Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Regarding the fundamental role of listening in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Rost (1994, p. 141-142) emphasized, “listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin”. And Nunan (1998, p. 1) claimed “listening is the basic skill in language learning. Without listening skill, learners will never learn to communicate effectively. In fact, over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening”. In spite of the importance of listening, it has been overlooked by L2/FL teachers and researchers and received less attention than the other language skills (Moyer, 2017) and has often been referred to as a passive or receptive skill (Elkhafaifi, 2017; Oxford, 1993). Learning to listen in a second language (L2) essentially still goes on in a classroom environment. Teachers traditionally manipulate and control the text as they see fit to enable learners to listen a number of times, get the given listening comprehension tasks completed, and produce the necessary responses. In all, it is a traditional listening practice. However, over these years, teachers have also been encouraged by listening researchers and scholars to do more to train learners about how to listen. Meta-cognitive teaching is a way of achieving this, which is a process-based approach that aims to enforce learners’ knowledge of themselves as listeners in a second language context and their understanding of the inherent challenges of L2 listening, as well as teaching them about ways to control their listening comprehension (Goh, 2017).
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1.2 Purposes of the Study
Based on the previous teachers’ and experts’ investigations as well as researches, the study is intended to explore listening further by looking it into from different perspectives by teaching art majors listening cognitive strategies integrated in classroom instruction that are teacher’s professional development and students’ need in real study as well as their own reflections on listening itself after class. Hope that the research results can make a little contribution to listening teaching in the special group of art majors finding a way to improve their English and English teacher’s professional development in English teaching. In the meantime, through the study, more information on listening teaching features and difficulties in Northwest China can be obtained, which will be useful to the poor &n，英语毕业论文，英语论文范文 |
