Activation Of Students' English Listening Interest

Listening is one of the means by which people communicate with each other. Listening is the most important in communication; Listening is aiso important in language learning. Among the four language skills, listening is main way to get language information and language perception. Learners can get large quantities of language input by listening. Both new English syllabus and the Criteria of New English Course have set specific listening goals. Whats more., listening test is added to NMET. From the angle of society, English is more and more widely used in the world. English is becoming international language. Therefore. English listening is more and more important, which both teachers and students are beginning to realize.However, most students, esp. in ordinary Senior School have no interest in listening both in the classroom and outside the classroom. The reason for this is that students' English base is not good. They are not able to understand what they hear in the listening class and unable to complete listening exercises. Besides, they can not get a .good mark in listening test. So students would not like to waste much time in practicing listening. Instead, they prefer to spend much more time practicing other language skills to make up for the lost marks for poor listening. Students in my school not only have poor English base but also their qualities are not good because the students who are refused by other schools which are ordinary schools as well as key schools are admitted to my school every year: Another reason why students have no interest in listening is that our teachers don't pay great attention to train students' listening skill and that our teachers spend little time studying proper methods of practicing listening. Teachers in many schook just regard listening class as listening tests instead of thinking about arousing students1 listening interest and train students' listening skills, which is the road leading to success.This thesis will state the necessity and importance of interest in learning by using cognitive psychology, social constructivism and social interactionism. Then the thesis will explore how to arouse students' interest in listening according to the nature of listening and show the result whether students begin to take interest in listening by observing, interviewing and questionnaire. Therefore the conclusion can be made that arousing students' interest is crucial to improve students' competence of listening comprehension.