The Cultivation of Middle School Students' Sub-skills of English Listening

      Ⅰ.Importance of English listening    
      Nowadays, listening is becoming more and more important in English language teaching, since our government's further reform and open door policy and especially, as China's entry into the WTO. Our country needs foreign language students who can not only read well but also communicate successfully with the outside world. the target of English teaching is to cultivate the students' communicating ability. When we communicate with others, we need to listen and speak as well as to read and write. In fact, we cannot develop speaking skills unless we also develop listening skills. It means that listening occupies an important position in language study and communication practice. What's more, the result of English listening has been a certain part of the students' total results in senior and junior middle school. The scores of listening cover from 20% to 25% in junior middle school's examinations. So it is critically important to improve our listening skills.
      Ⅱ.Difficulties in English listening
      But, in reality, we find so many difficulties in English listening.
      On one hand, learning English in non-English speaking surrounding, listening comprehension is always the weakness of Chinese students. They may sometimes find it difficult to understand the listening materials. The root causes of this phenomenon are various according to the students' different levels in mastering the language.For example, they may be poor at distinguishing the pronunciations of some key words in the passage.And their insufficient vocabulary has also placed them into the dilemma which leads to the loss of their confidence in study. Even for some good students, lack of background knowledge is a barrier to their success in listening. In addition to these causes, there are interference of mother language and psychological quality as well.
      On the other hand, it is also the weakest point in English teaching of the basic educational period. Listening, taught by the traditional methods, seems to focus on one sub-skill only which is called listening for details.
      Ⅲ. How to cultivate listening sub-skills
      How can we improve the study efficiency and change the situation of high consumption and inefficiency? Traditionally, we will probably just play the tape, let the students listen and do the exercises, then check the answers while by this means we only have a so-so effect on accuracy. We should let students have a deeper understanding of the material so as to accomplish our aim in listening class which is to develop students' listening ability. To develop students' listening ability, we have to focus on developing listening sub-skills.
      1.Predicting skill
      1)Pre-listening stage
      This stage is for preparation, particularly to mentally prepare the students for what they are going to listen to, so that they can catch the meaning more easily. It is a stage whose aim is to help the students with listening and bring down the difficulties in understanding. In this stage, listeners are required to skim through the questions and the choices of the listening material, and to make a prediction of the topic, the language circumstance, the people in the dialogue, the place of the dialogue that take place, and so on. While listening, it is less likely for students to catch each word, so only if students can catch the main points of the material, will they get to know the idea of the passage. For parts of students, they don't know what key points and factors that they should catch. What may helps them is just this pre-listening stage as it helps to let students get to know what to listen.
      Example
      1. Where is the woman going?
      A. Bridge Street.  B. The cinema. 　C. The station.
      2. Where is the cinema?
      A. On the corner of Bridge Street. B. Next to the station.
C. On Station Street.
      3. Which turning should the woman take on Bridge Street?
      A. The first on the right.  B. The first on the left.　 C. The second on the left.
      From the questions and the choices, we can predict that the material is about asking the way. The sentence patterns, like “Excuse me, how can I get to ...?”, “Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to ...?” are activated. The key words should be places and directions.
      If we mark them down, we can easily get the answers.
      2)While-listening stage
      This stage moves from general to more specific understanding of the text. In this stage, listeners are supposed to predict what will happen next or what the speaker is going to talk about next according to the information that they get beforehand, so to catch the key information that is needed.
      Example:You will hear:
      M: Excuse me, what are the dinning hours?
      We can predict that the dialogue is about the schedule for having meals. We should be mindful of the relevant content especially.
      2.Listening for main ideas or gist
      When we come to the listening exercises, we often meet questions like the following：What are the two speakers talking about？What is the main purpose of the speech？What does the speaker want to tell us？ect.
      These questions deal with the main ideas or gist of the listening material. Students should keep in mind that they ought to consider the material as a whole and get the main ideas or gist, for getting details is also very important for the following sub-skills that are to be discussed.
      3.Listening for details
      To most of the listening materials, exercises for getting details cover a considerable proportion. That means both teachers and students should pay enough attention to this sub-skill. We should be aware that all gist are supported by numerous details. But sometimes we may mix up or miss some key words when the materials are too long. If so, listeners can try to write down the key words like time, dates, ages, prices, distances, places,  and so on. so we can complete the exercises accurately by referring to the notes that we take.
      Example:
      When will the train leave?
      A. 6:20 B. 6:10  C. 6:30  D. 6:40
      We will hear：
      M: Hurry up. It's 6:20 already.
      W: Yes. The train will leave 10 minutes later. We have to run all the way.
      From the content, we can easily get the time 6:20. And from the detail leave 10 minutes later, we can conclude that C, 6:30 is the correct answer.
      4.Inferring the speakers' feelings and opinions
      Sometimes we may come across to some question that deals with the speakers' feelings attitudes and opinions like the following：What does the man mean? How does the woman feel at the beginning of the conversation?
      When communicating with each other, speakers will try to express their feelings or opinions either directly or implicitly. Sometimes this kind of exercise deals with the background knowledge of the English-speaking countries. Students should pay more attention to the knowledge in this aspect consciously and permanently. Only when we know exactly the speaker's feelings and opinions can we master the listening materials exactly .To help students listen and understand feelings and opinions, we teachers should have students note expressions like In my opinion/view……, as far as I am concerned……, etc. It is also important to let students listen carefully and select relevant adjectives, verbs or prepositions and decide whether the statements are positive or negative.
      IV.Conclusion
      All in all, the process of listening is an active process. We teachers should make an effective plan to cultivate the students' sub-skills of listening. An effective plan includes what materials we will have the students listen to and to what extend we decide the students to understand the material. The control of difficulty, the design of the questions as well as the students' level should also be taken into consideration. In the final analysis, practice makes perfect. Students will surely make progress after lots of practice.