| English news listening has always been an important part of the content in teaching the listening course for English majors.The teaching syllabus for the listening comprehension course for English majors of colleges and universities specifies that English majors should be able to understand the main content of VOA and BBC at normal speed at the end of the second academic year.But as English news listening involves every aspect of human life,is informative,and has certain special features in its broadcasting speed,vocabulary,grammar and syntax,it is difficult for most of the students with weak listening comprehension ability to grasp the main idea of the news.Therefore,news listening comprehension has become a weak point in English majors'listening comprehension learning.In practical teaching,it has become a great difficulty for both the students to learn and the teachers to teach.In this paper,the author conducts a questionnaire survey among 361 English-maj or students who are in their second year or third year of college study in two local universities in Fujian Province which will be referred to as College A and College B hereinafter.The survey mainly investigates the English majors' basis of English listening,their learning habits,news listening comprehension barriers and the application of listening strategies.Based on the statistics and analyses of the data obtained in the investigation,the author finds out that the main obstacles that hinder the English majors' news listening comprehension are the students' poor ability in English listening,the fast broadcasting speed,students' lacking in news vocabulary and relevant background knowledge,and their low degree of applying listening strategies.Based on the current situation,the author aims to put forward some effective strategies to improve the quality of teaching English news listening course and to provide solutions for improving the students' English news listening comprehension.For the teachers,they should try to improve students' English proficiency,inspire students' learning motives,present proper listening material to boost students' confidence and try to create a relaxing classroom atmosphere to alleviate students' anxiety for listening.It is also important to raise students'awareness of adopting listening strategies and focus on the instruction of some important listening strategies,such as the strategy of guessing,note-taking,attention focusing and schema constructing. |
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