A Strategic Research on Improving Middle School Students’Listening Abilities

【Abstract】Listening is a life skill that is often developed during early childhood.it is one of the most important life skills that helps people become effective communicators for the rest of their lives.Listening ranks first among are the four basic skills that English learners in middle school should develop. The improvement of middle school students’ listening ability is very helpful to the development of their abilities. However， the training of listening has not been placed in its proper position in traditional teaching for a long time and hence listening has long been a weak point. Many students think that listening is one of the most difficult things in English study. As the development of students’ listening ability has become the demand of middle school’s New English Curriculum Standard， nowadays the training of listening has drawn unprecedented attention than before. How to increase the students’ ability in listening and how to improve students’ listening comprehension in the examination has been the common concern of many English teachers’. this thesis tries to probe into middle school students’ problems into listening and to seek solutions for these problems so as to improve their listening ability.

【Key words】middle school students； English listening； Strategies

Ⅰ.Introduction

Listening is important in personal lives， daily activities and a career and employment environment. Many top employers spend money to ensure that their employees are able to effectively listen. They provide seminars， classes and training sessions that are geared toward helping employees learn how to listen better in various situations. This does not simply involve the input of information into the ears but allows employees to better interpret what they have heard when someone else is speaking.

As technology advances and trade and exchanges between countries increase ， it is becoming more and more important to spoken English in many situation as face- to- face， English play a more and more important role in modern society under reform and opening policy.

During the course of teaching English in middle school listening is one important skill needed to be taught. if you want to examine your own communication behavior， you would probably find that you spend more time in listening than speaking， reading and writing. But most of us are likely to be far from effective as listeners even if we hear satisfactorily. Why does it happen？ It is because few of us have had much training in listening of the four communication skills. Far more hours of study have focused on reading and writing than on speaking and listening.They would improve the balanced development of various language ability.

Ⅱ. Current Situation

Theaters：English teaching in the middle school most often used traditional method of translating-writing and the grammar teaching structure..Most students can only read and write， not listen and speak， Many people want to learn English well， but they are lack of chance to communicate with native speaker.

Students：there are many reasons effect Students’ listening skill，such as：listeners’ poor phonetic knowledge，listeners’ poor vocabulary，poor Background knowledge，poor Listening skills and lack of teaching materials， both with print materials and audio or video tapes， lack of equipment（tape players， VCRs， VCDs， computer） in some schools. Meanwhile Language is an integral part of culture. It has had special difficulties for Chinese to learn Western languages. When people learn a language， should learn Background knowledge fristly.

Enviroment：we all know，learning a knowledge need language environment.but we have no good English leaning environment in Middle school of China now。People become aware of psychological factors nowadays. They have found that in the whole process of learning a foreign language.

III. Strategies to Improve Students’ English Listening Comprehension

3.1 Improve basic knowledge of pronunciation，vocabulary and background knowledge

Even at the beginning of language learning some students are not sure of the proper pronunciation of each word.In order to improve our listening ability and enlarge our own vocabulary we should memorize the words through the context of the readings. Meanwhile we should also learn some word ―building knowledge to extend the vocabulary.

Students who want to learn English well must have certain knowledge about history language and culture.Learn about English country‘s local conditions and customs， their living style and habits. In English class， teachers should also tell them some culture and history background of America.

3.2 Improve teacher’ quality in middle school

English teachers’ quality has great impact on students’ spoken English， but now their spoken English is lagging behind because the English exam isn’t included listening in middle school. The traditional teaching ways make the students be very good at “deaf and mute English”.some of the students will be the future English teachers， maybe they will still teach their students spoken English in the traditional teaching methods. If a teacher’s spoken English is not very well， how can he help his students to improve their spoken English？ The quality of English teachers is the key in English teaching which impact directly on the English quality of students. As English teachers we should firstly continually strive to improve our quality in order to adapt to the modern English teaching better.

3.3 Improve students confident and interest in listening

We all know that interest is the most active factor in learning. So cultivating students’ interest on learning English is a good idea.. In order to do this， the writer sum up the following：

Firstly， Choose humour， variety， interesting and comparatively easy materials when choosing listening materials.Once students find they can understand some part of the materials， they will have a feeling of harvest so that they would have more interest in training of interesting.Secondly，Lower the degree of difficulty and chose training styles. Finally，Students are required to form a good habit of listening.Choose some fixed time every week to listen to the radio or tapes. Teachers should inform student how to use listening laboratory properly to form a foundation for long-period standarized listening training.

3.4 Motivate students to practice much listening

Practice after listening is the deep stage of listening comprehension. Teachers should take advantage of listening class and make full use of class time， solve some main problems and digest the main content of listening books. But this is not enough. Teachers should also choice some other listening materials and let them finish out of class， but these materials must be limited in amount.

3.5 Create a good listening environment

In class，teachers play a leading role while students are the principle characters. Teachers’ explanation should be limited and simple and their interpretation should not take much time. Some difficult points should be left for students to solve by themselves.

IV. Conclusion

English Listening is of significance to English learners. Middle school students are at the entrance of learning English. It is essential for them to lay a solid foundation. Suitable listening strategies can help enhance listening ability.Due to various factors， the concept of listening strategy is far from being taken seriously. And the outcomes concerning this field are relatively unsatisfying. Therefore， it is of importance for this paper to study listening strategy cultivation for middle school students.In general， listening strategy cultivation in this paper has practical meaning for middle school students. Although the paper has some shortages， the author hopes it is useful for cultivation of English listening strategy for p middle school students， thus improving their listening comprehension ability.

References：

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作者简介：赵Zt（1988-），女，陕西杨凌人，硕士，宿迁职业技术学院，党政办公室主任，助教，研究方向：学生管理，高等教育研究，英语教育。