A Study Of First-year English Majors’Listening Comprehension Barriers And Countermeasures

Listening is the first language skill that children acquire, and it is the basis of the other language skills. The ability to speak, to read and to write, to a large degree, depends on one’s ability to listen. With increasing international commercial and political communication and cooperation, communicative competence becomes the ultimate aim of English teaching, and skills of listening and speaking are becoming much more important than ever.At present, many scholars have carried out a lot of studies on listening strategies theoretically, but there are few studies on listening barriers, especially barriers confronted by first-year English majors. In the process of listening teaching, teachers should help the students improve their listening abilities and train them to use listening strategies. It is also important for students to get to know the obstacles they have encountered in their listening comprehension, and learn how to develop their listening ability effectively. Therefore it is necessary to explore various kinds of barriers existing in first-year English majors’ listening practice and present some countermeasures.The present study is a descriptive study of first-year English majors’listening comprehension barriers. It is conducted on the basis of the nature of listening comprehension, two models of listening comprehension processing and studies related to listening barriers and listening strategies. By means of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of questionnaires and interviews on seventy English majors from Shengli College, China Petroleum University, this thesis attempts to answer the following research questions:1) What are the biggest barriers the first-year English majors have encountered in their listening practice?2) What categories of barriers are confronted by the first-year English majors in their listening practice?The thesis presents two main findings. First, based on the analysis of the questionnaires, the top five barriers are found. They are barriers related to vocabulary, phonological knowledge, input retention, processing speed and spoken word recognition. In addition, nine categories of listening comprehension barriers are derived by means of analysis of the questionnaires and interviews. They are language proficiency barriers, material barriers, information processing barriers, psychological barriers, belief barriers, habitudinal barriers, self-management barriers, background knowledge barriers and strategic barriers.After finding the listening barriers, the author provides some helpful countermeasures for the teachers as well as for the students. As far as the students are concerned, they are expected to be active in class and outside class, try to lower anxiety and build up confidence, enhance English proficiency, accumulate background knowledge and raise awareness of using listening strategies. As for the teachers, it is important for them to select suitable listening materials, try to create a relaxing classroom atmosphere, improve freshmen’s pronunciation and develop freshmen’s listening strategies. It is also important for the teachers to cultivate students’awareness of employing listening strategies and introduce some important listening strategies in class, such as guessing the meanings of new words, finding the main idea, taking notes, making inference and making predictions.