Discourse Analysis In English Listening Comprehension

Listening, as a way of communication, is the most frequently used skill in daily life. English language learners must pay enough attention to the training of their listening comprehension skills.People' s view on the nature of listening comprehension had gone through great changes. Based on structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, traditional approach of listening teaching only focuses on the form and structure of the language and regards the listening process as a passive and static way. The listening teaching only stays at sentence level. As a result, they ignore the meaning of language as a thought form, away of communication. The students' listening comprehension capability is greatly impeded.Since the 1970s, with the development of functional linguistics and cognitive psychology, more and more attention is paid to the communicative function of language and it is realized that a lot of factors are involved in listening comprehension. The understanding of a single sentence doesn' t necessarily mean the understanding of the whole discourse. A new listening approach is recommended, that is, discourse-oriented approach in the listening comprehension.Although discourse analysis is a comparatively new field and there are still considerable gaps in our knowledge about it, discourse analysis has in effect provided new insights into language teaching involving listening. Some theories in discourse analysis such as cohesion, coherence, schema, relevance, etc. are critically important in enhancing the students' listening comprehension ability and improving their communicative competence.Cohesion and coherence are the two kernels of importance in discourse analysis. Both of them serve either as ways of thinking or as adequate approaches to textual composition. They are the ultimate goal of discourse interpretation. The listeners often have to rely on a process of inference to arrive at an ideal interpretation based on the activation of background knowledge and the seeking of relevant information as well as the setting up of cohesion and coherence.Schema theory and relevance theory are mutually dependent and mutually supportive. Schematic listening comprehension pattern emphasizes that the listeners rely more heavily on top-down process which involves activation of schematic knowledge and contextual knowledge.Relevant theory aims at explaining discourse relevance from the perspective of cognitive science, and hence disclosing psychological devices of discourse interpretation. These two theories lay important theoretical foundations of coherence interpretation.After examining the above-mentioned important theories, the author puts forward some corresponding ways and strategies in order to facilitate listening comprehension. For example, to link background knowledge and a discourse by using schematic knowledge, to interpret discourse connectives, world knowledge and context in a discourse by using coherence knowledge and relevance knowledge and so on. By doing some experiments, the author concludes that discourse-oriented approach is more effective than sentence-oriented approach in improving the students' listening comprehension ability and their communicative competence.At the end of this dissertation, some specific suggestions are given on teaching of listening comprehension activities. They are mainly note-taking, prediction-making, schema-broadening and authenticity.In brief, this dissertation intends to use the concept of discourse analysis coupled with listening theories, views to reveal the nature and the process of listening comprehension. It' s proved that discourse-oriented approach can complement the traditional one and is effective to improve the listening comprehension of English learners.