An Empirical Study On Presupposition Based On Mutual Information In College English Listening Teaching

Language learning is composed of a great deal of information input and output,and listening is an important source of information input.Presupposition can help students guess the meaning of the utterance,the background of the utterance,and judge the speaker's intention in listening,so as to help students find answers.Therefore,how to help students develop their pragmatic reasoning ability and improve their listening comprehension level has obviously become an important topic in college English listening teaching.Under this background,the study is based on presupposition theory,exploring the influence of presupposition based on mutual information on college students' listening ability,and further proves that the teaching method of using mutual information to guide college English listening can effectively improve college students' English listening ability.This study aims to solve three problems:(1)What are the confusions of college students in English listening study and what are the problems in listening comprehension?(2)Is there any correlation between the improvement of listening performance and presupposition teaching methods based on mutual information?(3)In listening teaching,what are the possible ways to use presupposition theory based on mutual information to improve students' listening comprehension more effectively?In this study,74 students from two classes of Shenyang Normal University in Grade 2017 have been selected as subjects.The students are classified according to their entrance grades,and their English language proficiency is comparatively consistent,which is also confirmed by the analysis of pre-test data.One of the two classes is randomly selected as the experimental class(38 students)and the other as the control class(36 students).The experiment lasts a semester for 15 weeks.The experimental process includes questionnaire survey,pre-test and post-test experiments and classroom teaching.The experimental class is guided by the listening teaching method of presupposition based on mutual information,while the control class is guided by traditional listening teaching method.The two classes use the same textbook and are taught by the same teacher.At the end of the experiment,SPSS 19.0 software is used to make a comprehensive comparative analysis of the questionnaire and test data of the experimental class and the control class.Based on the comparative analysis of the collected questionnaires and the experimental data,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)Most students neglect the role of pragmatic inference in the process of English listening learning,which makes it difficult to accurately understand the implications of listening materials.(2)There is a positive correlation between listening performance and presupposition teaching method based on mutual information,which can effectively improve students' listening performance.(3)In the content of listening teaching,students' learning of cultural background knowledge and the cultivation of pragmatic reasoning thinking should be strengthened,and teachers should make full use of presupposition triggers and cultural presupposition to improve students' listening comprehension.Therefore,in further college English listening teaching,attention should be paid to the presupposition teaching of listening teaching.In addition,teachers should expand students' common background knowledge with native speakers,help students acquire more cultural presuppositions,find presupposition triggers in listening materials,presuppose different types of listening materials,also exercise students' sensitivity to presupposition and enhance their own language sensitivity,so as to improve their listening comprehension.