The Research Of The Effects Of Topic Familiarity And Text Difficulty In EFL Students' Listening Comprehension Process

High school English teaching in China focused on enhancing students'reading skill,and grammar knowledge in the past. On the other hand, listening and speaking skills were not probably tested because they were considered less important and testing them involved some technical problems, such as having enough tape-recorders to measure listening comprehension. This led to peculiar English teaching in high school. High school English teachers made efforts to improve their students'reading and writing skills, but lost sight of the development of their listening and speaking skill.The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of topic familiarity and the effects of text difficulty on topic familiarity in EFL students' listening comprehension process. Following are specific purposes:1. explore the effects of topic familiarity on the listening comprehension of EFL students at different levels;2. explore the effects of text difficulty on the listening comprehension of EFL students at different levels;3. explore how EFL students construct their models of the listening text. It is hoped that this study may help researchers and language teachers understand the effects of topic familiarity and text difficulty in EFL students'listening comprehension process; and how EFL listeners construct their models of the listening text. It is also hoped that the results can help language teachers to improve their EFL listening instruction.