Developing The Senior Students' English Listening Competence From Contextual Perspective

Context has long been considered a key concept in the field of pragmatics. Context, which refers to language environment, is the basis of language communication. With the development of applied linguistics and functional teaching approach, the linguists have become more and more interested in the practical use of language. No context, no text. Because of its close relationship with language, context has aroused great interest in linguistic circles.B.Malinowski first proposed the concept of "context" in 1923. He argues that utterances and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of words.After Malinowski, many other scholars also probe into this field, such as Hymes, Lyons, Firth and Leech, etc. Although different branches of linguists have studied context for years, many important theoretical and practical problems remain unsolved. On the one hand, there are contending views on the definitions and classification; on the other hand, their focuses are on the non-linguistic context and the relation of language with the situation in which it occurs, with insufficient attention to the linguistic context and its influence on the meaning of language. This thesis concentrates both on the linguistic context and non-linguistic context and holds that they are of equal importance.First, we present a relatively detailed introduction of the studies of context at home and abroad and attempt to provide the definition and classification of context, as well as roles of context from the semantic and pragmatic perspectives. On the basis of a general study of many scholars it attempts to categorize context into linguistic context and non-linguistic context.Linguistic context refers to the co-text; non-linguistic context includes situational context, cultural context and cognitive context. As we know, semantics and pragmatics are two branches of linguistics. Semantics focuses on the lexical meaning of language while pragmatics stresses the practical use of language in particular contexts. Both of them value context, so we may study the functions of context from semantic and pragmatic perspectives respectively.The functions of context in semantic field mainly refer to the roles of the linguisticcontext in influencing and restricting the meaning in respect of semantic co-occurrence and disambiguation. Co-occurrence can produce the correct sentences both grammatically and semantically as well as diagnose the semantic deviance of sentences. Disambiguation refers to the fact that context could provide semantic constraints on the possible choice of the meanings of linguistic units so that ambiguity can be eliminated.The study of functions of context from pragmatic perspective attempts to explore the roles of non-linguistic context in influencing the practical use of language in the particular context. We may use two terms to describe the major roles: selectional restrictions and interpretation. The roles of the context in determining the speaker's language selected as appropriate to the context will be termed as selectional restrictions; the roles of the context in supporting the hearer's inference of what the speaker relays will be termed as interpretation.The meaning of language is influenced and restricted by its context, and the core problem of listening is to understand the meaning of the language, therefore, we can apply context in the teaching of listening. By making use of context, the students could solve their practical problems in listening and improve their listening ability efficiently.Listening competence figures as an essential measure in examining a foreign language learner's overall linguistic sense and communicative competence, and thus, the study of listening teaching receives extensive attention from linguists and foreign language teaching experts. Here we may provide an introductory discussion of traditional listening teaching methods and context and a comparison between traditional listening teaching methods and context as well as schema approach, listening method for listening comprehension so as to work out a complementary strategy for listening teaching.The traditional listening comprehension processes usually consist of what we refer to as the bottom-up and the top-down. The bottom-up or view holds that hearers should strive to remember linguistic elements focusing on linguistic context; the top-down view suggests that hearers exploit both his internal linguistic knowledge (including phonology, vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and even text knowledge of the target language) and non-linguistic knowledge (such as cultural background information and world experience) to interpret the received message emphasizing non-linguistic context. To deepen the discussion, the author has also introduced briefly schema theory to strengthen the cognitive aspect of listening comprehension. The processes and schema theory which areonce used in listening teaching combining context learning may have a great effect on the promoting of students' listening ability.With continuous deepening of the quality-oriented education, our country is carrying out the new reform of English curriculum Standard of Education (Testing Manuscript) and The English Curriculum of Regular Senior Middle Schools (Testing). The New Curriculum makes the Senior English courses full of characters of times, basis and choice. It reflects the ideology of the quality-oriented education in the master object design and stresses the cultivating of the comprehensive language ability.