A Probe into Obstacles and Solution of English Listening Comprehension
 
[Abstract] Listening is one of the essential skills in the learning of English. However, “among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), it is often considered to be the most difficult to acquire.” One major reason for students’ poor listening skill is that listening is often neglected in English teaching, but even it were not neglected, it could not be guaranteed that students would have no problem in listening. The leading obstacles in listening comprehension are involved two aspects: linguistic obstacles and non-linguistic obstacles. Linguistic obstacles include phonetic barrier, vocabulary barrier, grammar barrier and comprehensive understanding barrier, etc. And non-linguistic obstacles mainly consist of psychological barrier and cross-cultural barrier. In order to find out which are the leading listening hindrances of junior school, senior school and college students, a questionnaire is presented in the third chapter. Finally, the author probes corresponding solutions to help the students to eliminate the listening comprehension obstacles respectively from the students’ perspective and the teachers’ perspective.
[Key Words] English listening; obstacles; strategies
 
浅析英语听力理解障碍及其解决对策
 
【摘 要】世界上有超过5000种的语言，其中的三分之二只能用言语表达，没有文字。语言作为人们交流思想和情感的媒介，首先而且一定是以言语的形式出现的，其后为了存储某些重要的话语或是宝贵的生产、生活经验，文字才被人们发明出来。我们每天都在做无忧论文 【http://www.uklunwen.com】大量的听力活动。我们通过听的方式获得的信息，要远比通过读的方式所获得的信息多得多，也方便得多。最近出现的一种名叫“audio books”的新科技，让人们去“听书”而不是“读书”，成为了一种新时尚。可见听力在外语的学习中，地位至关重要。但听力又是在听、说、读、写这四个技能中最难以控制和掌握的一项。影响听力的主要障碍包括语言障碍与非语言障碍。语言障碍又包括语音障碍、词汇障碍、语法障碍和综合理解障碍等等；非语言障碍主要包括心理障碍和跨文化交际障碍。本文就英语学习者在听力过程中出现的障碍进行探讨，通过问卷调查的方式找出初中生、高中生和大学生主要的听力障碍，然后提出针对性的方法与建议。
【关键词】英语听力；障碍；对策
 
1. Introduction
Although not long before the French President Jacques Chirac left EU summit as a fellow Frenchman spoke English, we cannot deny that the “English learning mania” has still spread fast all over the world. This is quite true in open China today. Not only has the trend been due to the acceleration of globalization of the economy and China’s entry of WTO that requires more and more talents who have high proficiency level in English, but also been due to the higher earning and social status that the talents will get. However, it seems that more and more people have studied English as a second language and spent a lot of time as well as money on it, but their effort has not yielded notable results. And when being asked which is the most difficult to acquire among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), they often complain that it is listening.
The importance of listening comprehension is self-evident. According to the survey made by Rivers and Temperly (1978), among the time an individual is engaged in communication, approximately 9% is devoted to writing, 16% to reading, 30% to speaking and 45% to listening [1]. And as