Discourse Analysis And Listening Comprehension Teaching

Discourse analysis is a rapidly expanding field, providing insight into the problems and processes of language use and language learning and is therefore of great significance of language teachers and learners.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 overcome these problems is a subject that always confronts language teachers.This thesis attempts to apply discourse analysis theories to the teaching to listening comprehension in the hope of improving the teaching method and students'listening ability in an effective way. It is organized as follows:Chapter one gives a brief introduction to the thesis. The significance of listening comprehension, problems existing in current listening comprehension teaching and some applicable approaches are discussed in this chapter. Chapter Two reviews literature of listening comprehension in four areas: 1. the nature of listening comprehension. 2. the process of listening comprehension. 3. the models of listening comprehension, including bottom-up, top-down and interactive models. 4. factors influencing listening comprehension. Chapter Three is the core of our thesis. It is about the main theories in discourse analysis, particularly schema theory, speech act theory, cohesion and coherence, relevance theory. Chapter Four highlights the application of discourse analysis theories to listening comprehension. It is feasible to apply discourse analysis theories to teaching listening comprehension. We classify the process of listening into three stages, namely pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening stages. In Chapter Five, it discusses the implications and suggestions about aural teaching: 1. Accumulation of schema is a prerequisite for any language learners. 2. Application of discourse analysis theories can deepen the listeners'understanding of the literal language and transfer the listeners'emphasis on words and sentences of an utterance. 3. Input of cross-cultural communication knowledge can also move away the listeners'non-linguistic barriers and in turn will guide the listeners to have a successful communication with native speakers. 4. Some suggestions on teaching listening comprehension: expose students to different listening tasks; note-taking; prediction; inference; authenticity. Chapter Six is a conclusion. It sums up the above discussion and stresses the guiding meaning to teaching practice.This thesis has explored deeply the topic on how to apply discourse analysis theories to listening comprehension teaching. It will have a positive effect on teaching.