OntheEnglishTeachingofListeningandSpeakinginMiddleSchoolinChina

1、淺談中學(xué)英語聽說教學(xué)on the english teaching of listening and speaking in middle school in chinaabstractin middle school, most students feel that it is very difficult for them to listen to english and speak english. as we know, the teachers always spend a lot of time in practicing written english, such as the

2、words, grammar, and so on, which leads to a serious problem for the students future study. the aim of learning english is to communicate with others, and oral english is becoming more and more important, so at the beginning stage, the teachers should pay more attention to listening and speaking. as

3、long as the students have a good base in middle schools, they will save a lot of time and be more interested in learning english. this paper first introduces the problems in listening and speaking teaching in middle school, and then gives some suggestion about the solutions, such as group-work metho

4、d and two-way communication. both of them are very beneficial for the students.key wordsenglish teaching in middle school; listening; speaking摘要在中學(xué)，大部分的學(xué)生發(fā)現(xiàn)英語聽說方面非常難。就我們所知，老師們通?；ù罅康臅r(shí)間在書面英語上，如，單詞，語法等等。實(shí)際上這種情形將在以后的學(xué)習(xí)中成為一個(gè)比較嚴(yán)重的問題。學(xué)英語的目的主要是交流, 而當(dāng)今口語的重要性顯得日益突出，因此，在英語學(xué)習(xí)的入門階段，老師應(yīng)當(dāng)更加關(guān)注學(xué)生聽說能力的發(fā)展。只有在中學(xué)階段打下良好的

5、基礎(chǔ)，才能使學(xué)生們?cè)谌蘸蟮膶W(xué)習(xí)中節(jié)省許多的時(shí)間，也將大大提高學(xué)習(xí)英語的興趣。這篇文章主要介紹了英語聽說教學(xué)方面所存在的一些問題及解決這些問題的基本方法。如小組活動(dòng)教學(xué)，功能教學(xué)法的應(yīng)用，它們都是在理論與實(shí)踐方面被證實(shí)是行之有效的，對(duì)學(xué)生的幫助很大。關(guān)鍵詞中學(xué)英語教學(xué)；聽；說introductionnowadays, english is becoming more and more important after china entered the wto, which can encourage us to study english well. to study a foreign lan

6、guage, we should master four abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. generally speaking, communication is the main aim of learning a foreign language, and we know that most students have less difficulty in reading and writing. from this point, we should pay more attention to listening

7、and speaking. in fact, in china, a lot of students spend a great number of time in learning english, but they still feel that they can not understand well what they have heard and can not speak fluently.  this is partially because of our examination system, and partially of teaching method. as

8、we know, as long as the students get a high mark and they can enter into a good school. so we just focus on the grammar. in the past several years, the government realized the seriousness of examination - oriented education and did a lot to change the situation. the teaching outline has been informe

9、d. in the text books, there are a lot of activities involving listening and speaking, including pair work and group work. in the examination the part of listening comprehension has been added, and it is more difficult. at home and abroad, there are many experts studying the methods of teaching, and

10、the main method is functional method, which has been used almost all over the world. here i would like to introduce some useful methods to help students to improve their listening and speaking and raise their interest.  . the present situation in english teaching of listening and speakinga. the

11、 present situation in english teaching of listeningin middle school, most students have great difficulties in listening because they can not pronounce correctly and have no good methods to practice listening and they lack relevant knowledge about the foreign countries cultures.in fact, listening com

12、prehension is an essential part of communication and basic to second language learning. in any standard foreign language test, listening comprehension usually occupies a considerable proportion. yet, to the students who learn english in situations where english is not the language of the country and

13、 where opportunities for hearing english outside the classroom are few, it is usually extremely difficult for them to comprehend english spoken to them. many students, usually influenced by some traditional habits, are accustomed to putting what they are hearing into their native language in order t

14、o get the original meaning. as a result, when trying to understand one sentence, and then they will miss the next one. so when a conversation or a passage is over, they almost know nothing and are totally at a loss what to do about the exercises they are required to do. in order to develop their lis

15、tening skills, some teachers just give them plenty of graded practice and hope that they will work out for themselves the most efficient way of coping with it. unfortunately, it only proves to be a timeconsuming but inefficient way and they can hardly arrive at the most satisfactory solution of thei

16、r own accord. when they repeatedly meet with setbacks, they come to the conclusion that listening comprehension is only the eagles nest and it is an impassable chasm. some even lose their confidence. actually, the improvement of listening comprehension can be gained by good methods.b. the present si

17、tuation in english teaching of speakingfor a long time, students have been used to the english learning situation where teachers explain grammatical structures and the content of texts most of the time while students job is to take notes and respond to. their role in the class is passive. although s

18、ometimes they have some speaking activities in class, such as doing oral translations, making sentences orally or reading texts aloud, none of these involve genuine communication in which they can express their own opinions, exchange their own ideas or find their own solutions to the problems. as a

19、result, students feel frustrated when they face with genuine english-communication situations. they find it difficult to talk with a real native speaker and to express themselves orally.in view of all the students difficulties in listening and speaking, we, as teachers, will have to try our best to

20、use a more gradual but most efficient approach to the real language and help them in various ways. something must be done in english classes to give students more chances to practice speaking english and to encourage them to engage in meaningful interactions ii. the solutionsa. ways of improving lis

21、teningfor some years now, methodologists have recommended small group work (including pair work) in elt (english listening text) classrooms. the pedagogical benefits of group work are summarized as follows: “it increases the quantity of language practice opportunities; it improves the quality of stu

22、dents talk in several ways; it helps individualize instruction; it creates a positive, relaxed phenomenon in the classroom and it increases students motivation.”(long and porter, p124) with group work, students can practice language use and cooperative learning in which they can form relationship wi

23、th others in the group and share their beliefs and perception with others with only minimum amount of direction from teachers. how can we improve the students listening level in a small group? there are seven practical ways.1. to proceed step by step according to the students actual statewe should p

24、ractice listening step by step and according to the students actual state .during the initial stage of listening, we should spend a lot of time training basic skills. as we know, whatever we do, we should begin with the basis. so is the listening. in junior high school, it is the beginning of learni

25、ng english. so it is the key period. we can study the native language easily especially the ability of listening because we could listen to a lot of materials since we were born. gradually we can speak by ourselves naturally. that is to say, learning a language needs a good environment. but we know

26、that most of us can not go abroad and we can just learn english at home and in classroom. thus we almost have no real situation and should spend a lot of time .this process is long and the work is very difficult. in china we usually use class teaching. when we train the students basic skills, we hav

27、e the following methods. first we should teach the letters and the phonetic symbols one by one. during this period, we should be very patient. when the students have some wrong pronunciation, we need to teach them the way to correct it. if this process could not be done well, the students will not g

28、rasp correct pronunciation and it is very difficult for them to improve listening and speaking. to finish that, we should be qualified. as long as we do this work very well, we will reduce many tasks and save a lot of time. besides, students are also required to master some basic vocabulary for ever

29、y-day use. words are the most basic element. in every lesson, we should teach the new words firstly. then ask the students to read them to gain good impression. the best way is to ask them to read the text because there is a context, which is easy for them to memorize the words and know some structu

30、res .of course we can use tape- recorder. let the students listen to the tape and then read after it, which can improve their pronunciation and listening gradually and help them form a good feeling. what i have said is the basic phonetic knowledge and new words. there are many other things; for exam

31、ple, the students should try their best to memorize a lot of relevant knowledge about the habits and cultures of foreign countries. and we can easily know that that this task can not be finished in a short time so we should give some instructions to them. we can tell the students to read some releva

32、nt books. after period of such training, we can let them listen to longer sentences and short conversations and some other materials which are the appropriate level of linguistic difficulty as regards syntax and vocabulary. if we can do it in this way, students will not have the feeling that listeni

33、ng comprehension is high up and beyond grasp at the very beginning. a good beginning is half done. good basic skills will certainly make their future study easier.2. to provide interesting materialsin class we should practice listening to some materials away from the usual kind of memorization exerc

34、ises often used in classrooms and in language labs. the listening practice should be that in which students are to listen with full attention to something that interests and challenges them; they are to get the information or get at the meaning of what they hear and then produce a response to what t

35、heyve understood. to do this, we can select materials of appropriate interesting level. we neednt go over all the items in “l(fā)istening practice” one by one without considering whether it is easy or difficult, interesting or boring. as we know, when one is not interested in something, he or she cant d

36、o it well anyway, even when forced to. so is the case with listening comprehension. dull materials can only make students lose interest at all. as it proves, students perform better with materials that they want to listen to because they enjoy them. in order to make the effect of listening comprehen

37、sion more notable, sometimes we need add something, such as songs, humorous stories, some important news at home or abroad, personal anecdotes, materials containing some puzzles to be solved, etc.3. to give some relevant instructions before listeningif we are going to ask our students to listen to s

38、omething, we cant just stand or sit there playing the tape-recorder or we cant just explain some words or expressions. we should try to guide our students with our prior knowledge of the material. for instance, we can introduce the topic with short discussion; let them make a guess of what is going

39、to be heard according to the title or give them some hints to help themto understand what they are going to listen to. by doing so, we can arouse their expectations and make them mentally prepare for the listening material. what is more important is to help students to be selective by giving them a

40、purpose for listening. without a definite purpose, they will be in the dark. when they try to memorize everything, they prove to forget almost everything in the end. so try to give students a few questions before first hearing, or ask them to prepare to pick out 2 or 3 main points, or the main steps

41、 in a process. set tasks which entail concentrating on certain features and throw away irrelevant information. sometimes if the material is too long, we can split it up into short sections and ask questions appropriate to each short section as we go along. sometimes if the material is a little diffi

42、cult, we can introduce it in simple language first. but, remember, dont say too much or just retell the whole material by yourself. otherwise, students will have no interest to listen to it or they will not listen to it with great care since they think theyve already known a lot about it. we can als

43、o help students to develop the ability of taking notes while listening. when we do this, we first give some questions about what the students will listen to. thus, they will be effective with the aim. in this way, students will not miss the important facts and details. besides, it is also conductive

44、 to the comprehension of a long material.4. to do some dictation exercisesanother effective way of improving students listening comprehension which can be used in class is to do some dictation exercises, which is particular to those students who have been introduced to the language only through read

45、ing and writing rather than listening, they often have great difficulty in recognizing the spoken forms. thus, by doing dictation exercises, they can gain a lot. for example, if there are some homonyms, the students should pay more attention to those. they should think those words through the contex

46、t. during this course, they will form better thought. at the same time, they can strengthen the ability of spelling and writing. similarly, when the teacher finds it worthy of doing, they will be likely to use this method frequently. undoubtedly, we can pay more attention to the dictation and regard

47、 it as a technique for teaching listening comprehension. if we can do the work frequently, it will be of great help to students. of course, the material for dictation shouldnt be too long or too difficult, otherwise they will feel that it is really beyond their understanding or interest and will dis

48、like it and even abandon it. so be sure to select the proper material and make sure that the exercise will certainly contribute to the improvement of their listening comprehension.5. to catch the main pointsusually, most students like to understand each word in any passage. in fact, it is impossible

49、 for them to listen to different passages at different speed. generally speaking, the students just know the main idea which can help them to understand what they have just heard. usually in every passage there are some new words which do not influence their understanding. so they neednt understand

50、each word at any time unless they have not correct pronunciation. so we should help students to overcome this problem and help them know how to catch the main points in listening.6. to create a good language environmenta good environment is very important for learning language. in the class, we shou

51、ld try our best to use simple english to train the students listening. at first, the students usually have some difficulty in listening. to solve this problem, in my opinion, we can first use chinese and body language to help them. for example, in grade 1, junior high school, when we say the phrase”

52、 shut the door” at the first time, the students usually do not understand that, at this time, we can perform it. then we say it again, they will understand that phrase quickly. similarly, we can use chinese. if we usually do this, the students can gradually be accustomed to this environment. but wha

53、t i want to mention is that we must pronounce correctly and standard. besides, how much english should we use? we should perform it according to the students actual level. generally, at the beginning, we can use english and chinese equally. as time goes, we can gradually reduce using chinese. after

54、a long time, the students can form a good instinctive feel for the language.7. to enlarge the students knowledgewithout a certain materials, it is very difficult to improve the listening ability in a shorter period. so when the students face this kind of material which they are not familiar with at

55、all, they usually think it is too difficult. to learn a foreign language, we must pay much attention to the cultures of the foreign countries because a kind of language is just a tool and the most important part is the content of the culture, which includes the history, the festivals, and so on. so

56、when we teach a lesson, if there some parts having linkage with the history, we should introduce them in detail. besides, there are many other ways for the students to know about the culture. we can ask them to read some simple materials on these topics. day by day, they will feel that learning engl

57、ish is very interesting. from this point, we should do that well. up to now, there are seven ways altogether. each of them is not the best, so we can use them flexibly.b. ways on developing speakingit is known to us that listening and speaking are relevant, and they can not be taught separately. spe

58、aking is equal to listening, and it is developed on the basis of listening. so we are easy to know that both of them are connected closely. the skills of speaking generally include these aspects: pronouncing correctly; using suitable stress, strong form, weak form, intonation; using general structur

59、es which accord with the habits of native speakers; using brief and reasonable words and expressions to express a complete meaning. thus it is not easy for one, whose native language is not english to speak well in a short period. it needs the learners to spend a lot of time and use correct ways. in middle school, the students should use what they have learned to say comparatively simple sentences to express something about their everyday life and study. in that way, what kind of way is suitable? here are three basic ways