Contrastive Analysis Of Grammatical Features Between CET-4Listening Comprehension Materials And English Songs

In our daily communication,"listening" plays an important role. Based on the thelinguistic factors influencing listening comprehension and the more and more important ofgrammars to the listening according to the existed studies, it is necessary to analyze thegrammatical features of listening materials. In addition, English songs have been increasinglybecoming the choice of English lovers and many English learners expecting to improve theirlistening. In that case, the analysis of the grammatical features of English songs also entails.What are the grammatical features of English songs? What are the differences of grammaticalfeatures between listening comprehension and English songs? Because of the importance anduniversity of CET-4and CET-6for most college students, this paper attempts to makecontrastive analyses on the grammatical features between CET-4listening comprehension andEnglish songs, expecting to shed lights on teachers and students using English songs toimprove their listening.The study firstly has a brief review of the literature referring to information processingprocesses of listening comprehension and of factors influencing listening comprehension,especially the importance of grammars to the listening, summarizes the utilization of Englishsongs in language teaching, especially in listening teachinng, and sets forth the concepts andtheories of grammar and introduces the grammatical theoretical basis, marshaling a completegrammatical framework which includes133mophological features and43syntactical features.Next, the study collects11sets of CET-4listening comprehension and81English songswhich are approximate in the number of words. Finally, with the aid of UCREL CLAWS7,Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel and SPSS17.0, the study tags, parses, retrievesand analyzes the collected materials. Through a systematic study, the conclusions are drawn.In terms of grammatical features:(1) The proportions of articles, conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, adjectives, numerals and nouns in CET-4listening comprehensionare higher than those in English songs, while the situation of pronouns, adverbs, verbs andspecial word classes is the opposite.(2) The difference in nouns is big. The difference insingular and plural forms, proper nouns, locative nouns, temporal nouns, nouns of title andunits of measurement is big, while those in cases of nouns is very small.(3) Comparison ofadjectives and adverbs almost has no difference, while that of degree adverbs is of difference.(4) The difference in pronouns is big. The1st and2nd person personal pronouns in CET-4listening comprehension are more than those in English songs but the situation of the3rdperson personal pronouns is the opposite. The genitive pronouns have no big difference.(5)The difference in numerals is obvious, especially in cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers.Fractions are of little difference.(6) The difference in verbs is small. Modal auxiliaries inCET-4listening comprehension are more than those in English songs. Base forms,-ingparticiples, past participles and infinitive verbs are of little difference.(7) The negative word"not" are almost the same but the unclassified words, foreign words and interjections are ofgreat difference.(8) There are more word classes in CET-4listening comprehension.In terms of syntactical features, the distribution of syntax is analyzed from fourperspectives.(1) The complexity of sentences: In both, simple sentences are predominant.Compound sentences and complex sentences have no big differences. Minor sentences havesignificant difference.(2) Phatic functions: In both, declarative sentences are of absoluteadvantage, comparing with exclamatory sentences that have the smallest number. Imperativesentences are very different, opposite to the situation of interrogative sentences.(3) Sentencestructure: Noun clauses, attributive clauses, subjunctive mood, existential sentences,comparative constructions,"IT" construction and the direct speech are of no big difference,while the situation of adverbial clauses, passive voices and inversion is opposite.(4) Tenseand aspect: In both, among the16tenses and aspects, the simple present tense is maximum.Simple progressive tense, present perfect progressive tense, past perfect tense, simple futuretense and past perfect tense have great difference while others have not.In terms of statistical significance: There is no significant difference in bothmorphorlogy and syntax between CET-4listening comprehension and English songs.Accorging to the conclusions above, English songs,the lively and authentic listeningmaterials, should be fully used in our Ennglish listening teaching rather than just to dodictation or only as the method of relaxing.