A Study Of Negative Inlfuence Factors Confining English Listening Learning

In the course of learning English as a foreign language, development of listening as aninput skill lays a foundation for other basic skills of English, and plays an important role inthe learners’ communication in the language they are learning. Owing to various reasons, inEnglish teaching conducted in schools in China, the performance of English listening teaching,on the whole, has much to be desired. On the side of the learners, what are the negativeinfluence factors constraining learning and developing the English listening abilities? Thestudy attempts to research the question through means of questionnaire taking as the objectsof research the2011-year English majors doing the3+2program offered by the school ofeducation, Lu dong University, who specialized in English teaching for primary students. Onthe basis of the analysis of the research data, and incorporating the characteristics of theobjects of research and relevant achievements into listening research, some suggestions aremade for improving the performance of teaching English listening to3+2program Englishmajors.The main findings of the study are: Lack in vocabulary is the weakest point of juniorcollege students’ listening learning, while they consider vocabulary as the priority in listeninglearning and believe that their most urgent task at present is to memorize words as many aspossible; Generally speaking, students’ approval rating of their listening teachers’performance is relatively high, much higher than we usually expect; The type of listeningmaterials which arouse students’ interest is quite different from the types of listening materialsin textbooks: Most students (among whom girls account for the most majority) showenormous interest in entertainment news, while the overwhelming majority of listeningmaterials in textbooks are political and social news; Students are not familiar with listeningstrategies, not to mention using them skillfully in listening learning; Wholly speaking, juniorcollege students rarely communicate with their fellow students over learning experience orlistening skills.The suggestions made for improving the performance of teaching English listening to3+2program English majors include: Firstly, the teachers should make more efforts to learnrelevant theories on listening and its teaching, to comprehend correctly the essential features of the listening process and its nature; They should investigate the students for knowledge ofthe negative influence factors against their listening learning result, for example thoseproblems they meet in phonetics, listening skills and strategies, their learning psychology,their background knowledge of the English culture, etc. and consequently form solvingmeasures; They should also strive to find more effective and diversified teaching models andmethods so as to diminish the negative influence of those factors. When it comes to classroomteaching, the teachers should encourage students to face the challenges they meet in theirlearning English listening, hunt down appropriate materials for their training, assign themmoderate tasks which fall within reach of their English proficiency and can be accomplishedwith some efforts, which will add to their self-confidence in learning. And the teachers shouldalso pay attention to strengthening English phonetics teaching and help students develop andapply listening skills and strategies, for example, guessing, inferring, and predicting thepossible meaning of new words in their contexts, searching for the main idea of the text theyare listening, taking notes, and resorting to background knowledge relevant to the theme ofwhat they are listening.