A Tentative View On Teaching Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension teaching, one of the four fundamental skills of language teaching, long has been thought as the most difficult part and easily neglected one. Since the 1970s, viewpoints about the nature of listening process and strategies were expressed by scholars abroad, meanwhile, in China, since the launch of Syllabus of Basic English Teaching, especially in 1984, for the first time, listening comprehension was included in national College English Test Band-four examination, great importance has been attached to listening.It is noteworthy that the listening comprehension teaching, for quite a period of time, has been conducted in a sole teaching mode: explaining new words, listening to the tape, doing the exercises and checking the answers. This teaching approach hasn't lead to desirable results,it does influence the improvement of learners'listening levels directly.The author of this article, during her listening teaching practice, gradually found out students have got certain kinds of difficulties which hinder their listening competence to some extent, such as lacking the initiative in class activities, no definite listening purposes and so on. In an attempt to seek potential reasons, based on real teaching practice and deliberate thinking and analysis, the author focuses on three reasons which lie in teaching methodology, teaching materials and learners'strategies. In order to prove this, the author adopts the means of conducting detailed questionnaires and relevant interviews and the results verify these presumptions. Enlightened by constructivism, the author pinpoints new renovation and redesign of class activities pertaining to these three aspects, a new means of teaching listening through video, together with network-supported teaching, is proposed.