the basis of listening comprehension. Generally speaking, students find two types of sentences difficult: sentences with totally different structure from Chinese and lengthy and complex sentences. After listening, the teacher should analyze and explain these two types of sentences in order to help students understand them. Besides, English teachers should require students have systematic understanding of English grammar and master some important grammars, like subjunctive mood, conditional clause, attributive clause, etc. Additionally, the teacher should encourage students to learn some common but typical sentences to help them with listening comprehension. Therefore, students should learn the superficial forms on the basis of understanding and master some frequently used sentences in remembering sentences. With plenty of substitution practice these sentence patterns will be kept fast in memory and can be used as units of language.
4.4 Clarifying the Purpose of Listening
The purpose determines to a large extent what meanings he must listen for and which parts of the spoken text are most important to him. So before listening, the teacher should let students know what questions they need to answer and what they need to master when finishing the listening, should students listening for general ideas or specific details. Those questions in their minds can inspire their desire to listen for the answers. This can also help the students to focus their attention on understanding the general idea of the whole article in the process of listening and develop their ability of abstracting the major information. 4.5 Training Students’ Psychological Qualities
Study of psychology shows that the psychological condition always plays a role in whatever activities or work people may engage in. A good psychological state promotes what we do while a bad one prevents it. In listening activities, good psychological qualities can help students improve their listening ability. In views of the problems of students? psychological qualities, the teacher can create a relaxing environment on class and make the lesson lively so as to relieve the students? tension and fear and guide their attention to the listening activity. To focus one?s attention is a process of psychological adjustment in which thinking must be drawn to one?s
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“focus” or the perception objectives. Only in this way can we guarantee that the brain will have the clearest impression of the input information. Therefore, the English teachers can do the followings:（1）Making the listening class interesting. Teachers should choose some useful and wonderful listening material for students to increase their interest, which can ease students? psychological pressure and make them relaxed. During the break, letting students have the chance to listen to some beautiful English songs and some humorous English stories which can improve student motivation and general morale, and show the language in a new light – not just as a subject of study, but as a source of enjoyment and recreation.（2）Letting students take deep breaths, close their eyes and clam down in listening class so as to reduce their tension and restlessness. Besides, teachers should encourage those students lack of confidence to be confident and brave to overcome difficulties in teaching listening. Praise is necessary for any improvement so teachers should praise or encourage students so as to help them overcome psychological obstacle and making listening something they enjoy instead of something they fear.
4.6 Expanding Cultural Background Knowledge
The importance of cultural background knowledge has been more and more highlighted in English listening comprehension nowadays. In the process of listening, the listener will, argued Brown (Brown, 1990) actively make use of the related background knowledge, scene information (gender, age, viewpoints etc.), information about the topic etc. to help him with his listening comprehension. Yang Rong thought that in listening comprehension listener needs to understand not only the words but also the purpose of these words (Yang Rong, 1994). To learn about the purpose of the speaker, the listener should refer to all his knowledge, language knowledge and knowledge in practical life, The knowledge in practical life refers to all the things in the world that people use language to describe. It includes many aspects of society life, from politics, economy, culture, and customs to science, sports and arts and so on. At this point, to build students? cultural background knowledge means making the students get familiar with the culture contents contained in the listening texts. For example the students should learn to know the way of life in the target country, the
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cultural connotation of words and phrases, the cultural differences, the conventional behavior in common situation (Wu Jingxian, 1997). According to the above analysis, to expand related cultural background knowledge will help students? listening comprehension and is thus necessary. Therefore, students should learn as much as possible about the living habits, mores, thinking ways, behavior codes, social regions, cultural traditions of English – speaking countries. Besides, they can use the following specific methods to enhance their cultural background knowledge:（1）read English articles, newspapers and books about culture or science or sports, etc.（2）watch original English films or TV programs.（3）If possible, make foreign friends and communicate with them as much as possible.
5. Conclusion
Listening is one of the essential parts in the English learning, but it has not drawn enough attention in English teaching in many schools, especially in many middle schools. Listening class is considered as a simple job to play the tape and check the answers. It is high time for researchers to think about how to improve the teaching of English listening and enhance students? ability of listening comprehension.
Firstly, it is advisable that we study some researches on listening comprehension and get a clear understanding of the important and nature of listening comprehension. Secondly, we should analyze the barriers that students come across in the learning of listening comprehension. The barriers are divided into two aspects: Problems in teachers? teaching and problems of students. Problems in teachers? teaching include teachers? teaching ideas, teaching methods, problems in choosing listening materials and the influence of traditional English education system. Students? problems refer to the linguistic and the non-linguistic factors. The linguistic factors include speed obstacle, pronunciation obstacle, grammatical obstacle and vocabulary obstacle, and the non-linguistic factors have been classified into three types: Cultural and
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background knowledge obstacle, psychological obstacle and inappropriate listening habits.
Finally, based on the study, this paper comes up with some suggestive strategies for English teachers to solve students? listening comprehension problems, they can do the following: Teaching students basic listening skills; Taking measures to arouse students? interest; Teaching students basic language knowledge; Clarifying the purpose of listening; Training students? psychological qualities and expanding students? cultural background knowledge.
We believe that the listening comprehension in middle schools will have a bright future if we use the methods scientifically, practically and efficiently.
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