A Study On CET-4Listening Comprehension Teaching Based On Cohesion And Coherence Theory

Listening comprehension is not only an important proficiency in daily life, but also one of the teaching contents in current National College English Syllabus. In recent years, the priority is at the core of speaking and listening in Second Language Acquisition Therefore, listening must consider more. In the current college English teaching, especially teaching in dependent colleges like Xinhua College of Ningxia University, listening has been a weak point comparatively. Traditional teaching of listening only remains on the sentence level. It considers language forms and omits the meaning of whole text. As a result, in order to compensate for the inadequate aspects, a new teaching approach cohesion and coherence theory will be brought into the English listening teaching.Cohesion and coherence theory has been applied to language teaching items such as reading, writing, translation, speaking, listening and cloze, which makes great contribution to EFL teaching. There are a few empirical studies that is conducted with this theory in teaching listening comprehension in CET-4, especially in that of dependent colleges like Xinhua College of Ningxia University. Therefore, it brings a new perspective into the listening teaching research there. Cohesion and coherence are essential concept in text analysis. Their function is a means of thinking to textual organization. The ultimate purpose is text interpretation. If text analysis knowledge is applied to teaching of listening comprehension of CET-4in dependent colleges like Xinhua College of Ningxia University, it may inspire the learns’activeness and increase teaching and leaning quality. At the same time, it compensate for the shortage of traditional teaching method. Therefore, the author chooses the participants of the teaching experiment from Xinhua College of Ningxia University in order to have a certification.The originalities of this thesis try to study the effectiveness of cohesion and coherence theory in teaching listening comprehension of CET-4in dependent college, compared with the traditional teaching approach. Which listening skills will be enhanced by applying the cohesion and coherence theory? What implications can be drawn from the research? Based on a thorough investigation of the application of cohesion and coherence theory to English teaching, the author conducted this three-month experiment. The64subjects were non-English majors students from two advanced English classes in Xinhua College of Ningxia University. One class (N=32) was randomly assigned to be the control class (CC) and the other one (N=32) was the experimental class (EC). EC and CC were at the same level of English proficiency. EC was instructed with the emphasis on cohesion and coherence in the listening comprehension materials, while CC was instructed with the traditional approach.Through data analyses, the following findings are obtained. The analyses of the questionnaire reveal that most of the participants in EC can analyze listening materials in CET-4in the view of cohesion, while they can not do in the perspective of coherence. The statistical analysis of the pre-test and post-test through SPSS12.0shows that scores of dialogues and compound dictations in EC are higher than that in CC. Most of participants in EC apply cohesive ties not only to analyzing listening materials, but also to enhancing their micro-linguistic and direct meaning comprehension in listening skills. However, participants’ inexperience in coherence using is observed to impede, to some extent, the understanding of indirect meaning comprehension in listening skills. The total scores of EC are higher than that of CC. The results of the study show that compared with traditional teaching approach, cohesion and coherence theory is more effective. At the same time, this theory can enhance micro-linguistic and direct meaning comprehension in listening skills. Moreover, it is suggested that the combination of cohesive ties with listening skills can enhance participants’listening comprehension proficiency during teaching listening comprehension in CET-4. Given participants’ inexperience in coherence, the recommendations for teaching are that teachers should consolidate coherence training in order for the students to master indirect meaning comprehension listening skills, and achieving a better effect of listening comprehension learning. Therefore, the research proves that in teaching listening comprehension to participants preparing for the CET-4in Xinhua College in Ningxia University, cohesion and coherence theory is an effective way to increase their textual comprehension.