Strategies For English Listening Comprehension In Senior Middle Schools

Listening comprehension plays an important role in our daily life as well as in language learning. Of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in second or foreign language learning, listening has now been considered to be the most important. Krashen once said:"Whether children or adults, in language acquisition, top priority is listening". However, in traditional English listening class, the teachers focus on the results of the listening rather than the process. Though students have invested a lot of time and energies in practicing listening comprehension, their listening proficiency is still unsatisfactory. In this situation, more and more attention is being drawn to researches on ways to improve the efficiency of listening teaching. Implementing listening strategy training in listening teaching is one of the ways, though its effectiveness is still under discussion.Deriving from the study of learning strategies, the study of listening has gained a wide concern. Great achievements have been made in this field since the 1990s.The thesis begins with a general literature review on listening comprehension, its origin, definition of listening strategy and classification of listening strategy training mode.According to the listening situation survey and questionnaires of English listening strategies, the author learns about the difficulties which appear in students'listening and the use of listening strategies. On the basis of the strategy training models proposed by linguistic experts at home and abroad, the author puts forward a fiver-step training model:(1) judge the students'listening skills and strategies needed(2) select the strategies you want to teach, develop proper strategies and training programs(3) implementation of the strategy training(4) assess the effectiveness of strategy training(5) adjust and improve strategies for training and researchWithin the framework of this training model, the author conducted a one-term listening strategy training program with 80 students from two classes of Ruian No.4 High School. For the listening strategy training class, the author uses this five-step strategy training mode to train the listening strategy. For the control of class, the author uses the "traditional" method of listening. In order to understand students'listening comprehension and its difficulties accurately, the author uses English listening comprehension test and listening strategies questionnaires in this study.Studies on statistical data analysis shows that:(1)After the listening strategy training, students can improve their listening comprehension level.(2) Listening strategy training can enhance the awareness of using listening strategies.(3)After the listening strategy training, the students in High School could improve the feeling state of listening.