On The "Reading-Listening" Hypothesis In The Development Of Listening Competence

According to Wilga M. Rivers(1984), in daily communication, listening takes a proportion of 45%, ranking a first place among the activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Many linguists have also recognized the importance of listening and claimed to give priority to the mastery of listening ability. It is obvious that listening has been placed significantly in both the daily communication and the development of a second language.With the rapid development of English learning, the teaching of listening has been attached more and more importance to. It has been found that the keystone of listening researches has been to the process of listening comprehension, the factors affecting listening comprehension, the use of listening strategies, and the suggestions towards listening teaching. Based on this framework, this thesis first tries to reveal the correlation of listening and reading through the investigation of their relations, for instance, they belong to the same category of language input, and both receive and deal with information according to the schema in mind as well as prediction. Founded on this, a "reading-listening" hypothesis is further proposed and proved through quantitative analysis to have its maneuverability in assisting the acquisition of listening comprehension. It is finally hoped that the learners could have some promotion in their listening competence through the research in this area.The present paper is divided into 5 chapters and organized as follow:Chapter 1 is the starting point of this study. An introduction is given to the significance of listening in a second language acquisition, the factors affecting listening competence and the present listening situation in Chinese English classroom teaching.Chapter 2 has a brief review of second language listening comprehension and its...