How to Improve Students’ Listening Ability

At present， the purpose of middle school English teach-ing is to improve students’ skills of listening， speaking， read-ing and writing. However， the teachers and the students yield to the examinations， which result in many problems in Eng-lish learning， particularly in English listening. The main causes of it are as follows: （1） Teachers and students think it’s not important to practice listening in junior one and junior two. They prefer tactics for the examination of entering schools of a higher grade. （2）Listening is not taught systema-tically to students， such as how to choose words， make sent-ences， organize paragraphs， conceive the whole essay and soon.

Because of the above reasons， some students are in dread of listening. In the long run， this causes the vicious cir-cles. So the teachers should attach importance to the students listening in English teaching. It’s very necessary to give guidance on the students’ listening and it’s quite important for the students to practice listening more.

Methods Of Improving Students’ Listening Ability

Ⅰ.To cultivate students’ interest of listening

Einstein ever said， “Interest is the best teacher.” So cultivating students’ interest on learning can’t be ignored. As soon as teachers make students interested in listening， they can motivate their enthusiasm and initiative. Listening must be the beginning step of English learning. Practice lis-tening and speaking together， students can improve the lis-tening ability by speaking. At the beginning of the listening， teachers should explain to students in humorous and lively ways in class， using simple means， expressions and actions. Teachers can also use the simple pictures to help students understand. Sometimes it is necessary to combine the key content and write a few Chinese words on the blackboard. It is helpful to develop students’ listening understanding in this way. With the students’ listening level improved， teachers can choose some lively language， more interesting conversa-tion stories， which can make students more interested in English listening. In order to do this， the writer sum up the following:

1.To choose various， interesting and comparatively easy materials

Since lacking of practice in listening， even though some listening materials are much easier than reading materials are somewhat interesting， students would collect their mind and focus on the materials more easily. Once students find they can understand some parts of the materials， they will have a feeling of harvest so that they would have more interest in training of interesting.

2. To lower the degree of difficulty and chose training styles

For example， we may watch a slide show and listen to the tape at the same time or look at the materials while listen-ing. According to different difficulty degree， they can have the following training types: reading while listening; reading after listening; listening after reading; listening without reading. Here “reading” means “read materials” while “l(fā)istening” means “l(fā)isten to the record”. Difficulty could be controlled by various training styles. Before listening to materials， teachers should introduce the story briefly. We may also encourage the students to listen to English pop songs.

Find cassettes/CDs which have the lyrics enclosed.

Write A Summary—Test the students’ listening by comparing the original lyrics with their summary. Try to listen to songs in English again and again without referring to the words until the students can understand as much as possible. The primary aim of this activity is to listen for main ideas. Tell them don’t be bothered by the details. After this， write a summary of the main ideas. Compare the original lyrics with what they have written down.

Sing Along With The Melody—Read the words and sing along with the cassette. This can be done alone or with a karaoke.

Do A Eloze Exercise—This can be done in the class-room. The teacher removes some words from a song. Listen to the song and let the students try to fill in the words that have been left out.

3. To foster students’ good habits of listening

Choose some fixed time every week to listen to the radio or tapes. Teachers should inform students how to use listen-ing laboratory properly to form a foundation for long-period standardized listening training.

Ⅱ. To use both extensive listening and intensive lis-tening

Extensive listening requires students to understand not only the main content but also every sentence of the materi-als. Students even have to distinguish every word and every syllable. While intensive listening requires them to listen to a large number of listening materials and get in touch with more language phenomenon. So English TV and radio pro-grams would certainly help students a lot. In addition， before every class the teachers may ask them to go to the stage and talk about everyday English programs so as to create a lan-guage environment and improve the listening ability.

Ⅲ. To practise in and out of class

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 e-nough. Teachers should also select some other listening ma-terials and let them finish out of class， but these materials must be limited in amount. Otherwise， it would spend too much time and affect learning of other subjects. Try every means to help students form a good listening habit out of class.

Ⅳ. To establish a good relationship between students and the teacher

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. For example， “Well， I guess I’ll have to go face the music.” According to this single sentence， it means “I have to listen to the music” or “I have to solve the problem about music” and so on. That is—the more teacher explained，the more students would feel puzzled. If finishing listening and try to comprehend it based on context， it would be much easier. The following passage is “It doesn’t mean he’s planning to go to a concert. It is something far less pleasant， like being called in by your boss to explain why you did it or not.”

Ⅴ．To deal with students in different level properly

It is well known that there are few students whose lis-tening level are really very high of poor. So teachers should know how to deal with these students. First of all， teachers should make allowance for the students. Otherwise， some may feel too easy or difficult to learn. If we only consider the poor students， it is impossible to improve the whole listening level. So materials of different degree should be chosen according to the majority students and teachers had better leave some comparatively easy questions to the lower students. Then the whole class will make progress together.

To achieve the aim of improving the listening compre-hension， teachers should pay more attention to the above teaching methods.

Ⅵ. Conclusion

Listening is the development of comprehensive ability. Students must comprehensively use the knowledge they have learned. So listening is the process of integrated study. Our teaching should be permeated with it in the whole teaching process. As an English teacher， we should cultivate students’ listening habit and train their ability in listening， speaking， reading and writing. Let the students keep reading more， re-member more， listening more. Listening must be preceded step by step and in an orderly way. To improve our listening comprehension， we should also pay attention to the following questions: Why listening is so difficult to us? How to deal with those difficult points? How can we learn listening well? And what shall we do when dealing with listening test?

This article mainly talks about the above questions. It tells us: （1） We find that there are four main factors which causing listening difficult—being short of basic language knowledge; the influence of our native language; cultural and background knowledge and psychological factors. In this pa-per， the writer also gives some corresponding skill to solve these problems. （2） We also know that there are some key factors which can help students to improve their listening ability—cultivate the interest in listening; connect extensive and intensive listening; practice both in and out of class; try to make close the relationship between students and teacher and learn how to deal with students of different degree. （3） In order to do listening test well， the writer also gives some art and skill for consulting. This paper may help you to improve your listening comprehension quickly.

（責(zé)任編輯 黃 曉）