Listening Comprehens
Listening Comprehens
Abstract
This paper discusses an investigation of a one-year experiment of teaching English as a foreign
language (TEFL) conducted at Shanxi University of Finance and Economics. The experiment
involved three teachers and 550 non-English major undergraduates of the University, sponsored by
the Chinese Ministry of Education. The study aims to find the factors influencing English listening
comprehension and the strategies to be taken that might improve students listening comprehension.
The study has also sought new ways of cultivating listening comprehension competence in TEFL in
the Chinese context. In the light of constructivist linguistics theory and practice this paper analyses
the nature of listening and comprehension and the process of listening comprehension. The paper
indicates that among current problems, and their causes in English teaching practice, the most
frequent is that of cultural difference and its affect on listening comprehension. According to the
practice of TEFL in the University, the author puts forward the teaching approach of listeningbased, overall development and addresses listening comprehension strategies such as
distinguishing different stages of listening teaching, matching instruction to students individual
differences, developing students listening comprehension micro skills, and especially focusing on
cultural learning in language teaching. Results of the research are of significance and may prove
beneficial to English language teaching in Chinese tertiary institutions
Key words: Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), listening comprehension competence,
listening comprehension strategies, and cultural knowledge
1. Introduction
With Chinas entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world, the demand for
English speaking proficiency among workers is rising. In recent years, the communicative approach
has become more and more widely used in Chinese English tertiary education and therefore,
students communicative competence has been stressed. The changes to the requirements of College
English Test (Band 4 and Band 6), National Matriculation English Test, and Graduate Record
Examination make listening teaching a priority all over the country. The need for competence in
listening in English learners is increasingly recognized, so that listening teaching has recently
attracted considerable attention.
However, careful observation of College English teaching practice has found that the teaching of
listening skills is still the weak link in the language teaching process. Despite students having
mastered the basic elements of English grammar and vocabulary, their listening comprehension is
often weak. Through systematic study of basic English teaching stages at university it has been
recognized that while students integrated skills in reading, writing, translating have been
improving, their listening and speaking capabilities have been left behind. The key factor that has
been recognized in the preliminary studies is students limited listening comprehension.
Both teachers and students recognized that the listening levels of each learner are different,
particularly because English listening is affected by an array of factors. Important among these
factors is the necessity to emphasize to teachers and students the importance of listening, to
encourage the study of listening teaching theory and to explore listening teaching methods by using
the most advanced teaching methods.
The traditional grammar-translation method of teaching English in China has been found inadequate
to the demands for producing efficient English speakers and listeners. The old approach has been
shown to be ineffectual; research has stimulated an entirely new conception of teaching English as a
foreign language. Central to the new approach is the understanding that there must be a rigorous
application of the communicative approach in English classrooms. English must be taught as a tool
for communication. It is now widely accepted that students listening ability must be at the core of
teaching practice, and it is the area in which teachers need to concentrate their own efforts to
improve their teaching. This is a significant challenge for teachers of English in China; however it
is crucial in the development of English language competence.
Beginning in 2004, the Chinese Ministry of Education launched a program of teaching reform with
an experimental study of TEFL programs across China. The Ministry issued its new document of
College English Curriculum Requirements for trial implementation. The new curriculum
emphasizes the need for the development of students communicative competence, particularly
listening and speaking (Wang Dong, 2004). The intention is to introduce teaching reform that will
result in an improvement to the students English overall linguistic capability, based on a
foundation of oral and aural competence.
The objective of this paper, then, is to provide an examination of the literature into TEFL,
particularly in China, and a descriptive explanation of the experimental situation at Shanxi
University of Finance and Economics (SUFE). The experiment has been designed to assist students
to learn how to listen and develop the metacognitive knowledge and strategies crucial to success in
listening comprehension. The analysis of the experimental outcomes has informed this paper and the
information has already proved beneficial in the decision-making process of curriculum and teaching
reforms to English teaching at SUFE in particular, and in China more generally.
Language learning depends on listening since it provides the aural input that serves as the basis for
language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.
Listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It provides the foundation for all aspects
of language and cognitive development, and it plays a life-long role in the processes of
communication. A study by Wilt (1950), found that people listen 45 % of the time they spend
communicating. This study is still widely cited (e.g., Martin, 1987; Strother, 1987). Wilt found that
30 % of communication time was spent speaking, 16 % reading, and 9 % writing. That finding
confirmed what Rankin discovered in 1928, that people spent 70 % of their waking time
communicating and that three-fourths of this time was spent listening and speaking.
According to Bulletin (1952), listening is the fundamental language skill. It is the medium through
which people gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the
world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. In this day of mass
communication, much of it oral, it is of vital importance that students are taught to listen effectively
and critically.
According to second language acquisition theory, language input is the most essential condition of
language acquisition. As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role in students language
development. Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic
information they hear. Thus language acquisition is achieved mainly through receiving
understandable input and listening ability is the critical component in achieving understandable
language input. Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential
for language teachers to help students become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to
language teaching, this means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in
authentic situations: precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language
outside the classroom. Therefore, we in China should establish listening-first as fundamental in
foreign language teaching.
predicting
drawing inferences
summarizing
Bottom-up strategies are text based in which the listener relies on the language in the message, that
is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies
include:
recognizing cognates
Listening comprehension tends to be an interactive, interpretive process in which listeners use prior
knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages. Listeners use metacognitive,
cognitive and socio-affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make their learning more
effective. Metacognitive strategies are important because they regulate and direct the language
learning process. Research shows that skilled listeners use more metacognitive strategies than their
less-skilled counterparts (O'Malley & Chamot, 1990, Vandergrift, 1997a). The use of cognitive
strategies helps students to manipulate learning materials and apply specific techniques to a
listening task. Socio-affective strategies describe the techniques listeners use to collaborate with
others, to verify understanding or to lower anxiety.
influenced the official assessment processes. Thus students generally pay less attention to
developing listening comprehension because they recognize it gains a lower percentage of marks in
examinations, while reading and writing are highly rewarded. Students understand they will gain
high scores only if they master the prescribed knowledge of grammar and writing. Furthermore,
listening comprehension seems to the students to have little practical value. Consequently these
psychological factors have a direct impact on students willingness and commitment to listening
instruction.
As a direct consequence of the factors mentioned above, many Chinese students lack confidence in
their oral English language capability and they frequently have a self-defeating and defensive
attitude to their engagement in it. In the listening classroom, teachers need students active
participation but, having so many students who lack confidence and who feel nervous and anxious,
makes the task of generating discussion and conversation particularly difficult. Students are
reluctant to answer questions and will not risk being laughed at by their peers. When attending
examinations the stress of being shown as inadequate and being criticized by the teacher and
parents is frequently more than students will tolerate. Thus, it is unsurprising that college students
who are under pressure for a considerable period of time are often stressed and depressed; factors
that compound their efforts to improve their English proficiency.
7.2 Grammar knowledge affects listening comprehension
Language knowledge is the foundation of learning English. If students knowledge of
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is insufficient, it is probable that their English listening
comprehension will be negatively affected by lack of language knowledge.
However, the most basic outward shell of language is pronunciation and intonation. Therefore, the
first step of listening comprehension is learning how to identify and select sound signals according
to pronunciation; thus pronunciation knowledge must be developed. When students pronunciation
knowledge is inadequate their capacity to discriminate will be weak and will affect listening
comprehension
For the Chinese student of English the challenge of listening poses particular demands because
there are many sentence types that are complex and very different from the home language. If the
student is unable to distinguish the main clause from a subordinate clause and is unable to
understand their relationships, despite understanding the meaning of every word in the sentence,
understanding is unlikely to occur with accuracy. Students do become accustomed to analysing
grammatical structure relatively quickly when they are taught the psychological analysis method.
Nevertheless many students become confused about relationships in a sentence and connections
between sentences and they are often unsure of relationship within sentences. Thus lack of
grammatical knowledge can reduce English listening levels.
7.3 Cultural background knowledge and thinking affect listening comprehension
According to Trudgill (1983) language is rather like a mirror that reflects the national culture of its
speakers. The American linguist Sapir (1921: 60-90) maintains that, Language cannot exist
without cultureCulture can be explained as what the society thinks and does, and the language is
the expression of the ideas of the society. Consequently, the marriage between language and
culture is inseparable; language is the carrier of culture and the capsule that holds a way of
thinking.
Language carries knowledge and cultural information and it reflects the substantial and particular
ways of thinking of that people. Thus culture is embedded in even the simplest act of language
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(Liddicoat, 2000), it is an inseparable part of the way in which we live our lives and the way we use
language.. As found by OMalley and Chamot (1989), the effective listener was the one who was
able to draw on a knowledge of the world, on personal experiences and by asking questions of
themselves.
Therefore, the student with no background knowledge of culture in English, American or other
English speaking countries, is unlikely to understand Anglophone modes of thinking as expressed
in English language. Kramsch (1993) maintains that every time we speak we perform a cultural act.
Consequently, there is now, an emphasis in modern language teaching on cultural knowledge as a
basis for language learning. An important requirement, then, for learning spoken English, is the
acquisition of cultural knowledge. Thus if students pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and
cultural knowledge are to prosper, they must be grounded in a sound knowledge of the society in
which the language is based.
After the students of Grade 2004 entered the university, they attended the first graded test. Based on
the results of the overall grades (60% for the test results and 40% for the results of National
Matriculation English Test), students were divided into two-level classes (Classes A and B). Three
classes A and six classes B were selected to do the experiment in order to put the experiences of the
new teaching model into practice. There were 550 undergraduate students taking a major in
English, with three teachers involved in their instruction, during the experimental period at SUFE.
The teaching approach of the experimental classes was to combine the teachers face-to-face
instruction with the Reading and Writing unit to allow the students autonomous learning as a
component of the ICT network in the Online Learning unit. Then to reinforce this engagement with
listening and speaking training in small groups in the Listening and Speaking unit.
The teaching ratio of in the face-to-face, autonomous learning, and listening and speaking training
is 2:1:1. Experimental classes had four class hours each week. The teachers engaged with students
face-to-face in the ICT-assisted classroom. The three natural classes were put together to have a
large-size class for two class hours once each week. The Internet-based autonomous learning was
arranged at the computer center with the teachers guidance; each session ran for two class hours
once every two weeks. Listening and speaking training was in small groups, each conducted as
face-to-face sessions, once every two weeks, for two class hours each session.
Experimental Class A were required to study the text book New Horizon College English (Volumes
2-4) commencing in first term and continuing through to the third term. Volume 1 was given to
students to learn by themselves. At the end of the third term the students were organized to attend
College English Test-4 (CET-4). During the fourth term the experimental classes studied Advanced
English (Volume 5). There were four class hours every week for College English Band 2 to Band 5.
Those students who passed CET-4 were able to attend CET-6 at the end of the fourth term. Nonexperimental classes were required to study New Horizon College English (Volumes 1-4) from the
first term to the fourth term, and at the end of the fourth term students were organized to attend
CET-4.
Experimental classes and non-experimental classes of Grade 2004 both adopted the use of New
Horizon College English (Reading and Writing course). The textbook has web-based teaching
software produced by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The experimental classes were given an
additional seventy-six hours of study time when they were able to have free access to the
computers. This access was allocated to each students computer-card at the beginning of the term.
Sixteen of seventy-six class hours were organized for autonomous learning, which was, initially,
supervised by the teacher. Once the teacher felt that the students were sufficiently prepared to work
autonomously the students organized their own study time to study on computers, work on
assignments, engage with the campus-web or checking teachers explanations to questions on the
website and in self practice (Teaching Reform Committee, SUFE, 2004).
8.3 Teaching processes in-class and outside-class
The new teaching model of listening comprehension has three stages. Stage one is preparation
before class; stage two is classroom teaching; and stage three is learning after class. During these
stages, teachers and students set teaching objectives, choose teaching content and design teaching
activities mutually.
8.3.1 Pre-listening activities:
The activities chosen during pre-listening may serve as preparation for listening in several ways.
During pre-listening the teacher may:
Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or
from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)
Make students aware of the type of text they will be listening to, the role they will play, and
the purpose for which they will be listening
Provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for background reading or class
discussion activities
8.3.2 Activities while-listening
Activities while-listening relate directly to engagement with text, and students do them during or
immediately after the time they are listening. These points are kept in mind when planning whilelistening activities:
Use questions to focus students' attention on the elements of the text crucial to
comprehension of the whole.
Organize activities to guide listeners through the text. Combine global activities such as
getting the main idea, topic,etc.
Give an immediate feedback whenever possible. Encourage students to examine how or why
their responses were incorrect.
8.3.3 Post-listening Activities:
The teacher writes questions on the board and asks students to answer them. Students are also
stimulated to talk and actively participate in the task.
Tell students to compare their notes and discuss what they understood in pairs or small
groups.
Encourage students to respond to what they heard. For example, where possible ask
questions like Do you agree? And encourage debate.
Tell pairs to write a summary of the main points. Then have them compare their summaries
and check if they covered all the main points.
Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task, modify
strategies if necessary
By raising students' awareness of listening as a skill that requires active engagement, and by
explicitly teaching listening strategies, teachers help their students develop both the ability and the
confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this
way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.
8.4 Roles of teachers and students
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The planning committee at SUFE found that changing the curriculum demanded considerable
changes in attitude from both teachers and learners. Teachers were no longer able to take their
previously dominant positions as the privileged speakers at the front of the class; neither could they
continue to consider themselves as the holders of all wisdom. And of course students, too, could not
shelter behind the quiet faade of their previous role as the passive receivers of information.
The changes in teachers roles and students roles were introduced to the students from the
beginning. Teachers first provided students with appropriate tools and opportunities to practice
using them, i.e. teachers facilitated the changes. The presupposition was that teachers were willing
to change and shift their roles in the classroom from information providers to facilitators, shifting
from teaching knowledge-based to supervising students learning-based, from a protagonist on
the stage, to becoming a director behind the scenes. Teachers were no longer the only source of
information, but acted as mentors who helped students to actively interpret and organize the
information they were given, fitting it into prior knowledge (Dole, et al., 1991). Students became
active participants in learning and were encouraged to be explorers and creators of language, rather
than passive recipients of it (Brown, 1991).
According to constructivist learning theory, language learners become active constructors of
knowledge by recognizing problems, producing hypotheses, confirming hypotheses and solving
problems; and then finding new problems. In the process of recycling, learners build up knowledge
structures. Students who are active constructors of knowledge through experience and opportunities
are more prone to discover and enquire. This implies that students are co-learners, using available
knowledge through interaction with others in socially significant tasks of collaborative work.
8.5 Assessment Methodology
The formative assessment of the teaching/learning process takes into consideration three aspects of
student activity. There are students self-assessment, students assessment of each other and the
teachers assessment of students. The teacher of each class has the responsibility of coordinating the
process of students self-assessment and students assessment of each other. The results from these
assessments serve as respective 5% of the overall term grades. The teacher of each class also
assesses the students performance in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating in class
and outside class. The results of this anecdotal record form another 10% of the overall term grades.
The computer automatically records the hours of students study on computers. At the end of term
students computer interactions form 20% of overall term grades.
Final assessment refers to the end of course examination and the level examination. The final course
examination consists of a written test and an oral test. The examination content of the experimental
classes has the same content as those of the non-experimental classes. However, the results of the
final course examination and the results of the level examination are respectively 50% and 10% of
the overall term grades. At the end of the term the Foreign Language Faculty of SUFE compared
the teaching results of the experimental classes and those of the non-experimental classes. A
detailed analytic report concerning the two teaching models was then completed.
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maintains that language acquisition is much more effective than language learning, since, in
language acquisition, learners really do break the fetters of mother tongue and use second language
to express thoughts and to communicate freely. But how to help students engage with the challenge
of improving their listening comprehensive ability effectively by this method? The author believes
that it is possible by following these aspects of best teaching practice.
9.1 Level-based listening teaching
In English listening teaching, there is a need to gauge students listening comprehensive ability in
order to cultivate their listening skills according to individual differences. Wu
Zhengfu 1991 points out that a student of English language needs to experience five stages in
listening comprehension. First, hearing a series of sounds students cannot understand the content at
all. In this stage, teachers should encourage students to listen frequently so they develop an
instinctive feel for the pronunciation and intonation of English. This will benefit students
pronunciation, and more importantly, students will gradually get used to the regular language flow.
In stage two, students can distinguish some isolated, content-related words. At this point, the
greatest achievement for students is the formation of good habits of listening. If students encounter
new words in the process of listening, teachers should tell them not to worry about that but let
students grasp the gist and guess the content from the context.
At stage three, students can distinguish phrases and sentence patterns from the language flow, and
have general understanding of the topic. Teachers should concentrate on cultivating students ability
to control sentences or the content of a whole passage.
The fourth stage occurs when students can distinguish clauses or sentences in the language flow,
knowing their implications, and having a reasonable understanding of the whole content. At this
point, students difficulties are likely to be that they have inadequate vocabulary related to
particular texts. Students need to listen to recording about subjects that are not familiar to them so
that they can learn to guess at meanings successfully, thus gradually enlarging vocabulary and their
skills of prediction.
By the fifth stage students can generally understand most spoken texts coherently. However, when
students listening ability has reached the fifth stage it will only take a change of content for
students to return to the third and the fourth stages. Even when students have reached the fifth stage
they still needs constant help to absorb new words and knowledge.
9.2 Cultivating students listening skills
Cultivating students listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher. This is
because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. The demands of
the task are often frustrating for students because there are no precise rules, as in grammar teaching.
Speaking and writing also have very specific exercises that can lead to improvement. However,
there are quite specific ways of improving listening skills but these are difficult to quantify.
Teachers must develop students micro skills of listening comprehension. Brown (1994) identifies
seventeen listening comprehension micro skills. Some of the more important of these skills are
discussed here.
For beginners, the most important listening skill is discrimination in English pronunciation,
intonation and language flow. They need to acquire the crucial skill of identifying the main
information. Wu Zhengfu 1991 recognizes that when students acquire basic discrimination
ability, they can select and analyze the meaning of what they hear and grasp the main content. In the
teaching process teachers should cultivate students ability to select main information and instruct
students to control the general meaning of listening materials on the whole. In class, for example,
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teachers can ask students to listen to the general meaning of the passage, and to sum up key points
and main information.
Predictive ability is also an extremely important listening micro skill. In everyday communication,
people continually make unconscious predictions about what speakers will say, and these
predictions are made on the basis of their knowledge of the context in which the communication is
made. The development of predictive ability has many aspects. Before listening training, teachers
might ask students questions related to listening materials, or introduce relevant background
knowledge to enlighten students thinking to allow students a clear recognition of the goals and
requirements of listening training.
The ability to guess the meaning of words is also an important listening micro skill. Listening
comprehension does not mean understanding every word, but some words do play a crucial part in
listening comprehension. It is a normal phenomenon not to understand every word that is uttered.
However, students may guess the meaning of new words on the basis of the topic being discussed
and gain some understanding of the probable linguistic items on the basis of the context of
discourses, the grammatical structure and the background knowledge of the topic.
9.3 Textbook-based learning and other listening contexts
Listening lessons require listeners to concentrate on the content and make fast responses to what is
heard. If students are passive and apprehensive during listening training, they will probably feel
nervous and wary of taking chances. Teachers need to take a non-punitive approach and structure
lessons that are varied, vivid and interesting. Teachers need to select a wide range of materials to
increase listening content besides using textbooks. Students need to listen to different levels of
English in order to be exposed to natural, lively, rich language, such as listening to English songs,
seeing films with English text. In these ways it is possible to raise students enthusiasm, cultivate
their listening interests, and achieve the goals of learning English.
9.4 Passing on cultural knowledge in language teaching
Understanding that language is controlled by particular cultural experiences is a necessity for the
language learner. If the cultural differences between the students own culture and that of the
language they are to learn is excessive, learners will usually keep some distance from the target
language in their efforts to maintain their psychological comfort level. As a consequence the
operating processes of memory and input will certainly be limited (Cheng Huaiyuan, 1999). Thus
teachers need to be aware that breaking down the barriers is a significant part of cultural teaching
and forms an important aspect of the whole process of language teaching.
English teaching in China is particularly fraught by the need to emphasize the properties of
linguistic communication, but also its cultural propriety. Cultural teaching and language teaching
become united in the same project. The aspect of cultural knowledge transmission is an equal part
of language improvement and development of work in listening development has the potential for
achieving a powerful influence on the formulation of students thinking habits and the application
of foreign language expressions. Cultural teaching, then, has direct and concrete influences on
intercultural communication.
When students gain an intimate knowledge of the culture of the target language they begin to
understand how the language is used to reflect the thoughts, behaviors and customs of that society.
In teaching English listening, teachers need to develop students consciousness about intercultural
communication and they need to energize students capacity for wanting to engage with a different
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culture.
Great care needs to be taken when selecting listening material and auxiliary texts, since these are a
crucial aspect of the cultural factors in listening teaching. The selection of material related to British
and American cultural background knowledge is of particular importance, since these tend to be the
focus of much of the classroom time when students thinking ability and intercultural awareness is
being cultivated.
9.5 Combining intensive listening with extensive listening; focusing on listening
Intensive listening requires students to understand the meaning of each discourse and, ultimately, to
understand every sentence and word. Generally, intensive listening requires students to listen to a
text several times, or divide the text into paragraphs and sentences to understand each one; or by
doing dictation word by word. The goal is for students to understand every sentence.
Alternatively, extensive listening does not require students to understand every sentence, and every
word, instead, students are encouraged to grasp the general meaning of the passage. The key point
of listening is to understand the content. The purpose of intensive listening is to build basic listening
skills, while extensive listening is to strengthen and enlarge effectiveness of intensive listening in
order to improve overall listening ability.
In listening teaching, both intensive and extensive listening should be combined with cultivating
students basic skills, the development of the productive listening habits of active thinking and the
ability to understand the text. Therefore, teachers must encourage students to engage in intensive
listening in class, requiring students to understand the general meaning and also to become
familiarized with English pronunciation, intonation and the changes in language flow. In activities
outside the class students need to engage in extensive listening; listening to many different variety
of language phenomena and gaining more knowledge through TV programs, radio, the Internet and
as many other kinds of exposure to listening training they can find. Exposure to demands of
listening should include aspects of everyday life, science and technology, and academic lectures.
Teachers must create language-learning environments that stimulate students interests and raise
students passion and enthusiasm for learning English.
9.6 Combining listening with other skills
According to language acquisition theory, human capacity for discrimination between language
intention and language content is a crucial step in the language acquisition process. Thus listening
comprehensive ability plays an important role in acquisition and improvement of language skills.
Therefore, in listening teaching, there is a need to combine the development of listening ability with
the development of other skills such as reading.
In order to improve listening ability it is necessary to listen frequently to a teacher reading well,
since it is very difficult to generate a high quality output without appropriate input. Secondly,
students need to practice reading aloud amongst themselves. By such activity students will learn to
combine the act of listening with reading. Students must be actively engaged in producing language
of high quality if they are to improve their English proficiency levels.
Similarly, by combining listening with writing, teachers can divide the work into two parts. First,
students might answer teachers questions in written English after listening to spoken language
13
material. It is also important to remember that good listening entails recalling the essence of the
material rather than the precise detail. Thirdly, teachers should combine listening activities with
speaking in ways that bring out the basics of oral communication. Inevitably, listeners will lose the
information resources without speaking; speaking will lose its objective without careful listening
and, as a result, speaking ability will not be acquired. Listening and speaking rely on each other and
regulate each other.
It is important to strengthen listening through speaking and to improve speaking through listening.
Students need to retell and discuss the material they have just heard in order to synthesize their
understanding. In this way they learn to combine listening with speaking properly. Students who are
able to do this are able to overcome their passive response to the situation and gradually they learn
to feel safe when they respond. In order for this to happen, a truly interactive and penalty free
listening class is required. Teacher/student and students/student exchanges should be emphasized as
opportunities for a free exchange of opinions when participants can consolidate their listening
approaches and skills during the process of communication.
Through a variety of listening-reading, listening-writing and listening-speaking activities, students
can not only strengthen their language skills but also sharpen their interests and raise their
motivation to improve their learning efficiency.
9.7 Make better use of advanced teaching facilities and learning conditions
We have found in our research that a two-hour time allocation per week it is not an efficient use of
time; since listening is the foundation of language learning, it should have a prominent place in the
teaching schedule. Students need to make the most effective use of the teaching facilities at
university, the language laboratory, the micro computer classroom and the self-learning classroom
with listening facilities to train their listening ability in their spare time. Teachers need to assign
students to outside-class listening tasks. For example, when students watch films, they must write
the general meaning of the film or write a comment on a sound recording. In order to make good
use of students spare time the Foreign Language Faculty of Economics and Trade established a
Campus English Radio Station, which has produced a number of programs broadcast at regular
times every day, such as Current Affairs, Entering Science, American Slang and Listening to This.
In addition, students are encouraged to listen to the VOA and BBC as well as original sound
recordings.
9.8 Evaluate listening effectiveness regularly and further improve listening approaches
When teaching listening skills, teachers should also evaluate students listening effectiveness
regularly in order to improve their own listening teaching approaches. Teachers need to discuss the
content and approaches of their teaching with students regularly, and they should make adjustments
in response to students feedback.
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that the measures taken in the experimental classes were both effective and efficient in cultivating
students listening comprehensive competence.
In addition, by making careful classroom observations, it is recognized that there are three possible
explanations of why the students in experimental classes did make better progress than the students
in the natural classes in listening comprehension. Firstly, the experimental students came to
understand the importance of listening comprehension and established the concept of listeningfirst. Secondly, students did learn active listening strategies and applied those listening strategies to
learning English; especially important were the skills of combining intensive listening with
extensive listening and combining listening with the development of other language skills. Thirdly,
students were able to make good use of their spare time to listen to a variety of language materials
through a variety of facilities to develop their listening ability.
11. Conclusion
The paper has explored some of the factors that have influenced our efforts to improve students
English listening comprehensive competence. An outcome of the study is that we have been able to
make some suggestions for measures that might be taken in terms of teaching listening skills in the
actuality of a Chinese tertiary institution. Subsequent to the introduction of these measure at Shanxi
University of finance and Economics we found that they were practical and effectual.
English listening competence is a complex skill that needs conscious development. It can be best
developed with practice when students reflect on the process of listening without the threat of
evaluation. Guiding students through the process of listening provides them with the knowledge
from which they can successfully complete a listening task; it also motivates them and puts them in
control of their learning (Vandergrift, 2002). It was found that by focusing on the process of
listening students acquired a useful tool to raise their English comprehensive competence. The
results of the experiment indicate that listening comprehension is foundational in learning a foreign
language. Furthermore, listening comprehension levels do influence the capacity for improvement
in other language skills such as speaking, reading, writing and translating. The evidence from this
study suggests sound reasons for emphasizing listening comprehension, which highlights the
importance of spending much more time doing it. However, improving Chinese students ability as
English speakers is a demanding process and there are still many factors, intellectual and nonintellectual, subjective and objective, influencing language acquisition that need to be considered
and further explored.
12. References
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