The Priority Of Listening In Second Language Acquisition

Chinese English learners are always having problems of listening in second language acquisition. They usually emphasize vocabulary and grammar at the beginning and emphasize reading comprehension, writing and oral English later. In the whole process of learning English, only few of them pay attention to listening consciously. Most of them view listening as a passive process and cannot realize its activeness. Linguists have reached some achievements in the study of second language acquisition. However, for the study of listening, they are more concerned about the research of listening process. The author puts forward the hypothesis that listening has its priority in second language acquisition from the perspective of linguistics and listening process combining quantitative and qualitative approaches in hope of attracting English learners'attention on listening to find the way to improve English.By tests and questionnaire, making records of the answers and their feelings about listening, and analyzing the contents of TEM4, the author illustrates listening is very important and difficult to improve combining the theories of second language acquisition and listening process. Then the author analyzes the answers and question types of the tests, and the answers of the questions in questionnaire, the author studies the activeness of listening with support of relevance theory and concludes that listening is both passive and active; inference takes a large proportion in listening comprehension. Listeners need to infer the real intention of the speakers, which makes them encounter obstacles in listening comprehension. Besides inference, there are other factors such as accent, voice, background knowledge, thinking way of first language, affective factors which can affect listening comprehension. Combined with the precedence of listening in first language acquisition, this paper generates that listening is primary and speaking is secondary in second language acquisition by analyzing comprehensible input, comprehension approach and the process of simultaneous interpretation. Listening is a complicated process. Listening and speaking are interwoven and listening can also help improve speaking. As listening and speaking are connected closely, they can complement with each other in learning English.