怎样教英语听力

After having Miss Chen‟s classes, I have a deeper understanding about teaching listening. The sentence Miss Chen cited from Nunan‟s work really impressed me--- “Listening is the „Cinderella Skill‟ compared with the elder sisters, speaking, reading and writing”. Listening, as one of the four basic English skills, is often considered to be not so important as others. However, we cannot deny that learners who pay more attention to listening can go further than those who don‟t.

In exam-oriented English teaching, events like reading the text, learning language points and commenting on test papers etc. might come first. As the lesson types were very limited, listening class was a stranger to us. Now as a student teacher, I learn that listening class, as well as others, should be interesting and challenging for students. Well-planned listening class should enable students to improve their listening skills and learning strategies. Listening is an “active, purposeful process of making sense of what we hear”. Students should know what they are listening for and why. Only in this way can they play an active role in the listening process and truly get what they need.

Miss Chen emphasized the variety and authenticity of listening material in her class. Students should listen not only for the language, but also for the content and the significant meaning the text is conveying. Natural environment can help them learn faster. So if the teachers speak standard English in class and encourage students to communicate or make good use of media in English, the students can make progress faster than those who have less passive listening. That is to say, students can absorb language without conscious effort such as cramming and drilling.

Pre-listening preparation is to listening as what warming up is to strenuous exercise. If Ss don‟t make any preparation before listening, they may easily get confused even if the material has no new words for them. A good teacher should be able to judge his Students‟difficulties based on their level before designing the activities. He should be skillful at getting his students engaged with the topic and arousing their interest in the coming listening. They may use pictures, videos,

brainstorming or discussions etc. Also, the cultivating of listening sub-skills and proper listening habits are significant. For instance, students should read the questions beforehand in order to be in a position to predict what is coming.

Another impressive point is that a teacher should exploit listening texts to the full. Listening is not only about finishing the exercise, but also about comprehending. To make good use of the listening material, the teachers should design some further study such as discussion to explore the deeper meaning under the language, or the text type etc. It was a pity that I seldom had this kind of post-listening study in high school. And in microteaching, though we have follow the “3P” teaching model, most of us neglect the exploitation of the text, which deserves our attention.

From Miss Chen‟s class, I learn that listening class is not all about listening to the tape and checking the answer, which is rather common in traditional teaching. Students need the cultivating of listening skills, learning strategies and good habits. And they need to make clear what they should listen for. Besides, I realize the importance of communicative language ability. Listening, as well as the other basic English skills, should aim at improving a learner‟s comprehensive language ability, instead of only for the exams. The reform of college entrance examination in English shows a good trend in education, while posing great challenges to English teachers, especially to the younger generation. As future teachers, we should make efforts to change the old-fashioned teaching style and follow the trend of the times. Henry Adams once said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” We can‟t tell how far our influence will reach, but we should prepare ourselves for the future.