Research On The Training Of High School Students’ Inference Skills Of English Listening Comprehension Based On Indirect Speech Act Theory

Listening ability is considered the most important one among the four basic skills in English learning. Nowadays listening is paid more attention in high school teaching for the requirements of the standards of English curriculum, but most students’ listening ability is not satisfying. What’s the main reason? Because the higher level of listening ability is demanding that listeners work out the speakers’ real meaning and intention by identifying the literal meaning, nevertheless most students just focus on superficial meaning comprehension but miss the real meaning while listening. Namely, it is correct understanding of the implied meaning of the speakers that is the difficulty that students have. It is also the obstacle which affects students’ listening effect. Besides, by observing 60 English listening tests of college entrance exam, I have found that the inferring questions occupy more than 2/5, which is the most difficult part for students to choose the correct answers and what a pity is that it is this part that has higher scores than other parts. We consider this to be one of the reasons why students can not do well in listening. Another reason is that according to my survey, most teachers merely encourage the students to be conscious of speakers’ indirect expression. What I mentioned above seriously affects students’ listening methods, as well as restricts the improvement of their listening competence.People commonly express themselves indirectly in language communication. Searle, a famous American linguist, defines and explains indirect speech acts, cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another. Based on what indirect speech acts theory explains, the writer longs to improve senior high school students’ inference ability in English listening with the help of the theory. At the very beginning, the writer searched for a great number of relevant document literature, finding out some researches on application of indirect speech act theory in English teaching, including research on application of indirect speech act theory in college students’ listening comprehension, the phenomenon of indirect speech act in film dialogues and the guidance of EFL based on indirect speech act theory etc. As for the researches mentioned, almost all of which introduce what indirect speech act theory is and the phenomenon of indirect speech act in English teaching, but not explain how to put the theory into teaching practice. In this thesis, the writer analyzed the relationship between indirect speech act theory and high school students’ listening comprehension, and did an experiment where indirect speech act theory was applied to listening teaching for improving students’ inference ability. In details, the writer guided the students to have the consciousness of identifying indirect speech act phenomenon, as well as collect as much as knowledge of indirect speech act. Then typical listening practices were selected to train students’ inference skills. Additionally, the writer concludes some methods and advice on teaching high school students listening comprehension efficiently, including teaching learners to master correct English pronunciation and tones encouraging students’ inference consciousness; enriching the students’ background knowledge of western culture; designing a variety of listening tasks according to different stages; designing practical listening activities; and making good use of listening equipment etc.At last, based on relevant survey and statistics, it was demonstrated that it is effective to apply indirect speech act theory in training the students’ inference ability in listening comprehension.