Listening Comprehension
姓名：姜莹
单位：外国语学院11级英语2班
指导教师：肖凌鹤
To Improve the Ability of
Listening Comprehension
Abstract: As we all know, listening comprehension is a kind of basic ability for the contemporary English majors. The purpose of English teaching is to improve the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. But the final purpose is to let the students be able to use the language. However, to communicate easily, you must be a good listener at first. And it is reported that listening wins the first place. Unluckily, it is difficult for Chinese students to master it. So it is time for us to know some listening skills, so that we can get good marks in the examination. What is the problem with us? How to improve listening comprehension? The aim of this paper is to explore how to use effective and corrective approaches to improve college student’s listening comprehension.
Key words: English majors, English listening ability, present situation, reasons and solutions.
Introduction
Knowing the difficulties the contemporary students have in studying English listening comprehension, I did an investigation on purpose. It is the first step to find where the problems are. Analyze it carefully. As a result, I come to the conclusion. At the same time, I write down the most effective ways to make more progress on the English comprehension studying. I wish I can help some other students.
Main Body：
一．The importance of English listening
Having studied English for ten years, many students still are not able to communicate with foreigners smoothly. The most important reason is that they can not understand what the foreigners say. Without listening ability, English will no longer a language! Because you cannot understand what others talk about and there will be no communication! So listening can help us talk just like in Chinese. Listening can also assist us with writing. If we hear from listening more, we will get more inspiration in our articles. In addition to this, listening test accounts for a large proportion in the Test for English Majors, Grade Four, as important as reading comprehension. To your surprise, listening will please us a lot and let us enjoy music, situations and stories which are full of happiness and sadness. Therefore, English listening ability is an important part of English majors in the process of English listening learning.
二．Current problems in English listening studying
1. Poor basic knowledge
Everyone knows that basic knowledge is of great important. And many people regard it as the base of the tall buildings. So it is obvious that a grasp of basic knowledge is necessary. For example, you can not understand what you have listened, even though you are familiar with the words. As a result, it seems to be easy, but you still fail to follow it. And the same sentence can be expressed in different ways. If so, it has to be a challenge to understand it. No input, no output. If you have not store enough for the cold winter, how can you live through it and enjoy the happiness of the spring?
2. Lack of English environment and interest
We know the largest difference between mother language learning and foreign language learning is the environment. A child can soon learn his mother language well. He has heard a lot before he can say something and walk. Then after he is able to walk and say, he has a chance of listening to more. Before he goes to school, he has already been a good listener and speaker. But for a foreign language, you can meet it only in formal places, classes, for example, otherwise, you can hardly have a chance to meet it. As a student, I have learned English for more than ten years. Frankly speaking, I can not communicate with English-speaking foreigners very easily.
How about other Chinese people in English-speaking countries? Yao Ming, a basketball player in NBA, entered NBA in 2002 with a translator for helping him communicate with American people. But after about 2 years, Yao “fired” his translator because Yao did not need him any more. He could communicate with others in English very easily. Another famous Chinese person, Zhang Ziyi, world wide famous movie actress, had hardly learnt English before she started to act in Hollywood. But now she can speak English very well after working hard and living in USA for several years and successfully finds a rich boyfriend Vivid in America.
How could this happen? It must have something to do with the English environment. I have some friends and classmates who study abroad. Most of them went to study after National College Entrance Examination in China. After studying about two years abroad, some of them can easily talk with English-speaking foreigners. Living abroad, they have more opportunities to listen, to think, to speak while it is almost a luxury in China. I do not mean that we all should go abroad to study English. What I want to say is that the English learning environment is very important to us.
On the other hand, English learning is important but it does not mean everything. If you do not have the willingness to learn, the good environment means nothing to you. You are always too bored to pay enough attention to the listening materials. English learning environment and willingness are both necessary while studying English.
3. The wrong pronunciation
It is sure that you can not understand the listening articles when you have the wrong pronunciation, especially the quick speed of it. Sometimes, it even involves lots of pronunciation phenomenon. Therefore, only when accurate to remember the pronunciation, can we understand what it says.
4. Cultural background differences
It often occurs that you can listen something that you never have listened. For example, there are specialized terms, place names and traditional stories. In my investigation, about 35% of the students with low listening comprehension thing this is because they do not understand or know the knowledge about linguistics; they are not able to tell the means of what they have heard. Pay attention to the western culture. It is also very important.
5. Psychological quality and skills
With the development of the society, more and more people pay great attention to the psychological test. They always talk about it in spare time. Frankly speaking, psychological quality affects the whole of our life. As a student, we must control our emotion when we take any examination. But many students complain that they feel nervous as soon as they pick up the headset. How to do this? It is impossible to be devoted when somebody is nervous. Especially at the beginning of the listening, the students have not been ready. In addition, we had better make full use of the brain. It means to master good skills. The ability of distinguishing the important information is in great need. If you are clever enough, you will not miss the main words.
三．Solutions
1. More vocabulary
I have put stress on the vocabulary already. Without question, it is difficult of a middle school student to understand the listening material, if he has not enough vocabulary and the ability of telling the grammar construction. But I want to say, whether you look back on the words you used to recite or not. Every one forgets something naturally. I remember, permanent memory is the process of repeating. Otherwise, you will be just familiar with the words. As a major English student, the fundamental vocabulary is quite insufficient. So take more time on the vocabulary. The more words you know, the easier you understand the listening materials.
2. Practice makes perfect
Everything comes to him who is waiting. And practice makes perfect. The industrious will win the dream one day. In fact, listening is connected with reading, speaking and writing. All of them need to be improved. Training and practicing the listening comprehension is not a day’s work.
First, reading is an important way of gaining information in foreign language learning. It is a basic skill for a foreign language learner. Reading can form your feeling naturally. Sometimes, you can make it by sense. Pay attention to the oral reading skill, It includes stress, strong form, weak form, intonation incomplete plosive consonant, affricate consonant, syllable and so on. What is more, you can understand a lot of western culture at the same time.
Then, speaking is good for your pronunciation. Be brave to express yourself in English. Never be afraid to make mistakes. Only when you find the mistake, can you correct it. Let the students grasp the phonetic symbol. I think the phonetic symbol is the base. A good intonation and phonetic depends on the base. Oral reading after a radio or a teacher is a good way at the beginning; Students should do much about it.
Pay attention to the oral reading skill, It includes stress, strong form, weak form, intonation incomplete plosive consonant, affricate consonant, syllable and so on. Training and practicing the oral reading is not a day. You need to know that more chance you have to practice speaking English, the more progress you make.
Finally, writing is good for you to form the logical thinking, which can help you analyze problems.
3. Enjoy it
The modern people are under great pressures from works, families, love, and study around them everyday. If they could not adjust their mood to face the challenges in front of them, they will suffer a lot from the trouble, even abandoned by the society. So if you want to live longer and healthier, you'd better keep a good mood and enjoy what you choose to do.
Be relaxed to study. We can watch the English films and listened English music in spare time. By doing this, we can develop great interest towards English.
4. Listening skills
New words prevent you from reading fast. One way to overcome this problem is to guess. There are many ways to guess the meaning of a new word. First you should find some hints. Context, some phrases, such as "means", "refer to", "in other words", "That is to sag"; are all the hints. It will waste much time to think about the unknown words. At the same time you miss the new information. It must be a failure.
Read the question ahead and write down the main information. If so, we know what we should do. And we can not forget any information. If possible, we can guess the main idea according to the context.
Avoid translating what you have listened, because it spends much time, too. It is good for you to forget your native language at the right time. It is clear that the reading speed of a material also affects. About 43% of the students thought that the material was read too fast and they could not follow. A lot of students have their own listening habits. Some students often try to understand each word or each sentence. The y 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.
四．Conclusion
In a word, the ability of listening comprehension is an indispensable tool to communicate in our world. This study has provided a detailed description of the understanding of listening, including the understanding of the nature of listening, the importance of it, and the problems with it. At last but not least, you will gain the solutions to your difficulties in improving the ability of listening comprehension. Just as the saying goes,”where there is a will, there is a way”. No matter what you want to do, you can make it by going all out.
五．References
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