英语听力教学论文.doc

黄 冈 师 范 学 院本 科 生 毕 业 论 文论文题目: On the Application of Context in Middle School English Listening Teaching 作 者: 朱旭 专业班级: 英语200804班 指导教师: 陈曼 学 号: 200813140422 2012年4月20日 黄冈师范学院本科毕业论文郑重声明本人的毕业论文（设计）是在指导教师 陈曼 的指导下独立撰写完成的。毕业论文（设计）没有剽窃、抄袭、造假等违反学术道德、学术规范的侵权行为,本人愿意承担由此产生的各种后果,甚至法律责任；并可以通过网络接受公众的质疑。特此郑重声明。 毕业论文作者:朱旭 2012年 4 月 20 日Abstract Listening competence,as one of important factors to evaluate foreign language learners overall communicative ability, arouses both learners and educational staffs more and more attention on it.However, ''listening" is the most difficult skill to master among the four basic linguistic competences,moreover, in our middle school English teaching,listening teaching is running through English classroom teaching,in this process,most of middle school English teachers are still using traditional and fossil listening teaching model:listening tape recorder-answering questions-checking answers-replaying tape recorder.This kind of traditional listening teaching model can not be considered as listening teaching,but testing students listening ability, therefore,it is difficult to improve students listening competence effectively, which makes listening comprehension an obstacle during the process of english learning for the middle school students. In order to solve these problems,the author, surfing the internet and looking for books related with teaching listening and context in the library, based on the theories collected, explains the relationship between listening teaching and context, analyses the functions of context in listening, and discusses on how to make good use of methods of context in the training to raise teaching effects, by which students' listening comprehension will be improved.Key words: context；middle school English；teaching listening；application 摘 要 听力能力作为衡量外语学习者总体语言交际能力的一个重要因素,使得外语学习者和教育工作者对于听力能力的培养越来越重视。然而,“听"是四种基本语言能力中最难掌握的一种能力,加之我国初中英语听力教学只是贯穿在英语课堂教学之中,大多初中教师仍然沿用传统僵化的听力教学模式:听录音对答案一再放录音,这种听力教学模式不是在进行听力教学,而是在测试学生听力水平,因此在这种教学模式下,学生的听力水平很难得到有效提高,正是这些因素导致英语听力理解成为中学生英语学习过程中的一大障碍。 为了解决这些问题,本文作者通过上网查询荷载图书馆查阅相关书籍，在对现存相关的理论研究之基础上,通过分析语境在中学英语听力理解中的作用,阐述听力和语境之间的关系，从而进一步探讨在教学中如何充分利用语境线索,提高学生听力理解的水平,进而提高大学英语听力课的教学质量。关键词:语境；中学英语；听力教学:应用 ContentsIntroduction1I. Overview of Listening Comprehension31.1 The process of listening comprehension31.2 The importance of Listening5II. Context in English Listening Teaching62.1 Concept of context62.2 Classification of context62.2.1 Linguistic Context6 2.2.2 Non-linguistic Context82.3 Functions of context92.3.1 Restrictive function9 2.3.2 Interpretive function.92.4 The relation between context and listening teaching10III. Current situation of English Listening Teaching113.1 Teaching stages113.1.1 Pre-listening stage113.1.2The while-listening Stage123.1.3 The Post-listening Stage133.2 Problems in practice133.2.1 Problems in listening comprehension133.2.2 Problems in listening teaching14IV. Improving Students' Listening Ability with Context154.1 Taking advantage of linguistic context154.1.1 Pronunciation ability164.1.2 Guessing ability164.1.3 Selective ability174.2 Taking advantage of non-linguistic context184.2.1 Background knowledge184.2.2 Making inference194.2.3 Predicting194.2.4 Taking notes20Conclusion20Bibliography:2219黄冈师范学院本科毕业论文IntroductionListening comprehension is essential to English teaching, how to improve students listening comprehension has been put more emphasis on and for a long time many teachers and linguists, many educators and researchers, both home and abroad, have made researches into it.Malinowski argues that utterances and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of word (1923). Claire Kramsch (1993) points out in his book Context and Culture in Language Teaching that our choice of words is constrained by the context in which we use the language,and foreign language pedagogy should be aware of the need to teach language in context.Mason (1994) made a research and found that students would rely on previous background knowledge of the subject matter to help them understand lectures. Jeremy Harmer (1998) has studied language teaching for more than 20 years and states in his book How to Teach English that teachers should do their best to get students engaged with the topic and the task so that students really want to listen. Rost (1994) is also one of the linguists who have put forward the listening model based on the Relevance Theory.and put emphasis on the importance of context to listening comprehension.William Littlewood (1981) concludes other linguistsideas and points out that the nature of listening comprehension means that the learner should be encouraged to engage in an active process of listening for meaning,using not only the linguistic cues but also his non-linguistic knowledge. For a long time,the study of the relationship between context and listening comprehension in China comparatively lagged behind that of other countries.But recently,the Chinese scholars have exhibited a strong interest in the improvement of listening comprehension with the help of context. Hu Zhuangling (2001) divides context into three parts in his book and pointes out the importance of every part in our English teaching. He Zhaoxiong (1999) uses some examples to express that understanding the meaning of a word or a phrase or a sentence doesnt mean understanding the contextual meaning, so context is essential in peoples daily communication. Zeng Xu (2004) discusses the function of context in listening comprehension and puts forward the way to getting the contextual clues in his article. Huang Yiping(2006)also uses her own teaching experience to state the importance of context to listening teaching and comprehension. All above shows that context plays an important role in listening learning and teaching process.The final aim for language learning lies in the realization of its communicative function,and any communicative activities happen in a specific context: language learning cannot be separated from context.What's more, listening comprehension is rather an active process than a passive one in which the listeners reconstruct and create the meaning of what they hear.Language is far less than the meaning of which listening comprehension relies heavily on context.However, what constitute a context? Is the context given before the comprehension process or is it just part of the comprehension process? All these are open to questions. In order to help the students improve their listening comprehension ability, this paper mainly introduces some basic theories and concepts related to listening comprehension and context ,including the difficulties of listening, the processes of listening, the functions of context as well as discussion on how to really improve listening ability with the help of context. I. Overview of Listening Comprehension1.1 The Process of Listening Comprehension A lot of researches have done many studies on exploring the nature and process of listening comprehension in the past two decades. Although once regarded as a passive skill,1lstemng comprehension is very much an active and complex process in which listeners interact with speakers to construct meaning within a specific context of their individual experiences and background knowledge.With the development of second language teaching, the importance of teaching listening comprehension has been increased,which attracted more and more researchers to conduct studies in this field.Anderson (1995) proposed a cognitive framework of language comprehension. He differentiates comprehension into three interrelated and recursive mental processes: perceptual processing,parsing,and utilization. During a single listening event, the processes may flow from one into the other and recycle. Perceptual processing is the most important stage of listening comprehension because it is the start of language comprehension process.In this first stage,listeners store sound information in a sensory store in which the information call be kept for a very short time. In this phase,that relevant or important information attract much more attention,such as key words,different tones,stress,etc. Parsing is the second listening comprehension process.In the second phase of parsing ,words and messages are used to construct meaningful mental representations.In this stage, listeners reorganize the information into meaningful unit.Listeners first match the aural word with its representation in the declarative knowledge in long term memory in order to decode individual words.They can identify the meaning of individual words by matching between words in short-term memory and a type of knowledge in long-term memory.This occurs when an utterance is segmented according to synthetic structures or cues of meaning. The third process, utilization, consists of relating a mental representation of the text meaning to existing knowledge. It is the key to comprehension. The utilization process can be divided into three stages: the first is to identify what kind of speech act such as assertion,request,warning,suggesting etc. the utterance conveys；the second is searching in his long-term memory the information that is related, trying to connect what they hear with what they already have known.The third is making decision of how to deal with the new information according to the request of the speech act. To sum up, listening comprehension involves three complex processes. Listeners must do many things to process information that they are receiving. First they have to hear what is being said, and then they have to pay attention and construct a meaningful message in their mind by relating what they hear to what they already know. From these, people can also conclude that listening is all active skill. In fact, listening comprehension is not a passive process of receiving vocal information, but an active process of reconstruction. This is the listening comprehension process in the cognitive theory. Of course the actual cognitive process is much more complex. It should be clear from Andersons claim of three-phase model that ones prior knowledge contributes extensively to information processing. Since listening is time-limited, if the information cannot be efficiently perceived, selected, recognized, interpreted or reconstructed in information processing, a good comprehension cannot be guaranteed.1.2 The Importance of Listening Listening is the most frequently used language skill in everyday life, Rivers (1979) report shows, in the daily life, 40%-50% time is spent on listening；.25%-30% is on speaking；11%-16%is on reading；and about 9% is on writing. L.G.Alexander pointed out " the first thing to master a language is to understand what you hear.,which account for 90%. Only by that will you feel comfortable otherwise it will make you Embarrassed .". The Standards for English Course in Full-Time Compulsory Education Common Senior Middle Schools (experimental version, 2002) about English skills, it stipulates, "Language skills are important component parts constructing communicative capacities. They consist of listening, speaking, reading and writing and the comprehensive ability in using them. Listening and reading are the skills of comprehension；speaking and writing are the skills of expression. These four skills supplement to and promote one another. Students should go through lots of particular and comprehensive language practices, to build up the ability of comprehensive use of the target language as the basis of real communication". Listening is an essential component of communication and a rather difficult language skill to acquire.II Context in English Listening Teaching2.1 Concept of context The concept of context is closely related to many subjects such as philosophy, linguistics, psychology and sociology. Many early philosophers believe that the meaning of a word only exists in the context of a sentence,and the study of many philosophical problems in context is dependent. However, the concept of contexts that the early philosophers use is the context of the sentences and paragraphs. They regard the context as co-texts or contexts in the text that is immediately previous and following discourse. Polish Anthropologist Malinowski coins the concept of context and situation,and says a word without linguistic context is a mere figment and stands for nothing by itself, so in reality of spoken living tongue.the utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation”(1923).He is believed to the first who carries out the study of contexts.It is evident that context plays an important part in listening comprehension. The context of listening is usually known to both the listener and the speaker in real life. In other words, we know the relationship between the listener and the speaker. Context can be used in both a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense, it refers to knowledge of factors outside the text under consideration.In the narrow sense,it refers to knowledge of these factors and to knowledge of other parts of the text under consideration, sometimes referred to as "co-text" (Cook, 1999).2.2 Classification of context In this paper, context will be divided into linguistic and non-linguistic one based on Numan's theory (1993) and these two kinds of context will be put much emphasis on.2.2.1 Linguistic Context According to Flu Zhuanglin (1994:181), linguistic context can be defined as co-text which refers to the inner language environment of a discourse. There are mainly four linguistic contexts, namely, the phonological context, the lexical context, the grammatical context, and the verbal context. They will be discussed individually.Phonological context refers to intonation,stress,pause, etc. which influence the meaning of words,sentences and even a whole utterance. They are important in conversations, as they can influence the meanings of words and sentences, and even the whole utterance in an oral communication. Lexical context refers to the lexical items combined with a given word. It is also known as collective context. It is the lexical context that contributes most to the collective meaning of a word or phrase. There are many polysemous words in English language. When collocated