with the analysis of them. This model is very useful for listeners while it pay more attention on signal word， sentence.

2.2 Top-down model

In top-down model， listeners usually pay their attention to their own background knowledge， prediction， experience and recognition schema in listening comprehension. Listeners have their own prediction， experience and background knowledge， while listening， the input information in listening comprehension is proceed by listeners. This model put emphasis on listeners own information. Even if it is helpful for listeners in listening comprehension， it has also some shortcoming. It plays more attention on listeners rather than grammatical and lexical elements.

2.3 Interactive model

The interactive model sees listening comprehension as a dynamic procedure. The background knowledge in listeners brain and information from listening material play an interactive role. In this model， listeners not only use phonetic， vocabulary and syntax knowledge， but also their background knowledge in their brain and then they proceed the information form materials in their short-time memory， so that they get the meaning in the interactive process. In fact， this model is the integration of top-down and bottom-up model.

3 Considerations about teaching listening

With the combination of the theories above mentioned and the authors own listening teaching practice， the author have some considerations and suggestions about listening teaching.

Firstly， teachers should pay attention to cultivate students confidence. With the application of the new vision of teaching materials in general colleges， some corresponded criteria are made for freshmen. Although many students have been accepted a series of basic listening training， they will be still labor some to these new vision， even hard to understand. Thus， while listening ， they will be tense and impatient， the tenser， the harder. During a period， if students find hard to get progress， they will be afraid of learning listening ， then get tired of it， at last they will lose heart in learning listening. As their conductor， teachers may illustrate the characteristics and methods of listening learning to students， then they will understand that listening learning is a gradual and difficult process. Also， teachers can help them set up confidence to overcome their anxiety and to make full use of their language knowledge， knowledge schema and affection schema in order to complete the communicative tasks. Whats more， teaching materials and methods can be changed， such as playing English songs and films.

Secondly， teachers should help students master necessary phonetic knowledge to overcome language disorders. While this point is the main problem for freshman. Therefore， phonetic teaching is also important. Teachers should put these knowledge into listening teaching， to make sure students mastering the characteristics of English pronunciation.

Thirdly， teachers should cultivate students good listening habits and effective listening strategies. First of all， teachers conduct students to be absorbed in listening as soon as possible and try their best to avoid interruption. Then， to conduct students to predict. Whats more， in rapidly read paragraph， listeners should have selective attention to listen using phonetic knowledge. For another， tell students how to elaborate， listeners should catch up with the speaker， If necessary， teach them something about how to take notes. Last but not the least， inference is also important， listeners can do some judgments about the time， place or the relationships of the speakers in the conversation or the passage. Listeners can also get some useful information from known signals， while doing dictation or word-filling exercises， listeners can finish them with the help of questions understood.

Finally， teaching materials should be taken into consideration， teachers should also conduct students to do listening exercises after class. In the authors practice， the times of listening classes are limited， only students listening ability cannot be improved by listening only in class. Therefore， teachers should also learn to make efficient use of those multimedia teaching assistant equipment， balance the everyday training between intensive listening and extensive one， give tender guidance to the students' listening practice out class， take full advantage of the unit test and lay our stress on the students' practical listening ability.

Those suggestions are the authors considerations based on the practice in a college. A conclusion can be indicated that， teachers should help listeners overcome their problems o while listening， design suitable teaching activities with the combination of the three models so as to improve their listening comprehension ability.

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