本科畢業(yè)論文英語教學(xué)
本科畢業(yè)論文英語教學(xué)
隨著時(shí)代的發(fā)展和進(jìn)步,英語作為一種國際通用語在貿(mào)易往來和文化交流過程中發(fā)揮著不可替代的作用。下文是學(xué)習(xí)啦小編為大家整理的關(guān)于本科畢業(yè)論文英語教學(xué)的范文,歡迎大家閱讀參考!
本科畢業(yè)論文英語教學(xué)篇1
農(nóng)村中學(xué)論文英語教學(xué)論文
摘要:我國農(nóng)村中學(xué)的英語教學(xué)質(zhì)量一直以來較差,特別是農(nóng)村初中的英語。加上現(xiàn)在又是課改階段,如何穩(wěn)步提高農(nóng)村初中英語教學(xué)的質(zhì)量,是個(gè)十分艱巨的任務(wù)。對(duì)此我國近年來在英語教學(xué)法方面,特別是在中小學(xué)英語教學(xué)方面進(jìn)行了較大的改革,取得了可觀的成績。
關(guān)鍵詞:語音教學(xué);寫作教學(xué);提高學(xué)習(xí)英語的興趣
我國農(nóng)村中學(xué)的英語教學(xué)質(zhì)量一直以來較差。加上現(xiàn)在又是課改階段,如何穩(wěn)步提高農(nóng)村初中英語教學(xué)的質(zhì)量,是個(gè)十分艱巨的任務(wù)。主要原因如下:其一,在小學(xué)階段沒有上英語課,或由非專業(yè)教師上英語課,所以初中英語教師只得從字母教起;其二,學(xué)生總是認(rèn)為語文、數(shù)學(xué)是主科,因?yàn)樾W(xué)上的基本上是語文、數(shù)學(xué)。其三,學(xué)生的學(xué)習(xí)方法不得當(dāng),科目多,又不主動(dòng)學(xué)習(xí)。
一、問題的提出
1、語音教學(xué)
農(nóng)村中學(xué)里幾乎沒有外籍教師,缺乏必要的教學(xué)設(shè)備,更沒有專門的聽力、語音設(shè)備。硬件上的落后致使學(xué)生缺少了很多英語學(xué)習(xí)的輔助條件。但對(duì)農(nóng)村中學(xué)英語語音教學(xué)影響更大的因素是“軟環(huán)境”的不足:師資匱乏;教師自身水平不高,口語不標(biāo)準(zhǔn),甚至很多教師仍在使用方言進(jìn)行課堂教學(xué);加之,大部分農(nóng)村中學(xué)生少有機(jī)會(huì)接觸到英語,卻少一個(gè)良好的語言環(huán)境。
2、寫作教學(xué)
寫作教學(xué)中師生互動(dòng)性不強(qiáng),內(nèi)容或話題往往由教師決定,較少關(guān)注情感因素對(duì)學(xué)生寫作的促進(jìn)作用,以致無法激發(fā)學(xué)生的表達(dá)欲望。寫作前與學(xué)生討論題目相關(guān)的信息,語言知識(shí),框架等不夠充分,教師的語篇題材意識(shí)不強(qiáng),未能采用“過程式寫作教學(xué)”對(duì)學(xué)生進(jìn)行具體指導(dǎo)和分析。大多限于“布置任務(wù)――學(xué)生寫作――教師批改――點(diǎn)評(píng)”這一單調(diào)形式,未能使用多種活動(dòng)和練習(xí)形式來組織寫作教學(xué),沒有有機(jī)結(jié)合基本的語言知識(shí)和技能,以致學(xué)生無法創(chuàng)造性運(yùn)用所學(xué)語言進(jìn)行書面表達(dá)。安排寫作訓(xùn)練的量和度不夠,未能使學(xué)生養(yǎng)成以寫作來書面交際的習(xí)慣。
3、傳統(tǒng)教學(xué)方法
觀察我們當(dāng)前英語課堂教學(xué),不難發(fā)現(xiàn),受“應(yīng)試教育”、“升學(xué)率”的影響,教師把持課堂的現(xiàn)象仍很普遍。這應(yīng)該說是一種以教師為中心的傳統(tǒng)教學(xué)模式。而傳統(tǒng)的英語教學(xué)基本上是依據(jù)行為主義理論,強(qiáng)調(diào)的是刺激反應(yīng),教師只是起到一個(gè)外部刺激作用,教學(xué)中忽視了學(xué)生內(nèi)在的心理反應(yīng),其根源就在于忽視了學(xué)生的極具潛力的主體作用。以教師為中心的根深蒂固的教學(xué)模式使學(xué)生在學(xué)習(xí)過程中始終處于被動(dòng)位置,這種狀況既阻礙英語教學(xué)的開展,更阻礙素質(zhì)教育的實(shí)施。
二、解決辦法
1、激發(fā)學(xué)生的學(xué)習(xí)興
教師在加強(qiáng)學(xué)法指導(dǎo)的同時(shí),還要注意不斷激發(fā)學(xué)生的學(xué)習(xí)興趣,努力使學(xué)生保持高昂的學(xué)習(xí)熱情,這是學(xué)生今后的英語學(xué)習(xí)能否順利發(fā)展下去的前提之一。在外語學(xué)習(xí)環(huán)境較差的中國,學(xué)生要想追求自我發(fā)展,把英語學(xué)習(xí)卓有成效地進(jìn)行下去,沒有強(qiáng)烈的學(xué)習(xí)動(dòng)機(jī),濃厚的學(xué)習(xí)興趣,學(xué)習(xí)能力再強(qiáng)也很難取得理想的學(xué)習(xí)效果。因此,英語教師一個(gè)重要任務(wù)就是在教會(huì)學(xué)生掌握英語的同時(shí),還要培養(yǎng)出學(xué)生的“愛學(xué)英語”的興趣和樂趣。
2、提高教師自身素質(zhì)
素質(zhì)教育的直接實(shí)施者是教師。英語教師的思想素質(zhì)、英語水平素質(zhì)、英語教學(xué)能力素質(zhì)和身心素質(zhì),特別是英語水平素質(zhì)的好壞,是決定外語教學(xué)質(zhì)量高低的一個(gè)極為重要的因素。人們常說,教師要給學(xué)生一杯水,自己首先要備一桶水。外語教師要熟練地掌握教材,駕駛教材,超越教材,不僅要掌握所授學(xué)科的基礎(chǔ)知識(shí)、基本理論,而且對(duì)這門學(xué)科的歷史、現(xiàn)狀、未來發(fā)展、社會(huì)功能以及與鄰近學(xué)科的關(guān)系等等都要有較多的了解和相當(dāng)?shù)难芯?。并在教學(xué)過程中不斷對(duì)自己的教學(xué)進(jìn)行反思,要運(yùn)用其它行之有效的教學(xué)方法、手段、技能、技巧,最大限度的引導(dǎo)幫助學(xué)生逐漸掌握外語,使其學(xué)會(huì)如何學(xué)習(xí)英語,并努力使自己成為具有創(chuàng)新精神的研究型教師。
3、時(shí)俱進(jìn),面向全體,培優(yōu)補(bǔ)差,爭取大面積提高
眾所周知,影響學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)成績差的原因是多方面的。有些是由于智力因素,絕大部分是由于非智力因素的影響所致。不管是哪種因素,在學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)上存在著困難,作為教師的我們應(yīng)該滿懷熱情地關(guān)懷愛護(hù)他們,決不能嫌棄排斥。我們的常言道:“沒有教不好的學(xué)生,只有不會(huì)教的老師”。所以我們要主動(dòng)去關(guān)心他們,去親近他們,深入到他們中間去,使他們對(duì)老師產(chǎn)生親近感、信任感,消除師生間的心理隔閡。在我教初二時(shí),有一個(gè)學(xué)生在課堂上問我:老師,我不想出國,我不想與外國人交朋友,我為何要學(xué)習(xí)英語?我為何要聽你說英語?所以,我對(duì)英語課很不感興趣,無心學(xué)習(xí),上課總是經(jīng)常睡覺,平時(shí)很少完成作業(yè)??荚嚠?dāng)然就沒有及格過。當(dāng)時(shí)我就在課堂上直接回答他的問題。只有與外國人交朋友才學(xué)習(xí)英語嗎?試問:在中國能有多少人能出國?中國人學(xué)習(xí)英語是為了提高自己的文化知識(shí),是為了學(xué)習(xí)國外優(yōu)秀先進(jìn)的技術(shù),是為了更好地為國為社會(huì)貢獻(xiàn)自己的一份力量,把祖國建設(shè)得更美好。特別是當(dāng)今時(shí)代,我們年輕人更要學(xué)習(xí)英語。就算你沒有機(jī)會(huì)出國,可外國人有機(jī)會(huì)來中國,也許就在你的家鄉(xiāng)建廠,你就有機(jī)會(huì)與外國人交談或做生意。
4、優(yōu)化組合多媒體,拓寬學(xué)生視野,創(chuàng)設(shè)口語交際情景
多媒體能通過圖文并茂、動(dòng)靜皆宜的表現(xiàn)形式,生動(dòng)形象地展示農(nóng)村學(xué)生不熟悉的信息化、時(shí)尚化的教學(xué)內(nèi)容,幫助學(xué)生獲得感性認(rèn)識(shí),拓寬視野,增長知識(shí),為學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)語言創(chuàng)設(shè)真實(shí)情景,使學(xué)生在活動(dòng)中有話可說。
中國學(xué)生英語開口能力差是我們每一位英語教育工作者必須正視的一個(gè)現(xiàn)實(shí)問題。改革傳統(tǒng)英語口語教學(xué)模式,提高英語口語教學(xué)水平,增強(qiáng)英語口語教學(xué)的實(shí)效性,是解決這一問題的必經(jīng)之路。而要想做到這一點(diǎn),僅有努力是不夠的,只有用科學(xué)的理論來為英語口語教學(xué)導(dǎo)航,解決“啞巴英語”問題才不致于成為空話。
本科畢業(yè)論文英語教學(xué)篇2
英語聽力教學(xué)論文范文
[Abstract] Modern language teaching theory highly emphasizes the effect of “listening” on the learning and the use of language. The teaching of English listening isn’t only a teaching of language, also a training of ability. In the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is the basic, and the most important skill. It isn’t only the main way of acquiring language information, but the base of improving other skills. Many Chinese students regard the listening test as the most difficult part of a whole test. In this article, we start with the conditions of the middle school listening teaching, point out some problems and design some activities in the beginning of the class. Then we focus on some activities of teaching English listening and insist that the activities should be emphasized on the process of listening, rather than the result of listening. How can students improve their listening and get good mark, become the subject that junior middle school teachers care. During the English teaching, it is important for teachers to master the skill of designing the listening activities
[Key Word] listening; middle school; English teaching; barrier; teaching activity designing;
【摘 要】隨著時(shí)代的發(fā)展和進(jìn)步,英語作為一種國際通用語在貿(mào)易往來和文化交流過程中發(fā)揮著不可替代的作用。掌握好英語這種交際工具,對(duì)學(xué)生將來的發(fā)展有著深遠(yuǎn)的影響?,F(xiàn)代語言教育理論高度重視“聽”在語言學(xué)習(xí)和語言使用中的作用。聽力教學(xué)既是一種語言教學(xué),也是一種技能的培養(yǎng)。在聽,說,讀,寫四項(xiàng)技能中,聽是最基礎(chǔ)的,最重要的技能。它不僅是獲取語言信息的主要途徑,還是提高其他技能的基礎(chǔ)。許多中國學(xué)生認(rèn)為聽力能力的測(cè)試是所有測(cè)試中最難的部分。在本篇論文中,開篇介紹了現(xiàn)在中學(xué)聽力教學(xué)的情況,指出當(dāng)中存在的一些問題,針對(duì)課前的一些較短的時(shí)間設(shè)計(jì)了一些教學(xué)活動(dòng)。然后集中介紹了聽力教學(xué)活動(dòng)的設(shè)計(jì),強(qiáng)調(diào)聽力教學(xué)活動(dòng)應(yīng)將目光集中在聽力的過程上,而非其結(jié)果上。如何提高學(xué)生英語聽力水平,使他們能取得好的成績,成為廣大初中教師所共同關(guān)注的問題。在英語教學(xué)中,教師如何進(jìn)行聽力教學(xué),精心設(shè)計(jì)教學(xué)活動(dòng),如何掌握聽力教學(xué)的各種技巧顯得十分重要。
【關(guān)鍵詞】聽力;初中;英語教學(xué);障礙;設(shè)計(jì)教學(xué)活動(dòng)
1. Introduction
It is true that listening, speaking, reading, and writing are four basic skills in language teaching and learning. Developmentally, these skills are acquired in a certain sequence. Listening is essential for developing other skills and provides a basis for language learning. But it is also the most difficult of all the learning skills for learners to master. When listening, listeners follow the speaker, thinking about what the speaker is saying and what is going on in the mind of the speaker, guessing the speaker’s opinions and attitudes and catching the true meaning of the speaker’s words. Listening itself accounts for almost half of the commutative activities in one’s daily life. In addition, learners should have the knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Many learners are afraid of listening, looking on it as more difficult than any other skills and pay much attention to training their ability to speak, read and write. Improving listening ability is not in a short time, it is a long time work.
2. Background study
Listening is important in junior students’ English learning. A child first listens for a long time before he is able to speak, so listening plays the first and the most important role in learning a foreign language. Listening is an important means of language. “It is one of the important ways in English language communication. According to Rivers study indications, listening occupies 45% of the whole social interactions. From this, we can see that a good listening can help to improve students’ ability of language understanding. And some statistics show that nearly 50% students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examinations.” [1] ( p1-2) . We must admit that there is no short cut in our life, so as the English learning. It finds that the original initiative to learn listening is very important, which can lead the way to success.
Now have a look at our junior schools. What most teachers do in class is merely to play the recorder and check answers to listening exercises. So most students can hardly learn anything in class, and listening comprehension gives much headache. Hence, in teaching listening comprehension, it is very important for teachers to find the problems students have and suitable ways to solve the problems. English teaching and learning asks for quite some challenges. The challenges are the lack of adequate linguistic environment, the strong interference from their mother tongue, the overcrowded classrooms and the lack of sufficient time for English study on the students' side. And students are having quite a few subjects on hand and shouldering the great task of all-respect full development in schools. And, in many junior school, it is true that Chinese students are not so influent as those in Western countries mainly because they lack self-confidence and they are afraid of making mistakes .In addition, teachers are quite used to the old teaching method, which lays more emphasis on grammar. In order to make themselves understood by all the students, some teachers would explain the grammar rulers or even the texts in Chinese rather than in English in class. Thus, students get fewer opportunities to improve their listening skills.
3. What are the factors influencing the listening comprehension in Chinese middle school classrooms?
Listening is an important mean of language learning. It is one of the significant ways in English language communication. But so many students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult one among all kinds of examinations. Where are their barriers? How to train some tactics for them? That’s what I am going to talk about here.
3.1 The analysis of the reasons for students’ poor listening ability
3.1.1.About the teacher aspect
There is a shortage of English teachers in China. It is usually difficult for English teachers in China to go to English-speaking countries to study or work. Most of them don’t have the experience of going abroad. They have learned their English only in China. So we may say they have certain shortage.
3.1.2.The English environment
The English environment in China is different from other countries e.g. Canada. In China, English is a foreign language (EFL), not a second language (ESL). Both students and teachers are doing their jobs under this condition which is quite different from that such as in the US. For example, Chinese immigrant students in Canada can learn English more quickly than those in China. Why? Because in Canada, English is regarded as their second language. They enjoy a much better English environment as well as have English high motivations. This is what is needed in China. What those students in China need is this authentic language environment which isn’t easy to be created in China.
3.1.3. The learning aspect
Listening comprehension is the summation of hearing and understanding. If you have a better level about English knowledge, you may be capable of understanding very well in listening to the materials, and may have an excellent response to any questions asked by the speakers on the tapes.
(ⅰ)Barriers on Phonetics and Phonology
It is clear that “Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of language, and Phonology studies how speech sounds system in a language form pattern.” [2] (p22) English, as a new language for Chinese students, usually appears some problems exactly on Phonetics and Phonology, such as the mistakes on pronunciation, intonation, and all kinds of skills like word stress, sentence stress, motion of sound, assimilation, sound---linking and incomplete explosion, etc. Therefore some basic knowledge about English Phonetics and Phonology will directly influence students’ listening comprehension. So designing activities must be aimed at point. So designing some interesting game is to let students discriminate the different pronunciation. The key point is guiding students to find the difference themselves. For example, most Chinese students find the discrimination of some sounds is a problem in listening comprehension, especially, some vowels. E.g., they can hardly distinguish the words like “sit—sea” and “bed--bad”. In a sentence like “He saw a thief steal into the palace”, steal /sti:l/ is very important in understanding the sentence, but some students just recognize it as still/stil/.
(ⅱ) Barriers on tempo
Tempo means the speed of speaking. It can be controlled by an actor who is good at tongue twisters. Some people enjoy more variation in tempo than others, but everyone has a norm which in characteristic of his usual conversational style. One who tends to use a rapid tempo in everyday speech in English, but Chinese students usually don’t have such a tempo in listening. Although sometimes they can speak very fast, they may not catch up with the materials on normal tempo while they’re listening to a tape, especially to a longer conversation or a passage, that’s their problems. Because they only used to listen to teachers who always read under the average speed in daily life, or used to slow conversations with their partners while practicing oral English, that’s why Chinese students can not suit the need of normal speed listening materials or native speakers. Teachers can help students to form a good sensation. Students can train the tempo through reading, because there are many skills on it. English teachers should take efforts to teach students how to learn some knowledge about sentence stress, rhythm, sound and intonation, etc. So, during in the class, or at the beginning of the class, teacher can design a game or completion about reading. The student who is the winner can give him/her a present. Through insisting on doing so, students’s sensation can be improved.
(ⅲ) Barriers on lexicology and grammar
During the process of listening comprehension, listeners should not only do the exercises of sound recognition, but also learn more vocabulary. If a new word appeared while they’re listening, they’ll find it difficult for them to understand the whole meaning, even some students stop to listen and think about over and over the new word they met before while the material are going on. So does the grammar. Grammar can help us to catch the implication of the vocal sounds, and understand them well, and it is also the essential condition of a whole passage comprehension. It gives us a basis for judging when the action happens, who is the operator or supporter? What is the factual evidence? Whether it is the subjunctive mood? Etc. If you don’t have a solid foundation on grammar it’ll directly influence your achieving good results while you are listening.
(ⅳ) Barriers on listening habits
The main purpose of listening is to understand the general idea of the materials. During the listening process, they should try to catch the major content, which’s the key point. But many Chinese students have some bad habits while listening. For example, they always try their best to get the meaning of each words, each sentences. Once they meet a new word or a difficulty sentence, they will stop to think. It is doubtless they can’t catch up with the speed any more. Still some students can’t directly understand materials in English, but with the help of Chinese, experienced the process of a heart translation. These bad habits are the main factors influencing their listening comprehension. In fact, it is unnecessary to know every word, every sentence, only should catch the main idea and grasp the major point, that’s enough. If you concentrate to think, you can’t catch up with the materials, and also that’s why you have no time to attend to the main content, let alone seize the implication of it.
Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to point out the bad habits and then help the students form good habits. Here are some bad listening habits on Listening, which are paraphrased below.
“(1) A poor listener will/ turnoff his or her ears as soon as he or she decides a listening task is going to be dull.
(2). A poor listener listens to only facts and ignores the ideas, the general picture.
(3). A poor listener will fix his or her eyes on the teacher or blackboard, then relax, or Do some thing else, expecting to get the information out of the tape scripts later.
(4).A poor listener will use very little distraction --footsteps, a door opening or closing, a cough, a dropped book—as an excuse to stop listening to the recording or the teacher.”[3] ( p1-2)
(ⅴ) Barriers on cultural background
Language is a kind of cultural expression. It is necessary for students to know some background about the English-speaking countries, such as the history, culture, customs and habits, even life styles. Many students lack of these kinds of knowledge, no wonder they are always making mistakes about them. For example, if teachers give two pieces of passage for them to understand the former, because Spring Festival is the traditional festival in China, everybody knows it very well, that’s helpful for their understanding, however the latter about the Thanksgiving day, students know little about it, it is not easy for them to understand, even very difficult for them to answer some questions about it. Listeners should base on their background knowledge about the topic and their experience of how talks on such themes are structured (as in the case of listening to news or weather reports) besides their understanding of language forms related to the subject area.
(ⅵ) Barriers on psychological factors
It is very important of students to have a good state while listening. Students should get clear that listening is the first step of any language learning, they should pay attention to learn it well at the very beginning.
The process of listening comprehension is a very complicated psychological one. Linguists tell us that it is easy for one to produce frightens when he is at his nervousness. If students meet some words or sentences they don’t understand by chance, they’ll have the fidgets, even some students are afraid of listening at the very beginning. It have placed all sorts of obstacles on the important information invisibly and make them less effective, this lowered the degrees of listening comprehension. On the other hand, eternal links, such as the noise made by inside or outside factors, the quality of the recorders, the loudness and the articulation of the sounds, etc, may all become obstructions influencing the students’ listening well. “Psychological linguistics regards listening is involved with the perception of a language: Perception is to turn the voice into meanings,and it is an analysis of the language signal perception. The process of the language perception is an activity of the short--time memorization .”[4] (p1)
Training and improving students’ ability in listening comprehension should combine daily teaching with following points. First of all, in English class, teachers should try to organize their classes in English, which’s the most effective way, students can concentrate their attention while listening to English. Teachers can also know from the expressions in students’ eyes if they understand. Second, using the first five minutes efficiently before the class, or the revision time, ask students to listen to the radios, television programmers in English. Never be afraid of it. Psychological quality is quite important to do everything, so does listening comprehension.
4.How to improve students’ listening ability---designing effective classroom activities
Among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), foreign language learners often complain that listening is the most difficult one to acquire. Teaching listening should focus on process.
There are three stages in listening activities for language learners: pre—listening, while—listening, post—listening, which will discuss in detail as follow:
4.1 Pre—listening activities
“Research points out that listening activity in general should consist of a pre—listening phase, which should make the context for listening explicit, clarify the purposes for listening, and establish goals, procedures and roles for listening. So a pre—listening activity can involve listeners in the following ways:
(1).By posing the tasks before the students listen to the topic, they are given a purpose for listening, which forces them to focus on selected information.
(2).The listener brings an orientation to a listening event. By opening up the topic, it arouses certain expectations and mentally prepares the students for the topic, it may also activate latest knowledge of vocabulary associated with the topic.
(3).Activating learner’s scripts and tuning in their prior knowledge about the topic helps to relate their background knowledge to the topic to be heard, thus enhancing the comprehension and interpretation of the received message.
(4).By brainstorming what they know about the topic before listening, learners will be able to compare what they know with what they are going to hear, and listen selectively.” [5] (p10)
4.1.1 Purpose
No less than in speaking, the listening process means that the learner must be motivated by a communicative purpose .This purpose determines to a large extent what meanings they must listen for and which parts of the text are most important to them. For example, there may be parts where he does not need to understand every detail, but only to listen for the general gist. There may be other parts where a topic of special significant arises, requiring them to listen for more detailed information—for example, so that they can report about the topic to other members of a group. At other times, a task may require them to listen for specific pieces of information distributed throughout the text.
“The activities will be grouped according to the kind of response that the learner must produce:
(1)Performing physical tasks (e.g. selecting pictures)
(2)Transferring information (e.g. into tabular form)
(3)Reformulating and evaluating information” [6] (p67-68)
4.1.2Choose the appropriate materials
Before having the class, teachers must choose and analysis the materials. “Teacher need to listen the tape all the way through .That way, they will be prepared for any problems, noises, accents etc. That way they can judge whether students will be able to cope with the tape and the tasks that go with it.” [7] ( p100) By doing so, the teacher will know the length of the materials, the difficult points and the focus of the materials, so the teacher can decide in advance how to go on with the teaching in class. Of course, it is a demand for teachers if all other courses. But some teachers do believe that they can teach listening course without any preparation so long as they have the tapes and reference books. So some researchers would like to emphasize the importance of preparations for a class: it is the basic need and also a basic insurance of an effective listening teaching. And the role of analyst, which means that teachers should analyze the functional patterns of the language used in the listening materials that students are to hear. The functions of a language can be simply divided into two patterns: the communication of emotion and the conveying of information. Communication of emotion means that the purpose of using a language is mainly for the establishment of harmonious relationship among the participants of social interaction.
4.1.3 Skills
(ⅰ)Prediction.
Research on speech processing and interpretation suggests that the listener’s ability to make intelligent guesses about what will come next plays a crucial role in their understanding of speech, and prediction is regarded by many researchers as on of the most powerful factors in comprehension. Therefore, a good listener is a good predictor. “By helping our students become better predictors, we are helping them become better listeners.”[8] ( p86)
Prediction also involves asking questions and answering them. According to Fisher and Terry active comprehension is process of generating questions while reading and searching for answers to them. Questioning helps to establish the purpose and causes the listener to interact with the speech, confirming or rejecting expectations.
“Penny Ur summarizes five types of cues that listeners depend on for making predictions about continuation of an utterance:
(1) The stock formula of the language, such as clichés, idioms, quotations and proverbs.
(2). Stress on a particular word in the first part of an utterance is often explained or clarified by a comment in the second.
(3). The logical relationship between the first part of an utterance and the second is often signaled by a conjunction.
(4.) There is construction where the speaker proclaims in advance the kind of thing he is going to say.
(5). Rhetorical questions or bold, brief statements, particularly in the negative, are often followed by answers or amplification in the form of reasons, examples or explanations.” [9] (p11)
(ⅱ)Setting the scene
Another type of pre-listening activity is to set the scene for the students, for example: picture, video, TV etc. Listening to passages in the classroom can be more difficult than listening in real life, because of the lack of context .So the teacher can help provide the background information to activate learners’ schema or illustrate the picture to help students to understand the main idea, so they will be better prepared to understand what they hear.
(ⅲ)Listening for the gist
This type of the pre-listening activity is listening for the gist. It is very important to give students practice in this area, because in real life, they can not listen to the materials several times. Therefore, it will be impossible for them to catch all the information, so they need to be fit with some ambiguity in listening and realize that they can still learn even when they do not understand every word. Listening for the gist is familiar with skimming a passage in reading. The key point lays in let students some questions that focus on the main idea or the tone or the mood of the passage. Find whether students can answer the questions even though they can not understand each word or phrase in the passage.
(ⅳ)Listening for specific information
There are situations in real life where they listen only for some specific details and ignore the rest of the entire message. For example, when they listen to the weather report on TV, they are only interested in the temperature in the city where they live or where we plan to go on the holiday, or when they are sitting in a train station or an air port, they do not listen to the details of all the announcements. It is important to expose our students to a variety of type of listening texts for a variety of purpose so that they will develop a variety of listening strategies to use for different situations.
4.2 While - listening activity
This stage is the most difficult for the teacher to control, because this is where a student should pay attention and get the information actively. However, if the teacher can provide a reason, goal, or task for the learner, this should encourage and help students to focus their attention.
In daily class, students must use all aspects of personal listening ability. At the beginning of this article, we have discussed the problems on students’ listening ability.
According to these problems, we must train the comprehensive listening ability in daily time.
Following are some special training
4.2.1 Listen and tick
A large part of what makes a listening task easy or difficult is what the teacher asks the students to do with the materials. If what students all need to do just is tick as they hear them, the task will be much easier. What you need to tick, you can hear them clearly. Because it is quite easy, ticking is very fit for the students who are in grade 7. It can encourage them to listen to the dialogue or passage carefully.
4.2.2 Listen and act
These activities relate to a method of teaching called Total Physical Response, which concentrates on learning language by listening and responding physical to commands or directions. Here is an example:
“Beginning TPR
Procedure:
(1.) Have two students positioned to two chairs.
Commands supporting vocabulary
Stand up fast slowly
Sit down table chair
Walk head stomach
Stop door blackboard
Turn around
Touch
(2)pick two other students and add more vocabulary that are in the classroom--- such as book, pencil, paper, desk, floor, teacher—and add to the commands put, place, scratch..
(3)use the following type of commands repeatedly in random order, rotating pairs of students from time to time, until you can see that all the students clearly understand what these commands and actions mean.
For example:
Put the pencil on the book.
Scratch your head.
Scratch your stomach.
Put the paper in the box.
Put your hand on your head.
Place the box on the teacher’s head.
Scratch your head and stomach. ” [10] (p11)
4.2.3 Listen and draw
This is similar to acting out physically, but in this type, the students are drawing picture, diagrams on paper. “This type of activity works very well as an information gap activity between pairs of students.” [11] (p90) One example: one student draws a simple picture and then tells his/her partner how to draw it in English .Neither partner can look at each other’s drawing during the task. After they have completed the task, they can compare their pictures to see how similar they are.
Other way: according to last example.
“Introduce the word draw. This opens up a rich network of things you can ask your students to do. Start very simply with the familiar items that the students have already internalized through TPR.
For example:
Draw a table
Draw a chair
Draw a hand
Draw a box
Draw a hand on a door
Draw a window and a hand and book. ”[12] (p11)
4.3 post --- listening activity
Post--- listening, teachers can determine how well the students have understood what they listened to, but it is important to design the tasks well. “One important point to keep in mind is whether we are testing the students’ listening comprehension or their memory. In fact, in real life, listener can remember the gist of the conversation, but cannot remember exactly what words were said. It is more natural to select and interpret what we hear rather than repeat everything we have heard.” [13] ( p187) .Here are some types of post—listening activity: multiple choice questions, answering questions, note-taking, gap—filling and dictogloss.
“It is important to remember when designing activities not to demand that students remember more details the native-speaker would in a real life, because we do not want our students to get into the habit of thinking that they need to understand and remember.” [14] ( p117)
5. Conclusion
As teachers change their practice activity they gain new insights about the learning potentials of their students. “These successes have encouraged teachers to persevere in their efforts to design learning experiences that provide multiple entry and exit points for their students.” [15] ( p290-297)
During the exercitation in middle school, in fact, teachers did not teach the phonetics and phonology. Main practice on listening is just about the textbook. For example, GO FOR IT, the book has a small part for training listening. but the listening teaching is limited. It must add some activities. In the listening activities, according to the certain purpose, it can choose different skills: listen and act, listen and draw, and so on. These types of activities can be designed into games, which are popular for students.
Bibliography
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9. 同2. p11
10. 同 1. p11
11. 同8. p90
12. 同 1 p11
13. 朱純 外語教育心理學(xué) [Z].上海:上海外語教育出版,1998.3. p187
14.王篤勤 英語教學(xué)策略論 [Z].北京:外語教學(xué)與研究出版社,2000.8. p117
15. 章兼中 外語教育學(xué) [Z].浙江:浙江教育出版社,1999. p290-297