Application Of Discourse Analysis Theories To The Teaching Of Listening Comprehension

Discourse analysis is a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into the problems and processes of language use and language learning and is therefore of great importance to language teachers.Listening is one of the most important and fundamental skills of language learning. For a long time language learners have been frustrated with two main factors-linguistic and non-linguistic barriers in the process of listening. How to move these listening obstacles away is a subject that always confronts language teachers.This thesis attempts to apply discourse analysis theories to the teaching of listening comprehension in the hope of improving the teaching method so as to improve students' listening ability in an efficient way. It is organized as follows:Chapter One reviews literature in three areas: 1. definition of discourse analysis 2. a historical overview of the discourse analysis 3. functions and applications of the discourse analysis theories. The review draws a conclusion that much attention has been paid to the study of discourse and its application, but the emphasis of this thesis is on the attempt to teach aural comprehension from a discourse perspective.Chapter Two presents the current situation of aural teaching in China. Firstly, it points out the primary position of listening in language learning and the characteristics of real-life listening. Then it reveals the weaknesses that the learners face in improving their listening abilities and the shortcomings that the traditional teaching methods have. Lastly, based upon the analysis of SLA principles, it stresses that efficient language input and devices for a low affective filter are two essential ingredients to achieve success in language teaching and learning.Chapter Three highlights the application of discourse analysis theories in search for a more efficient way of teaching listening comprehension so it is the core of this thesis and occupies a large proportioa It consists of five sections: Section One deals with schema theory. Firstly it introduces the origin and development of this theory anddefines it as past experiences leading to the creation of mental frameworks that help people make sense of new experiences. Next it classifies the schemata into two kinds: formal schemata and content schemata. The former refers to the linguistic knowledge stored in learners' minds including pronunciations, vocabulary and grammar, etc. The latter means the stereotypical mental scripts or scenarios of situations and events which are built up from numerous experiences of similar events. Lastly it points out that there are two processing models in the process of listening- bottom-up and top-down approaches. In order to clear the linguistic as well as non-linguistic barriers, the author suggests accumulating the schemata in the learners' mind and combining top-down and bottom-up processes to activate the schema frame in the process of listening. In Section Two, the author proposes that speech act theory can help learners understand the speaker's implied meaning and instructs learners to use it consciously in listening comprehension. To prove the effect of this theory, the author makes an experiment among the freshmen of Foreign Language Department of Weifang University and the result is very convincing. In Section Three, the author elaborates on cooperative principle (C.R) and politeness principle (P.P.) and points out that usually people will observe the maxims of C.P. in daily conversation but in some cases they do violate the maxims and hence some conversational implicatures will be produced. Perceiving these implicatures is vital in listening comprehension. P.P. is formulated as a necessary supplement and a remedy to C.P., which can explain why violations of C.P. maxims often occur and what the conversational implicatures are. A similar experiment is made and the result gives evidence to the guiding meaning of C.P. and P.P. Section Four and Five are intended to provide the listeners some micro skills to deal with some long discourse types like...