农村初中英语听力教学现状分析

CONTENTAbstract (i)摘要 (ii)1. Introduction (1)2. Current situation of English listening teaching in rural areas (2)3. Listening problem of junior middle school students in rural areas (2)3. 1 The pronunciation problem (2)3.2 V ocabulary problem (4)3. 3 The lack of grammar knowledge (4)3.4. Inadequate background knowledge (4)3.5 Psychological problem (5)3.6 Inappropriate listening habits (6)4. Strategies for helping students solve listening problem 64.1 To explore efficient method of listening teaching (6)4.1.1 Choosing the appropriate materials (7)4.1.2 Creating a harmonious atmosphere of teaching (7)4.1.3 Paying attention to teaching art (7)4.1.4 Making a variety of classroom activities (8)4.1.5 Organizing extra-curricular activities (8)4.1.6 Setting the scene (8)4.2 To strengthen studen ts’phonology (8)4.3 To combine the four skills (9)4.3.1 Combination of intensive listening and extensive listening (9)4.3.2 Combination of listening and speaking. (9)4.3.3 Combination of listening and reading (9)4.3.4 Combination of listening and writing. (10)4.4 To enhance cultural knowledge of English language (10)4.5 To develop the independent awareness of studying about rural students. (10)4.6 To improve teaching facilities of English in rural area (11)4.7 Other strategies (11)4.7.1 Expanding scope of reading. (11)4.7.2 Mastering skills (11)5. Conclusion 12Bibliography 141. IntroductionThe object of English teaching is to develop the ability of students’acquiring information and communicating with others. During the English teaching, it is true that listening, speaking, reading, and writing are four basic skills. However, listening is very important part of English teaching, and listening is basis 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. According to the status quo, on the other hand, the level of listening teaching is decreasing in the countryside. 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. The Result if this causing directly affects the activeness of students who study English listening after, and increase the difficulties of learning to listen. With the deepening if reform and open-up in our country, the distance between the poor and the rich is becoming more and more bigger. At the mostly rural countries, English listening class start with the junior middle school. It is believed that this is a key point that students are encouraged to exercise their ability to listen from this time. From now on, students must accumulate basic knowledge in case they cannot catch up with others after learning roads, for instance, in college. In view of this situation, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of English listening in rural country. In this article, we start with 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. What’s more, students should attach more great importance to the elementary knowledge, such as phonetics,assimilation, enough vocabulary, etc.In this paper, listening problem and strategies of junior middle school in rural area. We will discuss them in details in the follow parts:2. Current situation of English listening teaching in rural areasChina is a developing country. Its economic development is not balanced and production and living standard of rural are very low. Especially in rural country, lack of modern teaching facilities and making structure of teacher-resource unreasonable which affect directly or indirectly students’listening. And the pursuit of short-term examinations also influences English listening. Even most excellent teachers go to developed regions rather than staying at work in the countryside.3. Listening problem of junior middle school students in rural areasListening is an important mean of language learning. It is one of the significant ways in English language communication. However, (RenXiaoping,2001：1-2) puts forward some statistics show that nearly fifty percent students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult part among all kinds of examinations. in the following parts ,listening problem of junior middle school students in rural areas will be explored .3. 1 The pronunciation problemIt is clear that “ Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of language”, Dai Weidong proposed.(WangQiang，2002：35). If students want to listen and understand the general language materials, they must make every effort to listen and understand each word, which is very important. English, as a new language for Chinese students, usually appears some problems exactly on phonetics, such as the mistakes on pronunciation, intonation, and all kinds of skill like word stress, assimilation, etc.For instance, the phrase “tinned meat”, in the informal occasion, its pronunciation is described as /tin｀mi: t/. -Ed among tinned is omitted. The pronunciation of n assimilates /m/ just as following examples:That boy—thap boyTen people—tem peopleIn English, Many short words have two or more than kinds of pronunciation: accented mode and one or more than one weak stress. The word in non-stress position of sentence usually appears with mode of weak stress. However, the word in stress position mainly appears with stress mode. But there are many exceptions, sometimes stress appears in position on non-stress Such as the following dialogue: A: You had better give him the key.B: I am going to do it.These two sentences in the pronunciation as follows:“Him” appears with weak stress. On the other hand, it is assimilated by give so that the pronunciation of these two words changes. But in the second sentence, “going to ”and “do”also appear with the form of weak stress. These changes of pronunciation caused the difficulties for the listener.Sentence stress is the relative strength or key point of words on pronouncing among sentence. When people speak, not every word is stressed. All in all, notional words are stressed, but functional words appear with weak stress unless the speaker intended for being emphasized. Good understanding function of sentences can help learners understand implied meaning of sentences in the process of listening comprehension. The following dialogue will serve to illustrate the point: (Man) Is anyone coming to class today?(woman) Relax. It is ‘barely ‘two.Question: What does the woman mean?a. Only two people came to class so far.b. The man should take a nap.c. It is not very late.d. The teacher is too strict.The correct answer is c. The lady emphasizes “barely” and “two” in the dialogue. But some students think that he emphasize the reached number. In fact, the woman wants to express this meaning that it is too early to worry about the students’ present situation.3.2 Vocabulary problemEnglish has a wide vocabulary and it is a very flexible language. Size of English vocabulary, the proficiency of grasping and phenomenon of polysemy and homonym bring about a certain difficulties for students' listening comprehension. During the process of listening comprehension, listener should not only do the exercises of sound recognition, but also learn more vocabularies. As ( Li Guanyi,2008:2-3) put forward that “Some English words have a common root but are used in very different senses. Consider human and humane, for example. Their origin is the same and their meanings are related, but their usage is distinct. A human action is not the same thing as a humane action. We cannot speak of a Declaration of Humane Rights —There is a weapon called a humane killer, but it is not a human killer.”For example, the following two sentences:a：She was fast asleep.b: She ran fast.“Fast” has different meanings in the different contexts. However, students usually make a wrong conclusion according to familiar words which they master.Sometimes using different words can express the different meaning. For example, “Dianti”, British use “lift”, but American use “elevator”; “Ren Xingdao”, British use “pavement”, But American use “sidewalk”. Besides, for instance, first floor, it represents the second floor in Britain, but in American it represents the first floor.3. 3 The lack of grammar knowledgeSome students have not solid grammar skills and idioms in listening so that they misunderstand the original meaning of sentence with fuzzy concept or misunderstanding grammatical structure of sentences. As the following examples: “It is unnecessary for you to go there.” In this sentence, if students do not know that unnecessary is antonyms of necessary, they will misunderstand this sentence, even the opposition to the meaning. So grammar can help students catch the implication of the vocal sounds, and understand them well, and it is also the essential condition of a whole passage comprehension.3.4. Inadequate background knowledgeLanguage is the medium of culture, and special culture produces different characteristics of the language background. In China, English is a foreign language(EFL), not a second language(ESL). Both students and teachers are doing their jobs under their condition which quit different from that such as in the US. Even most of articles on English listening textbooks were written by European or American. If students do know the social system, customs, way of thinking and values and so on about western countries, they will be difficult to understand the materials while listening.Consider an ignorant of foreigners for Chinese culture at all, for example. When he or she hears of moon cakes, dumplings, and couplets among Chinese traditional culture, we can hardly ask him or her to have a correct understanding for these.For example, the implication of Chunjie and Dizhu cannot be represented by the Spring Festival Landlord completely. Plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum is to Chinese what cowboy is to American.The core of culture is the spirit, including social system, customs, way of thinking and values and so on. China and the western countries including Britain and America, due to the difference of the geographical location, the existing social system, cultural formation and developing process, there are fundamental differences in this aspect. The different values construct different styles of communication and language behavior patterns between the East and West.3.5Psychological problemThe process of listening comprehension is a very complicated psychological one. So it is very important of students to have a good state while listening. But 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 do not understand by chance, they will have the fidgets, even some students are afraid of listening at the very beginning. It has designed a variety of obstacles about the important information, and lowered the degree of listening comprehension. On the other hand, the loudness and the articulating of the sounds, the noise made by inside or outside factors, etc,may become barriers affecting the students’ listening well. (ZhangQi,1996.10：1) put forward that “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.”How do the students overcome psychological factors? Firstly, teachers should attempt to organize their classes in English, what’s the most important point, students can concentrate on their attention while listening. Secondly, using the first five minutes efficiently before the class, or the revision time, ask students to listen to the radios in English. Never be afraid of it. Psychological quality is quite important to do everything, so does listening comprehension.3.6 Inappropriate listening habitsThe main purpose of listening is to understand the general idea of the material. During the listening process, students should try their best to catch the main contents which the key point. For instance, some students cannot directly understand materials in English, but with the help Chinese, experienced the process of a heart translation. Besides, students usually do their utmost to get the meaning of each word, each sentences. Once they meet a new word or a difficult sentence, they will stop to think so that they cannot catch up with the speed any more. In fact, it is unnecessary to understand every word, every sentence, only should catch the main idea, that’ enough. Therefore, it is necessary for teacher to point out the bad habits and then help the student from good habits.4.Strategies for helping students solve listening problem4.1 To explore efficient method of listening teachingTeaching methods are an important part of improving the level of students’ English listening. Students need to be instructed by teachers in the class. Then teachers should motivate students’ activeness and stimulate students’ enthusiasm for listening English. Meantime students should study pronouncing rules, listening skills and background of relative culture, etc.There are five ways in listening activities for teachers: choosing the appropriate materials, creating a harmonious atmosphere of teaching, paying attention to teaching art, variety of classroom activities, organizing extra-curricular activities, which will discuss in detail as follow:4.1.1 Choosing the appropriate materialsBefore having the class, teachers must choose and analysis the materials. (Jeremy Harmer,2000:100) put forward that “Teachers 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.” 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 with the teaching in class.4.1.2 Creating a harmonious atmosphere of teachingOne kind of democratic, harmonious, loose classroom atmosphere let the students be at one kind of best study state. In the classroom a teacher's look or smile can bring certain influence to the student. Teacher is teaching with English .The teacher must use some body language according to the text content for letting students understand. Teachers should let students Participate in actively and initiatively to build up confidence.4.1.3 Paying attention to teaching artAnother way is that the teacher can use some simple tools to stimulate students’interest for listening. First of all, it is crucial point that students’ need must be met many tools which teachers use, including colored chalks on the blackboard, multimedia classroom and so on. These tools can create a vivid situation of English learning, and Stimulate and the cultivate students' interest for English learning. Taking advantage of multimedia technologies can make remote and strange environment convert colorful teaching situation so that students can get better comprehending and make students do their best to avoid the disturbances of mother tongue. Then the teacher should let the students speak English with beautiful pictures and melodious music. In a word, letting the student learn English in a state of happy is very4.1.4 Making a variety of classroom activitiesTeenagers’ hyperactivity and naughty is a normal psychological phenomenon. In English class, the teacher should grab the students’ individuality to urge them to learn. In particular, it is very important that the teacher organize class activities. (Wangqiang,2002：90) put forward that “This type of activity works very well as an information gap activity between pairs of students.” For example, one student draws a simple picture and then tells his or 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.4.1.5 Organizing extra-curricular activitiesListening is not only trained in the class. The teacher should let students get out of classroom to contact outside environment instead of staying inside. So the extra-curricular activities are important mean of teaching, and it is good for increasing knowledge and opening horizons.Extracurricular activities organized purposeful can make students learn lively independently, and can also stimulate students’ enthusiasm for learning.4.1.6 Setting the sceneAnother type of 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 due to 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.4.2 To strengthen students’phonologyTeachers should strengthen students’ basic training of phonology. On the other hand, students should study to distinguish vowels and consonants within words, to identify stress, weak stress and tone. And teachers should let students more contact with listening exercises of phonology and tone to eliminate the obstacles for phonology. All Ears made by Zhejiang Education Press is valuable training material4.3 To combine the four skills4.3.1 Combination of intensive listening and extensive listeningIntensive listening and extensive listening are indispensible in the listening training. Intensive listening is to let students listen some materials again and again until students understand completely. For instance, the student takes measures to listen each sentence among the college entrance examination English listening in these years. Then they check and correct errors. Or the student can repeat material contents after listening, and answer relative questions in order to let teachers know the students’ degree of mastering for materials. The purpose of extensive listening is to catch main idea, to listen different tones, to develop good sensitivity and clear and fluent speed of language and to enlarge knowledge. The teacher must cope with their relation between these. To sum up, extensive listening is the basis of intensive listening, and intensive listening is the deepening of extensive listening. What's more, using extensive listening drives intensive listening.4.3.2 Combination of listening and speaking.Listening and speaking are indispensible. The student must listen to understand in order to say. Only do students understand, they can say after that. Therefore, The teacher should organize actively students to use every chance to say English, and to use English to show themselves. However, the student should make full use of English Corner to exercise their oral English. Different tones in oral English can express different emotion, attitudes and meanings. Only do students more exercise, they can grasp that different tones show different feelings in the context. Furthermore, more exercises on oral English can make students better distinguish different tones which express different meanings. To conclude, speaking can improve listening, and listening can drive speaking.4.3.3 Combination of listening and readingReading can develop the language sensitivity and the flow of speech while listening. The combination of listening and reading can make tong, structure and meaning get together, and reduce errors of judging. For teachers, they should letstudent develop good habits of reading half hour each day while listening. All in all, whatever the materials of listening and reading are texts or passages, the student start with recording with words, then they can read with recording without words. At last, the student can be read synchronously with sensitivity and reading.4.3.4 Combination of listening and writing.The exercises of listening and writing are very important for improving the level of listening. Listening and writing are the process of brain labor that need needs the high attention of concentration with limited time and stimulates actively students’whole language knowledge. In the process of listening and writing, the student only understand directly and memorize, which can make the whole contents write down completely while listening. When a student can better take down contents which he or she listen, he or she will understand the content, hat’s not a question.4.4 To enhance cultural knowledge of English languageIn communicative habits, a nation's cultural characteristics in language reflects mainly sentences with words and tone of V oice, therefore, must be considered the cultural factors in the language. Due to students' growth in rural area, so their knowledge of English culture is relatively scarce with information block. In view of this, the teacher must instruct consciously students know politics, geography, history, social system and so on.4.5 To develop the independent awareness of studying about rural students.The success of English teaching in college relies on students’independent awareness of studying. And the differences of student's individuality also require students to promote corresponding training in listening, speaking, reading, writing according to their specific conditions. Therefore, the independent training can help students' listening comprehension improve. Nevertheless, how should students do in junior middle school? Specifically speaking, teachers’duty is very important. As people, playing is children’nature, they are very active, especially junior middle school. They are hard to calm down if teachers do not stop them properly. So teachers should make reasonable plans in order to meet students’ taste, and help them carry out plans. Gradually the student will form good habit after class.4.6 To improve teaching facilities of English in rural areaIt is true that listening teaching has taken place changes fundamentally for modern multimedia languages which make computer, VCR, recorder, projector, network and teaching software of listening, etc. put together and make images, audio, video, storage and transmission integrate. With the development of modern educational technologies, multimedia computer as the core of the foreign language teaching has become the developing direction of foreign language teaching reform. Therefore, national education sector and rural secondary school should change with the times, and attach importance to the English teaching of rural junior school. At the same time, they also increase investment in rural country, and improve teaching facilities, and recruit excellent teachers.4.7 Other strategies4.7.1 Expanding scope of reading.Now listening is related to reading. The more students read, the higher rates of lexical reiteration become. Moreover, the student can avoid the process of a heart translation to digest directly material contents of listening. Generally speaking, if a student has few scope of reading, his or her speed of reading will be low. So their sped of listening is not fast, and their understanding is not deep. For teachers, they must make a point of reading training to improve speed of reading. Even they should guide students to avoid deliberating one by one word. It is proper that students can only catch main idea and grasp important details within limited time. The improvement of reading speed can promote acceleration of thinking tempo. In this circumstance, the student can keep up with speed of listening.4.7.2 Mastering skillsUsing listening exercises improves skills of listening and changeable abilities which is an effective way for English listening. At the beginning stage of listening training, the student can take notes. For instance, they should put down name, place, time, Age and so on in the materials. The objective of doing this is to regard these information gotten down as references. On the basis of this, students then use theirbrain to memorize. Now students must pay attention to the training of micro-skills on listening, and catch the beginning and ending of articles to make their every effort to grasp theme and key sentence. At last, students should browse options on questions, and then predict the content and genre in the listening materials. For some implied problems, the student must make the most of their imagination and experience to understand, guess, promote, and notice the background knowledge and usage of English. If necessary, the student can use PaiChuFa to eliminate impossible answer. 5. ConclusionIn the final analysis, on one hand, we all know some problems which exist in the English listening are phonetics, stress , weak stress, etc. On the other hand, we also put forward some solutions to deal with these problems. Just as teachers change their practice activity they gain new insights about the learning potentials of their students. (Zhang Jianzhong,1999:290-297) , “These success have encouraged teachers to preserve in their effort to design learning experiences that provide multiple entry and exit points for their students.”In fact, teachers did not teach the phonetics and phonology in the junior middle school. Main practice on listening is about the textbook which 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: scientific training on listening, harmonious atmosphere in the class, paying attention to teaching art, making a variety of classroom activities, organizing extra-curricular activities and so on. These types of activities can be designed into games, which are popular for student. Above all, we make a point of teachers’role. More importantly, we also cannot ignore students’importance. In most cases, students should even take the initiative to exercise listening. For instance, students should master skills, including cultural knowledge of English language, developing abilities of reading and writing, etc. Besides there’s no exception that the government should make a point of education concerning rural country, for the government must provide substantial financial support and teaching equipment. In short, teachers play a important role of supervision, students play adominant role, and the government play a role of adjuvant in the junior middle school in the countryside for the improvement of listening level. If we excellently cope with the relationships between students’role, teachers’role and the government, we will not worry about improving the level of English listening. If they can perform their duties, the improvement of listening will not prove to be a problem in the junior middle school in the countryside.。