第一章引言
第一章是由四个部分组成。他们是背景的研究，研究的意义，程序的研究和研究大纲。外语教学实践中，听力是中国的四项基本技能之一，也是本文研究的必要和动机。
1.1 Background of the study 研究背景
With China’s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world, thedemand for English listening and speaking proficiency among English learners is rising.The changes to the requirement of College English Test (Band 4 and Band6), NationalMatriculation English Test, and Graduate Record Examination make listening teaching apriority all over the country.
The need for competence in listening is increasinglyrecognized, therefore listening competence of the students has recently attractedconsiderable attention.However, careful observation of college English teaching practice shows that theteaching of listening is still a weak link in the language teaching process. Despite studentshave mastered the basical elements of English grammar and vocabulary, their listeningcomprehension is still weak. Through systematic study of basic English teaching stages atuniversity it has been recognized that though students’ integrated skills in reading writingtranslating has been improved, their listening and speaking capacities have been leftbehind. The traditional grammar-translation method of teaching English in China has beenfound inadequate to the demands for producing efficient English speakers and listeners.For this reason, at present, the teaching of listening is considered one of the mostimportant teaching courses. It is necessary for students to make headways in their listeningcomprehension.
Culture teaching has always been a frequently discussed topic in Foreign LanguageTeaching. Since 1980s culture teaching has been a part of foreign language education. More and more educators have come to realize the importance of culture teaching anddevoted themselves into designing foreign culture courses for the second languagelearners or integrate culture elements into language classes. On the other hand, withglobalization, new goals and requirements have been raised for second language learners.That is to develop communicative competence through learning course not merely byremembering the culture facts, but rather develop a method to think like foreigners do inorder to understand their culture and be motivated to use what has been learned in thecommunicating process------to develop cultural recognition. Among the five basic skills ofcommunication in foreign language (learning, listening speaking reading writing andtranslating) listening comprehension is what we are going to discuss in the essay. It is oneof the most important basic skills that students have to develop during the learning processin order to communicate.
Chapter 2 Literature Review 文学评论
Schema can be seen as the restored units in human brains and it contains variableknowledge. Widdowson describes it as the structure of the objects or process that is storedin human brains. Schema has many levels and the structure of it is like a upside down tree.The higher the level the more abstract the schema is. Therefore, schema can be taken asthe foundation of the cultural recognition. Cultural recognition is the process of decoding,classifying, comprehending and remembering the input information by various schemataand the process of restructuring the information psychologically.
2.1 Cultural recognition and foreign language teaching 文化上的认同和外语教学
As far as cultural recognition is concerned, Lessard-Clouston (1997) notes, in thepast, people learned a foreign language to study its literature, and this was the mainmedium of culture. “It was through reading that students learned of the civilizationassociated with the target language” (Flewelling, 1993: 339, cited in Lessard-Clouston,1997). In the 1960s and 1970s, such eminent scholars as Hall (1959), Nostrand (1974),Seelve ([1974] 1984), and Brooks (1975) made an endeavour to base foreign languagelearning on a universal ground of emotional and physical needs, so that ‘the foreignculture would appear less threatening and more accessible to the language learner.(Kramsch, 1993: 224). In the heyday of the audiolingual era in language teaching, Brooks(1968) emphasized the importance of culture not for the study of literature but forlanguage learning, as Seelve (1989: 155) has observed. Earlier on, Brooks (1960) in hisseminal work Language and Language Learning had offered sixty-four topics regardingculture interspersed with questions covering several pages. These “hors d’ oeuvres”, as hecalled them, concerned, inter alia, such crucial aspects of culture as greetings, expletives,personal possessions, cosmetics, tobacco and smoking, verbal taboos, cafes, bars, andrestaurants, contrasts in town and country life, patterns of politeness, keeping warm andcool。
Chapter 3 Research design.................................... 34-40
3.1 Rationale for the empirical study ....................................34-35
3.2 Research hypothesis.................................... 35-36
3.3 Methodology.................................... 36-37
3.4 Data collection procedures.................................... 37-40
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion ....................................40-70
4.1 Data analysis.................................... 40-54
4.1.1 Analysis of the questionnaire.................................... 40-47
4.1.2 Analysis of the test.................................... 47-48
4.1.3 Data description of the test....................................48-51
4.1.4 Analysis of classroom observation ....................................51-54
4.2 A Discussion of cultural recognition.................................... 54-70
Chapter 5 Conclusion ....................................70-74
5.1 Main findings.................................... 70-71
5.2 Implications of the study ....................................71-72
5.3 Limitations.................................... 72-74
Conclusion 结论
One major source of limitation is the researcher’s own cultural stand. The study iscarried out in Chinese college students. Therefore, it is very possible that the researcher,as a Chinese, is biased by her own cultural identity. There are also many situationalconstraints on the research. Firstly, the sample students of the experiment are learners ofnon-English majors. Their learning motivation may be different from that of Englishmajors. This hinders the experiment effectiveness to some extent. Secondly, the samplesize is rather small, which may make the results less extensively representative. Thirdly,the training time is short. The cultivation of cultural recognition of the target language is along-time and complicated process. Only one term of teaching is not long enough for us toobserve the change of students’ acquisition apparently.
In the research, although the design of methods is considerately made, there areinevitably some limitations. Firstly, none of research methods is absolutely good or bad,but fit or unfit. Thus, there are also some limitations in the research methods adopted,. Forexample, in the real school teaching environment, true experimental research can not becarried out. Consequently, the author most often has to modify it into quasi-experimentalresearch to fit the situation. In addition, the subjects only involve two classes. The rangeof the research may not large enough to represent the listening competence of collegestudents in general. Finally, the test is specially designed on the basis of Cambridge IELTS Tests which can not be perfect enough to test students’ situation in all aspects, as is knownto all Cambridge IELTS Tests is a test fit for British culture.Secondly, in the aspect of theory, the course design to develop students’ culturalrecognition is still immature. It needs further perfecting in teaching practice. This mayaffect the outcomes of the research. Moreover, one-term teaching is relatively short todevelop students’ cultural recognition since the cultivation of the schemata of the targetculture is a long process.