Discourse Analysis In English Listening Comprehension

Although discourse analysis is a comParaively new field and there are stillconsiderable gaPs in our knowledge about it discourse analysis has in effectProvided new insighs into langUage teaching involving listening. Some theories in -discourse analysis such as cohesion, coherence, schem' relevance, etc arecritically imPohaIl in enhancing the stUdents' listening comprehension ability and -haProving their cornmwhcative comPetence.Cohesion and coherence are the twO kemels of imPortance in discourseanalysis. Both of them serve either as Ways of thinking or as adequae aPproachesto tetul composition. They are the ultimate goal of discourse interpretation. Thelisteners often haV to rely on a Process of inference to bove at an idealintemptation based on the activation of background knoWedge and the seeking ofrelevant information as well as the setting uP of cohesion and coherence.Schema theory and relevance theory are mutUally dePendent and mutuallysuPportive. According to schematic liStening comPrehension pattem, listeningcomPrehension process is an infimation-driven processing inVolving '\op-downprocessing" and "bottom-uP processing". HoweveT, it emphasizes that the listenersrely more heavily on toP-down processing Which involves activaton of schematicboWIedge and contextual AnoWledge. Relevan theory aims at exPlainingdiscourse relevance from the perspective of coghtive science, and hencedisclosing psychOlogical devices of discourse interpamion. These tWo theoriesIay imPortan theoreticaI foundations of coherence interpretation.Discourse teaching is an integral pat of listeulng teaching. Traditiona Way of,listening teaching is usualy senence-oriented Which is of less value tO imProvethe stUdents' listeulng ability Whereas discourse-oriented teaching method, WhichanalyZes teXts at discourse level, is an effective method. The result is that students"can not see the wood for the trCes" after the traditional way of teaching but can"see both the trCes and the wood" after discourse-oriented way of teaching. Itshould be noted tha discourse-oriented aPProach does not mean sacrificing thetraditional Way of teaching. Instead, it is now generally acknOWledged thatdiscourse-oritaled aPProach used along with swtence-oriented aPproach is morebeneficial to the studen. Hence, bOth toP-down and bOttOm-uP liStening skiIlsshould be integrated to imPrve second langUae listening comPrehension. As aII@ j:.t}.,tjt;{matter of fact, it is generally realized that listeners use more top-down processingduring listening whiIe readers use more bottom-up processing. This is appropriatebecause listening is ephemeral and linear and listening discourse is generally lesssyntactically integrated than written langUage, which gives listeners fewer clues todiscourse coherence..After examining the above-mentioned imPortant theories and analyzing of thefactors influencing listening comprehension, the author putS forward some- corresponding ways and strategies in order to facilitate listening comprehension.For example, to link background AnowIedge and a discourse by using schematicknowIedge, to interpret discourse connectives, world knowledge and context in adiscourse by using coherence knowledge and relevance knowledge and so on. Bydoing some experiments, the author concludes that discourse-oriented aPproach ismore effective than sentence-oriented aPproach in improving the students'1istening comprehension ability and their communicative competence.At the end of this dissertation, the author suggests some practical ways of notetaking and illustrates her own opinions on dictogloss, which is also calledgrammar dictation, and the authenticity of listening materials. She claims that aslanguage teachers they should teach the students directly some Anowledgeconcerning discourse interpretation such as cohesion, coherence, cohesive devices,schema theory, relevance theory, discourse structure, pragmatics, cultura...