任务型教学法在英语听力教学中的应用(英文)

Abstract: Listening is a vital skill of human communication and is also one of the four basic skills of language learning. However, it’s still a common phenomenon that listening teaching is conducted in a fixed mode: explanation of new words, listening and doing exercises and then checking of answers. Task-Based language teaching has been developing since 1980s. It emphasizes both language form and language meaning, and it targets language learning within communicative activities so as to promote second language learning. And many researches and experiments proved that it really helped a lot improving students’ second language learning. This thesis aims to have a close look at the problems confronted by teachers in the traditional listening classroom and is intended to apply Task-Based approach to listening comprehension teaching. The author puts forward a tentative model of listening class based on Jane Willis’s framework. The research is of great significance to call special attention to listening comprehension and propose a theoretically viable method.

Key words: Task-Based approach; Listening comprehension; Interaction

摘  要：听力不仅是人类沟通的一项重要技能，也是语言学习中的四项基本技能之一。然而，教学中固定、死板的模式仍是普遍现象：解释新单词，听、做练习，然后对答案。任务型语言教学法是自二十世纪八十年代发展起来的一种教学方法。它同时强调语言形式和语言意义，旨在通过交际活动提高第二语言学习，并且许多研究和试验也证实了它确实提高了学生的第二语言的学习。本文仔细研究传统听力课堂里教师面临的问题，本着将任务型教学法应用于听力教学的初衷，根据Jane Willis的理论框架设计一个听力教学的模式。它在提高人们对听力理解教学的关注和探索并提出理论上可行方案方面有很大的意义。

关键词：任务型教学法；听力理解；互动

Introduction
With the economic globalization and rapid development of science and technology, especially after China’s further opening up to the outer world, English language teaching and learning has accordingly witnessed a fast development in recent years. What’s more, both teachers and learners have become aware of how essential listening as a language skill is for communication. However, affected by the test-orientated education, the main current problem on English teaching in China is that most teachers have laid much more emphasis on the teaching of knowledge about language than the training of students’ comprehensive abilities of using a foreign language. Students busily memorize new vocabulary and grammar in and out of class rather than have opportunities to use what they have learnt to speak the target language in real life or to native speakers. Consequently, many learners have associated listening courses with pain and boredom and often complain that they benefit little from listening classes. That explains why many students’ listening ability stagnates and remains at elementary level although their other skills like reading, writing even speaking are advancing steadily. Fortunately, Task-Based language teaching based on communicative principle is gradually gaining ground in China. It’s a newly developed teaching approach from the 1980s which emphasizes “learning through doing” and leaves learners to experience the target language and construct the language system by themselves. What’s more, the demands for the tasks to be similar to those in daily life ensure that tasks possess the features of real communication. All this is supposed to be helpful in training learners’ communicative competence. For some considerable time the value of Task-Based language teaching has been acknowledged by teachers and students. This article aims to have a close look at the problems confronted by teachers in the traditional listening classroom. In the meanwhile, it tries to put Task-Based listening approach in practice of English listening comprehension teaching and proposes a tentative model of listening class based on Jane Willis’s framework.

1 Current situation of listening teaching in China and necessity of the research
With rapid developments in different fields in China, English language teaching and learning has gained a fast development as well. Owing to the constantly growing demands on the job applicants’ real language communicative competence, more and more teachers and scholars have laid their research emphasis on the teaching of listening.
1. 1 Notions of listening and listening comprehension
Among the four skills of a language, listening is usually regarded as the most important one and plays a very essential role in communication. Listening is not a passive activity. It’s a complex, active process in which the listener is supposed to discriminate between sounds, understand words and grammatical structures, interpret intonation, retain what is gathered in all of the above, and interpret it according to the larger socio-culture context of the utterance. Listening is not only a skill area in language performance, but also a critical means of acquiring a second language. It’s the primary channel by which the students gain access to the second language and in which they process language in real time-employing pacing, units of encoding and pausing that are unique to spoken language, it therefore serves as the trigger for acquisition. It’s a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education¬¬: their information, ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. The classic study of listening conducted by Rankin suggests that adults spend 42.1% of their communication time listening, in contrast with 39.1% speaking, 15% reading and 11% for writing. And students spend the majority of each school day listening and much of what students know is acquired through listening. In fact over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening. Without understanding input at the right level, learning can not begin [1]. 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net