The listening difficulties in Chinese EFL classrooms and the basic skills to improve their listening comprehension

“Real success in English teaching and learning is when the learners can actually communicate in English inside and outside the classroom”This essay aims to analyze the difficulties the students are faced with and list some solutions while they are learning listening to English and provide practical guidance to enable students to approach the learning of listening with confidence.

Listening difficulties the Chinese students are facing

The students may encounter many difficulties they face in understanding a talk， speech or dialogues in using language. The listeners， place and the different kinds of audience could be the causes of these difficulties. The factors include the speaker talking quickly， the noisy background， individual slang languages， lacking in visual clues， the listeners poor vocabulary， uncertain about the knowledge of the theme， not knowing how to distinguish different persons“sounds and external influences. Listening comprehension is also influenced by the speakers” features. Different speakers have various different types of characteristics. Apart from those mentioned above， listening is affected by the ways the listeners use and the strategies the students employ.

Some solutions about the difficulties the students are suffering from

As teachers we should be aware of the potential difficulties faced by the students so that we can help to decrease their influence. The solutions are listed as the follows：

Get the students to review on what they hear. The elements which result in interference in listening are obvious. With the help of the prediction task， we can motivate the students` interest in the topic， and activate the students to recall more pre-teach essential vocabularies. Whats more， when we preview what is the topic of a talk or a conversation about， many of the relevant words and expressions saved in our brains is “specialized” to evolve us better understand what were listening to.

The communicative approach to listening classes

Ask the students to join or guess what will be discussed from the related materials. Then， brainstorm any vocabulary or ideas connected with the topic. Try to divide the listening materials into shorter sentences to get the students to answer them. Activate the students to finish the gaps in a short summary and identify synonyms or antonyms of key words and phrases.

Important listening skills

We had better make our students aware of the following strategies to make them effective listeners， As a matter of fact， to develop listening strategies， we should exploit listening texts and tasks we might ask our students to do in order to focus their attention on the content of the texts to understand the texts effectively.

The students can have different kinds of forms to listen inside or outside the classrooms. Also， we can make use of multimedia about adverts， songs， news， weather forecast， TV series or films. Thirdly， academic， formal interviews， lectures， speeches and events can be adopted as well， if possible.

Using digital television， video or the Internet as a source of listening material.

Songs for improving listening

Songs sometimes reflect popular culture. Songs have unique advantages for the practice of listening comprehension because of their meaningful context. Songs should have clear lyrics to improve the EFL students` listening skill. Of course， songs have pedagogical value， enjoyable for students， and match the level of the students` tasks. Moreover， lyrics have repetition， and the tune is simple and easy. At the same time， songs reflect the cultural， gender， and religious sensitivity

This essay points out the difficulties the Chinese students are facing today， puts forward some solutions and confirms some effectiveness of using some listening skills to improve the students` listening skills according to the difficulties as well as the possibilities of the students. The results can be of great benefit to the students aimed at improving listening comprehension in a foreign language. Therefore， the Chinese teachers are advised to focus more on the listening strategies， which means that the students can be involved in plentiful listening materials. We， as teachers， need to take into consideration that the strategies mentioned in this essay elicit students to enhance their listening skills， develop the atmosphere of success and stimulate their sense of listening activity.

【作者簡介】丘文利，福建省上杭縣第一中學。