1、AbbreviationsEFLLCLCT1LCT2HLLLL2LTMSTMEnglish as Foreign LanguageListening ComprehensionListening Comprehension Test OneListening Comprehension Test TwoHigh-scored LearnerLow-scored LearnerSecond LanguageLong Term MemoryShort Term MemoryviiiList of TablesTable 3-1 Students Self-evaluation of Their E
2、nglish Listening Level.20Table 3-2 Descriptive Statistics of Questionnaire.20Table 3-3 Descriptive Statistics of Questionnaire of HL (total number=9).25Table 3-4 Descriptive Statistics of Questionnaire of LL (total number=7).26Table 3-5 Descriptive Statistics of the Results of Two Listening Comprehe
3、nsion tests.28Table 3-6 Independent T-test of the Result of Two Listening Tests between HL and LL.29ix论文独创性声明本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工作及取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含其他个人或其他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人承担本声明的法律责任。研究生签名： 日期：论文使用授权声明本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定。广西师范大学、中国科学技术信息研究所、清
4、华大学论文合作部，有权保留本人所送交学位论文的复印件和电子文档，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文。本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的内容相一致。除在保密期内的保密论文外，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可以公布（包括刊登）论文的全部或部分内容。论文的公布（包括刊登）授权广西师范大学学位办办理。研究生签名：导 师签名：日期：日期：AcknowledgementsAn enormous debt is owed to my supervisor, Professor Chen Jitang, for his wisdom,enthusiasm, support and encouragement. It
5、 is his profound knowledge and insight, and constantstrictness and kind understanding that help me succeed in mastering the important linguistictheories, ranging from the history of English language teaching to the modern language teachingprinciples, which consequently assists me to finish this thes
6、is as I have planned.My sincere thanks are also due to Professor Wei Han, Professor Tang Gaoyuan, Professor LiXiao, Associate Professor Zhou Xiaoling, Associate Professor Lu Qiaoling, and AssociateProfessor Shen Bin for their sincere and painstaking efforts in enriching my knowledge in thelinguistic
7、 and pedagogical field. Im eager to take this opportunity to thank Professor LiuShaozhong and Associate Professor Guan Yongping, Professor Qin Xiugui for without attendingtheir lectures I would have never been in a position to go through my postgraduate program.Also I would like to express my thanks
8、 to the 35 English majors in the college of foreignstudies of Guangxi Normal University and Mr. Ye and other teachers, who sacrificed theirprecious time to participate in my research.And finally, I would like to thank my dear husband Zhou Zhi for his encouragement andpatient care for the family chor
9、es which paved the way for my concentration on my study andthis thesis. I can not forget my dear daughter for her perfect performance both in home andkindergarten which made me proud and happy and never distracted my attention from the study.Without that it would be out of the question for me to com
10、plete this thesis during the expectedperiod.iiiChapter 1 Introduction1.1 Background and Origin of the ResearchThe status of listening in language programs has undergone substantial change in recentyears. From being a neglected skill relegated to passing treatment as a minor strand within aspeaking c
11、ourse, it now appears as a core course in many language programs. At the same time,the status of listening within language learning theory has also been strengthened and a body ofresearch now exists which provides a deeper understanding of the processes involved inunderstanding communication in a se
12、cond language. Some SLA theorists (e.g. Krashen 1988)have also stressed the role of listening in facilitating second language acquisition. Listening isan important skill “Listening comprehension can enhance the process of language learningacquisition” (Vandergrift, 1999: 168). The development of goo
13、d listening skills is seen not onlyas something valuable for its own sake but as something that supports the growth of otheraspects of language use, such as speaking and reading. Listening quite possibly is the mostimportant of language skills. Experts estimate that half of peoples communication tim
14、e is spentin listening. It is also the medium through which much significant foreign cultural informationis conveyed. Listening will also give an opportunity to get a “feel” for the language and willhelp students to improve their overall ability in it, for “listening comprehension is a highlyintegra
15、tive skill”, and “it plays an important role in the process of language learning/acquisition,facilitating the emergence of other language skills” (Vandergrift 1999:170). In a sense then theteaching of listening has never been in a better state, with few questioning its usefulness andwith a wide vari
16、ety of interesting course materials on the market for teachers to choose from.Listening is a process involving a continuum of active processes, which are under thecontrol of the listener. Listening means “constructing and representing meaning” (Michael Rost,2005:2). It suggests that listening is mor
17、e than just perception of sound; it also requirescomprehension of meaning in that message. The durability of a memory trace is essentiallydetermined by the “depth“ to which it is processed. Accordingly, attending to the “physical“properties of an item (what it looks like) leads to shallow form of pr
18、ocessing, attending to the“acoustic“ properties of an item (what it sounds like) will lead to relatively deeper form ofprocessing, while attending to the meaning of an item will lead to the deepest and the mostdurable form of processing: the “semantic level of processing“.In our country, students ar
19、e required to learn English even in some primary schools. Yet,some students still find many difficulties in the process of listening to English. They often tendto panic when they hear native speakers in conversations, radio broadcasts, films, or othernatural context. Even Chinese university English
20、majors often find themselves in embarrassing1situations when they are required to speak in English or listen to native speakers, often theycould not manage one fluent sentence or understand what is being said. In the process oflanguage learning, the difficulties of listening are highlighted in stude
21、nts. Teachers and studentshave now spent more time and energies in improving the listening ability and skills. Even withmuch practice, college students often find that they are good at doing listening tests, but unableto understand what is spoken in the tape as a whole. Who should take the blame?In
22、classroom materials a variety of strategies and techniques are used to practice listeningas comprehension. These include: predicting the meaning of messages, identifying key wordsand ignoring others while listening, using background knowledge to facilitate selective listening,keeping the broad meani
23、ng of a text in mind while listening. Tasks employed in classroommaterials seek to enable listeners to recognize and act on the general, specific or impliedmeaning of utterances, and these include sequencing tasks, true-false comprehension tasks,picture identification tasks, summary tasks, multiple
24、choices as well as to develop effectivelistening strategies (Mendelsohn ,1994).Identifying key words, as an effective listening strategy, has gained increasing attention.Usually, the words which appear most frequently in the exercise items would become keywords in both of teachers and learners eyes.
25、 As a result, learners would always devote theirmemory to the so-called key words. Identifying and remembering key words become theemphases and difficulty of English listening teaching and learning. Consequently, listeningcomprehension classes would follow a relatively consistent format: learning ne
26、w words -playing the tape and to which students listen - doing the related exercises - checking theanswers, which is called “listening quartet”. It is not uncommon to find a listening class or alanguage-lab where, for example: the students are busy taking notes or doing various kinds oflistening exe
27、rcises such as multiple choice, gap filling, etc. The teacher, on the other hand,controls the tape and checks answers afterwards. It seems that the teachers function in teachingis simply playing the tape and checking the answers. The students task in listening class issimply identifying “key words”
28、and passively receiving the information to finish the exercises.This keywords-centered teaching method reflects on that the students understanding oflistening material lies in a very superficial level - just obtaining the answers, which is faraway from global understanding. Influenced by this method
29、, some students even develop animproper habit of listening, that is, once they get the correct answers to listening questions, theywill think that is the end of listening activity and that would be successful listening, thus itseems unnecessary for them to pursue global understanding. So, many stude
30、nts could notrehearse the main idea after listening. Many facts have revealed that most students, in listeningclass, habitually pay their most attention to key words and the sentence related to the exercise2rather than general idea of the listening material. Even the higher-scored students show less
31、interesting in gaining the global understanding while listening. Listening for details involveslistening for specific information, such as key words and numbers. If a listener has to listen formany details, listening can become a very intensive and often tiring activity. As a result,students often f
32、eel that they have made little progress in English listening course though theywork hard. Listening becomes a common complaint for students.In recent years, many researchers have doubted the function of key words during listening.Through the experimental studies, Chen Jitang (2005) has revealed that
33、 only 16% of thestudents are able to pay their attention to the global understanding and rehearse the main idea ofthe listening material they heard. He thinks that this phenomenon is caused perhaps by theimproper choice and use of key words. Fang Zichun (2006) has stated that students excel inusing
34、micro-skills during the process of listening such as selected attention strategy (noticingkey words and details and specific information); they more often adopt bottom- up strategyduring listening. However, they are worse at summarizing, generalizing and rehearsing; theycant make clear the gist of t
35、he listening material even they have practiced many times and havedone well in other exercises. Whats more, they are not good at activating their prior knowledgeand experience to facilitate understanding in the process of listening.For many years, the present author has taught English listening less
36、ons, she has thoroughlyprepared the students to listen for the sole purpose of getting the correct answers to a set ofprescribed questions. She conducted the lesson by thoroughly teaching the students all thepossible unknown words and tried to help them identify key words, checked whether thestudent
37、s understood the listening material and then made sure whether they had predicted thepossible answers to all the questions. The teaching results were generally good, for moststudents could answer the multiple-choice questions well. However, they could tell little whenthey were asked to rehearse what
38、 they heard. Why? Whats wrong? Is key word important inlistening? How to identify key words during listening? Does key word facilitate understanding?Now, lets look at the most common types of listening exercises and activities designed in ourlistening course-book, we can find that multiple choice qu
39、estions, true false statements andopen W/H questions are the “main force”. Objectively speaking, there is nothing wrong fordesigning these listening exercises. However, these types of listening activities to some degreeare not enough to develop our students abilities to understand and process what t
40、hey hear inany meaningful way.1.2 Significance of the ResearchListening occupies an important status in second language learning. The improvement of3listening will exert great effect on second language learning as a whole. However, teachinglistening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any
41、ESL teacher, especially the skill ofobtaining and using the so called “key word”. The current situation of listening comprehensionbenefits students a little, which offers an impetus for the author to conduct this study.During the long time of EFL teaching of listening comprehension, the method that
42、offeringlisteners key words in pre-listening instruction or requiring them to listen for key words duringlistening has been long advocated by many language teachers because it surely helps listeners tochoose the correct answers for the exercises or obtain a better understanding. But what do keywords
43、 mean? Do key words really facilitate listening comprehension? How to use key words?Some people cast doubts on this method. Many teachers and researchers air their differentviews on the functions of key words. As for this “problem”, so far people talk only ingeneralities; they either say “yes” or sa
44、y “no”. No one does a series of study on this field up tonow. However, “key word problem” is really an important topic which is worth discussing. Thereasons are as follows: Firstly, though some researchers put forward the importance of catchingkey words while listening, they failed to clearly point
45、out the definition of key words and howto use key words to facilitate listening comprehension; they failed to provide strong theoreticalexplanations for them. Secondly, few scientific experiments have been conducted to test theeffectiveness of pr-listening instructions of key word in listening teach
46、ing to EFL students, andthirdly, few researchers investigated the effect of key words on deep global understanding inEFL listening comprehension. Fourthly, theoretically speaking, key words can play animportant role in listening, and many facts have proved that key words can help some listenersunder
47、stand well. Thats to say, there is a wide space for the study of key words in listeningcourse nowadays.The present study makes a tentative attempt to investigate the effect of key words on EFLlistening comprehension of English majors, and to test how students identify key words and usethem effective
48、ly in the process of listening comprehension. To be more specific, the presentstudy aims to provide answers to the following questions:1) If provided listeners with written material such as exercise items, how do they identifykey words? If without written material, how do they identify key words the
49、n? What is thedifference?2) Is there any difference in the ways of identifying key words between the high -scoredlearners and the low-scored learners? If there is, what is it?3) Does the method of identifying key words take a significant effect on EFL listeningcomprehension? Or does it only help listeners do listening exercises?4) How do those high-scored listeners use key words to facilitate listening understanding?4This study tries to provide some useful information of dealing with key words in teachinglistening compreh
