赵欢

Listening is an important skill of second language acquisition and it is also a basic skill that can help learners develop other skills of reading， writing and speaking. However， listening teaching has been neglected in second language teaching for many years， until recent years， teachers start to explore the effective way to teach listening. This essay is focused on the listening teaching for senior high school students in China. With China developing rapidly， the need of professionals with high level of English language proficiency has increased. Therefore， the requirement for English skills of Chinese students has been promoted. Nevertheless， four skills have not developed at the same speed and listening is the one that students have huge the problem to master. This essay takes the problems that students may confront with into consideration to seek the most suitable approach to teach listening.

1 Main approaches of listening teaching

Trace the development of language teaching， tremendous changes can be seen in the approaches to teach foreign language. Traditionally， the grammar-translation approach was applied in English class. According to Richards and Rogers （2014）， grammar-translation approach is a way of studying language through analyzing the grammar rules and structure of it in detail and completing the tasks of translating sentences into the target language. Since reading and writing are the main focus， listening is barely mentioned.

Since the grammar-translation approach cannot elicit students skills to improve listening or communicative competence， the direct-method approach emerges. “The direct-method approach has one very basic rule： No translation is allowed. Since this approach serves all purposes in class， it is not systematic to practice listening strategies and it is hard to control the complexity of the words teachers use in communication with different levels of students.

The audio-lingual approach encourages that listening should first pay attention to pronunciation and grammatical forms and then elicit similar forms through a lot of exercises. Laser-Freeman and Anderson （2013） explain that this approach emphasizes the importance of grammatical sentence patterns， rather than the acquisition of vocabulary by being exposed to its use in situations. In the history of Chinas foreign language teaching， the audio-lingual method approach first appeared at the beginning of the performance of Reform and Opening-up policy. At that time， students main task is listening， imitating and speaking. The audio-lingual approach provides a good opportunity to practice students listening strategies， but it is not flexible either， in that it focuses too much on grammar structures.

The main idea behind a task-based approach to developing listening is that students become active listeners （Brown 1987）. This approach offers an opportunity to listen to conversations in real life or authentic materials. After that， students will be asked to complete corresponding exercise， for example， completing a chart or a table， deciding the statements true or false. There are two main points behind adopting this approach to teach listening： （1） Students have the concept of what real-life communication is and how these situations are presented， and （2） students become more active when they listen to materials and try to find the response to that.

2 Most effective approaches to teach listening to the senior high school students in China

2.1 Listening problems of senior high school students in China

In order to find the most appropriate and effective approaches to improve their listening， teachers need to learn about the problems they are facing. Although every student may encounter with various problems， as a teacher， it is still imperative to predict and find out some common troubles. Only in this way can a teacher apply appropriate approach to solve the problems and teach listening effectively.

In recent years， some professors （Lu， 2000; Lu， 2001; Lu， 2005; Long， 2011; Ding， 2000） have made some studies on students problems on listening， the models of teaching listening， methods of listening and so on. According to their research， the main existing problems are： the pronunciation problem， inadequate background knowledge， vocabulary problem and the lack of grammar knowledge.

According to the existing data， the most crucial problem is the pronunciation， which means that students ability to identify the sound is weak. “The sound identifying ability mainly refers to that the listener matches the sounds he receives with the meanings stored in his brain and thus integrates the sounds and the meanings; it is the basis of listening comprehension”（Lu Lisha， 2005）. The biggest difficulty for students is that they cannot distinguish the words when assimilation and elision happen. Additionally， inadequate background knowledge is a huge trouble. That could lead to the confusion of students listening comprehension when the question is concerned with western culture. However， a nations culture is reflected in its language， so it is necessary for teachers to introduce culture when teach listening. Apart from that， vocabulary is the basis of all those. According to the English Teaching Syllabus （2000） for high school students， 2400-2500 words and certain amount of phrases are enough for high school listening comprehension. In fact， many students cannot reach that amount of vocabulary and thus cannot combine listening materials with the knowledge in minds. As a result， it affects their listening comprehension to some extent. At the same time， grammar is a principal problem as well， for grammar in listening is different from the grammar in reading. When listen to materials， students need to react to sentence structures or the usage of words and phrases quickly， which means that students need better command of grammar to understand listening materials.

2.2 The most effective approach to teach Chinese senior high school students listening

Since Chinas Reform and Opening-up policy has carried out， students， teachers and parents all have put greater emphasis on English. However， in China， teachers， students and parents still think highly of examinations， especially the College Entrance Examination. As a result， the approaches teachers applied to teach English are relatively rigid and exercise-stuffed. Listening teaching is not an exception. Looking back on the long journey towards listening teaching of Chinese students， except the audio-lingual method approach existing during the initial time of Reform and Opening-up policy， teachers would use traditional typical Chinese teaching method.

Traditional Chinese teaching approach is teacher-centered. Students responsibility is to remember what their teachers say and practice the language points they have learnt in class. In listening teaching， teachers are accustomed to introducing the background knowledge roughly and then play the listening material. This traditional method often crushes students enthusiasm to explore the knowledge behind listening tests. Another problem of this method is that teachers pay too much attention to the outcome of the tests instead of how students get the answer， but sometimes wrong answers are more important than the right ones. As Field （2000） said that the function of the teachers should be to identify and redress learners weakness as a listener.

On the basis of the problems that students may encounter with in the process of listening comprehension and the disadvantages of todays listening teaching approach， the approach can be chosen to improve this situation is task-based method approach. Task-based approach offers an opportunity to combine real-life situation with listening tasks and it stimulates listeners to be more active in the listening process. It should be conducted with three stages： pre-listening， while-listening and post-listening.

In pre-listening stage， the main focus is to motive the students and to activate the prior background knowledge stored in their mind before listen. These tasks “should make the context clear， and clarify aims and set up the roles， procedures and goals for listening teaching” （Rost， 1990， p.232）. An important aspect of pre-listening is to introduce the topic and to balance between bottom-up processing and top-down processing. At the beginning of the class， listeners need to get accustomed with the listening environment and materials. Tasks for pre-listening stage need to carry the responsibility of leading-in. In this phase， task-based approach should be combined with Chinese traditional teaching method under the circumstance of exam-centered education system. Thus， activities in this stage should focus on bottom-up processing to help students strengthen the knowledge of pronunciation and lexis. In China， no matter in primary schools or high school， pronunciation is often neglected. However， forming a standard pronunciation habit is beneficial for building the corresponding model in mind and to reduce time of bottom-up processing. As Hedge （2002） illustrates that in bottom-up processing， we use our knowledge of language and our ability to process the acoustic signal to make sense the sounds that speech presents to us.

One of the activities that can be performed before class is introducing to students a recent heated topic related to the listening material in class， then divide the whole class into several groups to discuss about the topic. Meanwhile，teachers gather the valuable lexis and the pronunciation problems. After several minutes， stop the discussion. Students volunteer to speak out their opinions while teachers write down the remarkable words they use. On the basis of that， teachers add some new words and phrases then lead students to make sentences with the new lexis. During the time， teachers should pay attention to students pronunciation and correct their mistakes. It is helpful for students listening and speaking skills and provides a chance for students to think when listen and motivate the students to be an active listeners.

While-listening stage can be regarded as all tasks or questions that students are requested to accomplish during the listening comprehension. In this stage， students should pay more attention on the context and the meaning of listening materials rather than the sentence structures or the meaning of single words. The primary purpose of while-listening stage is to train students capability to grasp and comprehend the message of the texts and collect enough information to solve the questions in the exams. The activities in while-listening stage should be intriguing and challenging. Activities in while-listening are various， it can be multiple choices， gap filling or cloze exercise. Yagang （1993， pp. 16-19） summarizes a lot of advice for this stage：

2.2.1 Contrast the pre-listening stage with the listening passage.

2.2.2 Accomplishing instructions， which the students are given some certain instructions to show their understanding through a physical response.

2.2.3 Fill up in gaps， while they listen to dialogue， and the students listen to only the utterances of the speakers and are asked to write down those of the others.

2.2.4Explore the differences or mistakes from a listening test， and the students reply only when they come across something different， etc.

From the advice above， one of the efficient activities is filling the gap. It can be used in dialogue listening or passage listening. In dialogue listening， gaps can be designed to fill in with words or phrases and in passage listening. This activity is beneficial for practicing students ability to gasp the information and the skill to summarize the information they heard. Another activity suitable for high school students is the one existed in IELTS listening tests. That is recording the map or redress the route. Students finish the task of drawing the map under the instruction they listen， or find the best route to somewhere， then check the map they have drawn. This kind of practice can be a good activity to remember vocabulary and master the information they hear in listening process. Also， write a brief summary is useful in while-listening section. Although it may be difficult for high school students， but with more practice， students can gain a huge progress in vocabulary， grammar， writing.

Post-listening is designed to check students understanding towards listening materials used before. It can be the extension activities in while-listening phase. Post-listening takes much longer time than other two stages， for teachers need to leave enough time for students to reflect and discuss what they learn in the class. It can be a good time to digest the background culture knowledge and grammar problem appearing among high school students， meanwhile， students can know more about cultural differences. Teachers can help students extract the grammar from the texts and give more explanations so that students can gain deeper comprehension of the language knowledge.

Using task-based method approach to teach listening to senior high school students in China is still a challenge， but teachers need to keep exploring and attempting. Under the circumstance of preparing students for examinations， task-based approach needs to be refined and redressed to suit Chinese education system continuously.

3 Conclusion

Listening is one of the essential skills in English learning， but this skill has not drawn enough attention in English teaching in China. Teaching listening simply equals to asking students to practice again and again. It is time for teachers to think about the approaches to enhance students listening ability. In this essay， the common problems that students are facing have been analyzed. On the basis of the problems and the education environment， task-based approach has been regarded as the appropriate method to teach listening in China. However， since the traditional teaching method is difficult to change， how successful this approach can be still need more exploration.

References

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