On the English Teaching of Listening and Speaking in Middle School in China

浅谈中学英语听说教学On the English Teaching of Listening and Speaking in Middle School in ChinaAbstractIn middle school, most students feel that it is very difficult for them to listen to English and speak English. As we know, the teachers always spend a lot of time in practicing written English, such as the words, grammar, and so on, which leads to a serious problem for the students future study. The aim of learning English is to communicate with others, and oral English is becoming more and more important, so at the beginning stage, the teachers should pay more attention to listening and speaking. As long as the students have a good base in middle schools, they will save a lot of time and be more interested in learning English. This paper first introduces the problems in listening and speaking teaching in middle school, and then gives some suggestion about the solutions, such as group-work method and two-way communication. Both of them are very beneficial for the students.Key wordsEnglish teaching in middle school; listening; speaking摘要在中学，大部分的学生发现英语听说方面非常难。就我们所知，老师们通常花大量的时间在书面英语上，如，单词，语法等等。实际上这种情形将在以后的学习中成为一个比较严重的问题。学英语的目的主要是交流, 而当今口语的重要性显得日益突出，因此，在英语学习的入门阶段，老师应当更加关注学生听说能力的发展。只有在中学阶段打下良好的基础，才能使学生们在日后的学习中节省许多的时间，也将大大提高学习英语的兴趣。这篇文章主要介绍了英语听说教学方面所存在的一些问题及解决这些问题的基本方法。如小组活动教学，功能教学法的应用，它们都是在理论与实践方面被证实是行之有效的，对学生的帮助很大。关键词中学英语教学；听；说IntroductionNowadays, English is becoming more and more important after China entered the WTO, which can encourage us to study English well. To study a foreign language, we should master four abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Generally speaking, communication is the main aim of learning a foreign language, and we know that most students have less difficulty in reading and writing. From this point, we should pay more attention to listening and speaking. In fact, in China, a lot of students spend a great number of time in learning English, but they still feel that they can not understand well what they have heard and can not speak fluently. This is partially because of our examination system, and partially of teaching method. As we know, as long as the students get a high mark and they can enter into a good school. So we just focus on the grammar. In the past several years, the government realized the seriousness of Examination - oriented education and did a lot to change the situation. The teaching outline has been informed. In the text books, there are a lot of activities involving listening and speaking, including pair work and group work. In the examination the part of listening comprehension has been added, and it is more difficult. At home and abroad, there are many experts studying the methods of teaching, and the main method is Functional method, which has been used almost all over the world. Here I would like to introduce some useful methods to help students to improve their listening and speaking and raise their interest. . The Present Situation in English Teaching of Listening and SpeakingA. The Present Situation in English Teaching of ListeningIn middle school, most students have great difficulties in listening because they can not pronounce correctly and have no good methods to practice listening and they lack relevant knowledge about the foreign countries cultures.In fact, listening comprehension is an essential part of communication and basic to second language learning. In any standard foreign language test, listening comprehension usually occupies a considerable proportion. Yet, to the students who learn English in situations where English is not the language of the country and where opportunities for hearing English outside the classroom are few, it is usually extremely difficult for them to comprehend English spoken to them. Many students, usually influenced by some traditional habits, are accustomed to putting what they are hearing into their native language in order to get the original meaning. As a result, when trying to understand one sentence, and then they will miss the next one. So when a conversation or a passage is over, they almost know nothing and are totally at a loss what to do about the exercises they are required to do. In order to develop their listening skills, some teachers just give them plenty of graded practice and hope that they will work out for themselves the most efficient way of coping with it. Unfortunately, it only proves to be a timeconsuming but inefficient way and they can hardly arrive at the most satisfactory solution of their own accord. When they repeatedly meet with setbacks, they come to the conclusion that listening comprehension is only the eagles nest and it is an impassable chasm. Some even lose their confidence. Actually, the improvement of listening comprehension can be gained by good methods.B. The Present Situation in English Teaching of SpeakingFor a long time, students have been used to the English learning situation where teachers explain grammatical structures and the content of texts most of the time while students job is to take notes and respond to. Their role in the class is passive. Although sometimes they have some speaking activities in class, such as doing oral translations, making sentences orally or reading texts aloud, none of these involve genuine communication in which they can express their own opinions, exchange their own ideas or find their own solutions to the problems. As a result, students feel frustrated when they face with genuine English-communication situations. They find it difficult to talk with a real native speaker and to express themselves orally.In view of all the students difficulties in listening and speaking, we, as teachers, will have to try our best to use a more gradual but most efficient approach to the real language and help them in various ways. Something must be done in English classes to give students more chances to practice speaking English and to encourage them to engage in meaningful interactions II. The solutionsA. Ways of Improving ListeningFor some years now, methodologists have recommended small group work (including pair work) in ELT (English Listening Text) classrooms. The pedagogical benefits of group work are summarized as follows: “it increases the quantity of language practice opportunities; it improves the quality of students talk in several ways; it helps individualize instruction; it creates a positive, relaxed phenomenon in the classroom and it increases students motivation.”(Long and Porter, p124) With group work, students can practice language use and cooperative learning in which they can form relationship with others in the group and share their beliefs and perception with others with only minimum amount of direction from teachers. How can we improve the students listening level in a small group? There are seven practical ways.1. To Proceed Step by Step according to the Students Actual StateWe should practice listening step by step and according to the students actual state .During the initial stage of listening, we should spend a lot of time training basic skills. As we know, whatever we do, we should begin with the basis. So is the listening. In junior high school, it is the beginning of learning English. So it is the key period. We can study the native language easily especially the ability of listening because we could listen to a lot of materials since we were born. Gradually we can speak by ourselves naturally. That is to say, learning a language needs a good environment. But we know that most of us can not go abroad and we can just learn English at home and in classroom. Thus we almost have no real situation and should spend a lot of time .This process is long and the work is very difficult. In China we usually use class teaching. When we train the students basic skills, we have the following methods. First we should teach the letters and the phonetic symbols one by one. During this period, we should be very patient. When the students have some wrong pronunciation, we need to teach them the way to correct it. If this process could not be done well, the students will not grasp correct pronunciation and it is very difficult for them to improve listening and speaking. To finish that, we should be qualified. As long as we do this work very well, we will reduce many tasks and save a lot of time. Besides, students are also required to master some basic vocabulary for every-day use. Words are the most basic element. In every lesson, we should teach the new words firstly. Then ask the students to read them to gain good impression. The best way is to ask them to read the text because there is a context, which is easy for them to memorize the words and know some structures .Of course we can use tape- recorder. Let the students listen to the tape and then read after it, which can improve their pronunciation and listening gradually and help them form a good feeling. What I have said is the basic phonetic knowledge and new words. There are many other things; for example, the students should try their best to memorize a lot of relevant knowledge about the habits and cultures of foreign countries. And we can easily know that that this task can not be finished in a short time so we should give some instructions to them. We can tell the students to read some relevant books. After period of such training, we can let them listen to longer sentences and short conversations and some other materials which are the appropriate level of linguistic difficulty as regards syntax and vocabulary. If we can do it in this way, students will not have the feeling that listening comprehension is high up and beyond grasp at the very beginning. A good beginning is half done. Good basic skills will certainly make their future study easier.2. To Provide Interesting MaterialsIn class we should practice listening to some materials away from the usual kind of memorization exercises often used in classrooms and in language labs. The listening practice should be that in which students are to listen with full attention to something that interests and challenges them; they are to get the information or get at the meaning of what they hear and then produce a response to what theyve understood. To do this, we can select materials of appropriate interesting level. We neednt go over all the items in “Listening Practice” one by one without considering whether it is easy or difficult, interesting or boring. As we know, when one is not interested in something, he or she cant do it well anyway, even when forced to. So is the case with listening comprehension. Dull materials can only make students lose interest at all. As it proves, students perform better with materials that they want to listen to because they enjoy them. In order to make the effect of listening comprehension more notable, sometimes we need add something, such as songs, humorous stories, some important news at home or abroad, personal anecdotes, materials containing some puzzles to be solved, etc.3. To Give Some Relevant Instructions before ListeningIf we are going to ask our students to listen to something, we cant just stand or sit there playing the tape-recorder or we cant just explain some words or expressions. We should try to guide our students with our prior knowledge of the material. For instance, we can introduce the topic with short discussion; let them make a guess of what is going to be heard according to the title or give them some hints to help themto understand what they are going to listen to. By doing so, we can arouse their expectations and make them mentally prepare for the listening material. What is more important is to help students to be selective by giving them a purpose for listening. Without a definite purpose, they will be in the dark. When they try to memorize everything, they prove to forget almost everything in the end. So try to give students a few questions before first hearing, or ask them to prepare to pick out 2 or 3 main points, or the main steps in a process. Set tasks which entail concentrating on certain features and throw away irrelevant information. Sometimes if the material is too long, we can split it up into short sections and ask questions appropriate to each short section as we go along. Sometimes if the material is a little difficult, we can introduce it in simple language first. But, remember, dont say too much or just retell the whole material by yourself. Otherwise, students will have no interest to listen to it or they will not listen to it with great care since they think theyve already known a lot about it. We can also help students to develop the ability of taking notes while listening. When we do this, we first give some questions about what the students will listen to. Thus, they will be effective with the aim. In this way, students will not miss the important facts and details. Besides, it is also conductive to the comprehension of a long material.4. To Do Some Dictation ExercisesAnother effective way of improving students listening comprehension which can be used in class is to do some dictation exercises, which is particular to those students who have been introduced to the language only through reading and writing rather than listening, they often have great difficulty in recognizing the spoken forms. Thus, by doing dictation exercises, they can gain a lot. For example, if there are some homonyms, the students should pay more attention to those. They should think those words through the context. During this course, they will form better thought. At the same time, they can strengthen the ability of spelling and writing. Similarly, when the teacher finds it worthy of doing, they will be likely to use this method frequently. Undoubtedly, we can pay more attention to the dictation and regard it as a technique for teaching listening comprehension. If we can do the work frequently, it will be of great help to students. Of course, the material for dictation shouldnt be too long or too difficult, otherwise they will feel that it is really beyond their understanding or interest and will dislike it and even abandon it. So be sure to select the proper material and make sure that the exercise will certainly contribute to the improvement of their listening comprehension.5. To Catch the Main PointsUsually, most students like to understand each word in any passage. In fact, it is impossible for them to listen to different passages at different speed. Generally speaking, the students just know the main idea which can help them to understand what they have just heard. Usually in every passage there are some new words which do not influence their understanding. So they neednt understand each word at any time unless they have not correct pronunciation. So we should help students to overcome this problem and help them know how to catch the main points in listening.6. To Create a Good Language EnvironmentA good environment is very important for learning language. In the class, we should try our best to use simple English to train the students listening. At first, the students usually have some difficulty in listening. To solve this problem, in my opinion, we can first use Chinese and body language to help them. For example, in Grade 1, Junior high school, when we say the phrase” Shut the door” at the first time, the students usually do not understand that, at this time, we can perform it. Then we say it again, they will understand that phrase quickly. Similarly, we can use Chinese. If we usually do this, the students can gradually be accustomed to this environment. But What I want to mention is that we must pronounce correctly and standard. Besides, how much English should we use? We should perform it according to the students actual level. Generally, at the beginning, we can use English and Chinese equally. As time goes, we can gradually reduce using Chinese. After a long time, the students can form a good instinctive feel for the language.7. To Enlarge the Students KnowledgeWithout a certain materials, it is very difficult to improve the listening ability in a shorter period. So when the students face this kind of material which they are not familiar with at all, they usually think it is too difficult. To learn a foreign language, we must pay much attention to the cultures of the foreign countries because a kind of language is just a tool and the most important part is the content of the culture, which includes the history, the festivals, and so on. So when we teach a lesson, if there some parts having linkage with the history, we should introduce them in detail. Besides, there are many other ways for the students to know about the culture. We can ask them to read some simple materials on these topics. Day by day, they will feel that learning English is very interesting. From this point, we should do that well. Up to now, there are seven ways altogether. Each of them is not the best, so we can use them flexibly.B. Ways on Developing SpeakingIt is known to us that listening and speaking are relevant, and they can not be taught separately. Speaking is equal to listening, and it is developed on the basis of listening. So we are easy to know that both of them are connected closely. The skills of speaking generally include these aspects: pronouncing correctly; using suitable stress, strong form, weak form, intonation; using general structures which accord with the habits of native speakers; using brief and reasonable words and expressions to express a complete meaning. Thus it is not easy for one, whose native language is not English to speak well in a short period. It needs the learners to spend a lot of time and use correct ways. In middle school, the students should use what they have learned to say comparatively simple sentences to express something about their everyday life and study. In that way, what kind of way is suitable? Here are three basic ways to solve this problem.1. Two-way CommunicationSpeaking cant be taught separately. It is often connected with listening. So we often speak of listening and speaking. The traditional way of listening and speaking is aural-oral method. Now, the new method of two-way communication is very popular. As you know that any teaching method has its psychological base. The aural-oral method began in the 1940s. It was based on behaviorism. One of its psychological theories is that learning a language is forming a set of new language habitThe usual process is Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement.The aural-oral method is fit for the teaching of beginning stage. It focuses on the practice of oral English drills. But too many drills are being practiced without any context or given conditions. So what is learned is isolated sentences. And it has few communicative functions.The two-way communication makes up for the defect in communicative ability in the traditional teaching. Two-way method means the relationship of the communication between the teacher and the students. This relationship is connected with the communicative activities between two people. This method is different from the traditional aural-oral method. But it also bases on the process of S-R-R. So we call it a new type of aural-oral method because it has some peculiarities: it can create a fresh environment for speaking English; it needs some necessary explanations of Grammar, including some sentence structures; hints are the major way of practice; teachers can control the practice wholly or partly; the practice can also be controlled by students freely. The internal force of study is not due to the interests in phonetic structure, but the content of the material.To make the correct response, the students are asked to pay more attention.Example:Teacher: Ask me what kind of sport I enjoy.Student: What kind of sport do you enjoy?T: Tell me-You enjoy swimming a