1．结合毕业设计（论文）课题情况，根据所查阅的文献资料，每人撰写2000字左右的文献综述：

1. Introduction

Listening is one of the important skills in learning English. Accordingly, it also plays a crucial role in teaching English. As a result, English teachers have to pay more attentions to listening training. What#8217;s more, in nowadays English tests, such as CET4, CET6, TEM4, TEM8 amp; GRE, British accent is widely used. It is believed that speaking rates affect listening comprehension. Therefore, we try to find the effects of British accent at different speaking rates on listening comprehension. Moreover, as for English major students, it will help them to achieve better performance in listening comprehension.

1.1 Need for the study

According to many previous studies, accents, difficulty of listening materials and speaking rates are thought to be important factors to listening comprehension. To be specific, British accent is the general dialect of English Language in Great Britain (Pike, 2001), or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles.

When it comes to listening comprehension, the fundamental factors are beyond count. Such as the mastery of the basic grammar, the accuracy of pronunciation and intonation, the English learners#8217; sensitiveness to the materials (Bu, 2009). Among numerous factors, speaking rate has a great influence on listening comprehension (Liu, 2012). So far much research has been done on the effect of speech rates on listening comprehension (Abdolmajid, 2010). Little research, however, has been done to explore the relationship between accent and speaking rate. Accordingly, the effects of British accent at different speaking rates on listening comprehension are the research focus of the current study.

1.2 Research purpose

The present study intends to investigate effects of British accent at different speaking rates and difficulty levels on listening comprehension. Specifically speaking, the purpose of this study is to find out whether there is any significant difference in British English listening comprehension at different speaking rates with materials of different difficulty levels.

2. Literature review

English listening ability is a basic part in the college English teaching. As the main criterion to affect English listening, speaking rates and difficulty levels have drawn quite a lot of attentions in the previous studies. In this study, effects of British accent at different speaking rates and difficulty levels on listening comprehension will be analyzed. And in this chapter, literature is reviewed in three parts: first, previous researches on speaking rates and listening comprehension; second, those on difficulty levels and listening comprehension; and third, on the problems in the previous studies.

2.1 Speaking rates and listening comprehension

Speaking rates affect listening comprehension greatly. Griffiths (1990) studied the effect of speech rate on comprehension of a semi-scientific text that was read aloud at three different speech rate levels and found that moderately fast speech rates reduced comprehension, but a slow rate of delivery did not increase comprehension significantly as compared to speech delivered at a normal rate. In another descriptive study, Griffiths (1991) stated that language learners were likely to meet a far greater speed of rates than the rates investigated in the earlier study. In a similar study but with different materials, Griffiths (1992) conducted an experiment on 24 Omani elementary school teachers for a five-week course. He provided three story passages with three different speech rates: slow speech rates, average speech rates, and fast speech rates. Based on the participants#8217; scores in listening comprehension, he concluded that a slower rate of delivery resulted in better comprehension scores than fast and average rates.

In Huei-chun#8217;s (2001) study, he investigated the effects of syntactic modification and speech rate on EFL listening comprehension. Four versions of the listening passage on syntactic modification with two different speech rates are used to conduct this study. Huei-chun assigned 168 college freshmen to one of the eight experimental groups. After completing the test, the results confirm the significant syntactic. The study offers empirical evidences for the facilitating effects of syntactic modification and slower speech rate.

Liu (2012) designed an listening comprehension experiment with two different speaking rates: normal speed (250 syllables per minute) and lower speed (70 syllables per minute). 80 students were assigned into 4 groups. This experiment aims at finding the effect of listening implicit learning on different speaking rates. By giving the control of speech rate, he found that students#8217; s listening comprehension improved more at normal speed.

Abdolmajid (2010) examined the effect of speech rate on listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. Initially, a sample of 108 sophomore EFL learners majoring in English translation was selected based on systematic random sampling from Abadan Islamic Azad University. Then, based on an ECCE proficiency test, 62 participants were chosen and divided into two homogeneous groups of 31. One group had exposure to natural speech rate and the other to slow speech rate of listening materials. After thirteen academic sessions, the results o the paired t-test regarding the pre-tests and post-tests of the two group means showed that both differences (group one: #8211;2.83 and group two: #8211;1.22) were significant at 0.05 levels (P lt; 0.05). These findings suggest that each speech rate, whether natural or slow, could improve EFL learners listening comprehension; however, natural speech rate could demonstrate greater improvements than slow speech rate in EFL learners#8217; listening comprehension.

2.2 Difficulty level and listening comprehension

According to previous studies, learners perform variously while listening to materials with different degrees of difficulty. Xu (2006) investigated factors which affect listening comprehension. The complexity of the sentence, memory and type can affect listening comprehension. Peng (2013) found that variables that affected item difficulty genres and the differences of item difficulty of different genres are investigated with regression and analysis and ANOVA. Findings show that variables of listen ability alone could not be the most effective predictors of item difficulty. Therefore, test validity need to be constructed from multi-perspectives and multi-dimensions.

2.3 Problems in the previous studies

In the past few decades, factors that affect listening comprehension have successfully attracted a lot of attentions and more and more scholars come into notice the necessities of studying the skills of listening comprehension. Among them, accents and speaking rates are two important factors to listening comprehension. However, there still exit some problems in the previous studies.

Firstly, we could easily learn that researches on the effects of different accents on listening comprehension are relatively scanty and fewer findings are yielded. In addition, there is fewer researches referring to the relationship between accent and speech rate when it comes to listening comprehension.

Secondly, difficulty of listening materials can affect listening comprehension. However, it is not included in the previous related researches. To sum up, there are still many insufficiencies in the previous studies, which call for the implement of the current study.

This study is to explore effects of British accent at different speaking rates and difficulty levels on listening comprehension.

References

Abdolmajid, H. (2010). The effect of speech rate on listening comprehension of EFL learners. Creative Education, 2, 107-114.

Ahmad, M., O., R., amp; Salman, D. (2012). The effect of non-native accent on Iranian EFL learners#8217; listening comprehension: Focusing on Persian accent of English. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3, 967-972.

Bu. Q. L. [卜巧玲]，2009，影响英语听力理解的因素及对策. 宿州学院学报(24)：159-162。

Du, F. Y. [杜方圆]，2013，语篇线索词和语速对中国大学生学术英语听力的影响.外语与翻译 (2)：31-38。

Griffiths, R. (1990). Speech rate and NNS comprehension: A preliminary study in time-benefit analysis. Language Learning, 40, (3), 311-336.

Griffiths, R. (1991). Language classroom speech rates: A descriptive study. TESOL Quarterly, 25, (1), 189-194.

Griffiths, R. (1992). Speech rate and listening comprehension: Further evidence of the relationship. TESOL Quarterly, 26, (2), 385-390.

Huei-chun, Teng. (2001). Impact of modification on EFL listening. Conference on Proceedings, 533-539.

Liu, J. R., et al. [柳加仁]等人，2012，输入语速对外语听力习得影响的实验研究. 外语教学与研究(44)：402-410。

Liu, W. D. [刘卫东]，1999，浅论美国英语与英国英语发音差异. 江苏广播电视大学学报(10)：96-97。

Mackey, L. S., amp; Finn, P. (1997). Effect of speech accent on speech naturalness ratings: A systematic replication of Martin, Haroldson, and Triden (1984). Journal of Speech, Language amp; Hearing Research, 40, 349#8211;361.

Mcbride, K. (2011). The effect of rate of speech and distributed practice on the development of listening comprehension. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24,(24), 131-154.

Munro, M. J., amp; Derwing, T. M. (1995a). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45,
73#8211;97.

Munro, M. J., amp; Derwing, T. M. (1995b). Processing time, accent, and comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Language and Speech, 38, 289#8211;306.

Neison, N, W. amp; McRoskey, R, L. (1978). Comprehension of Standard English at varied speaking rates by children whose major dialect is Black English. Journal of Communication Disorders, 11, (1), 37-50.

Ou, Y. C. [欧阳春]，2005，英国英语和美国英语发音差异的分析. 广西医科大学大学学报 (23)：381-382。

Pike, D.( 2001). British accent. Motor Boating, 5, 38.

Roy, C., Susan, F. F., Ferenc, B. amp; Chandrika, B. (2002). The effects of nonnative accents on listening comprehension. Implications for ESL assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 36,(2), 173#8211;190.

Tauroza, S. amp; Luk, J. 1997, Accent and second language listening comprehension. Relc Journal, 28,(1), 54-71.

Teng, H. C. (2001). Impact of speech modification on EFL listening. Conference Proceedings ,3, 532-537.

Tian, L. [田靓]，2002，言语速度对留学生听力理解的影响. 汉语学习(2)：71-72。

Xu, H. Y. [许红岩]，2006，论英语教学中影响听力的因素及解决途径. 宿州教育学院学报 (4)：126-127。

２．本课题要研究或解决的问题和拟采用的研究手段（途径）：

Research methodology

2.1 Research Questions

The present study investigates effects of British accent at different speaking rates and difficulty levels on listening comprehension. The specific research questions are as follows:

1. Is there any effect of different speaking rates on Listening Comprehension?

2. Is there any effect of difficulty levels on Listening Comprehension?

3. Does the effect of different speaking rates on British listening comprehension vary according to difficulty levels?

2.2. Variables and operational definitions

2.2.1 Subjects

The experiment was administered to the select 56 English majors from Nanjing Tech University. They are all freshmen who have never participant in the CET6. Under these conditions, subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups (according to their classes).

2.2.2 Listening material and test

This part shows the processes of choosing the listening materials and the listening test. In this study, the listening materials were selected from CET6. All the participants are freshmen, and the listening materials could be appropriate for the subjects. Considering the difficulties of the listening materials, we adopted Readability to test all the 10 listening passages, then we chose 4 out of the 10 with a pretest. According to the results of Readability and our pretest, we divided the listening materials into two levels, which were appropriate for the participants to listen to. Easy materials got lower scores in the readability stool, and students got higher scores in the pretest. Difficult materials performs conversely. All the listening materials were recorded in Standard British English. The lengths of these passages were approximately equal in these passages.

The test of this study had two levels: the listening test at normal speed and the listening test at slower speed. We invited a native English speaker with 20 years#8217; teaching experience to record the listening materials at two rates: normal speed and lower speed. In this case, we have four passages: easy material at slower speed, easy material at normal speed, difficult material at slower speed and difficult material at normal speed. In other words, each material with different rate has two difficulty level passages.

2.3 Data collection

The subjects in this study were 56 freshmen of English majors from two classes. According to their classes, the 56 subjects were divided into two groups with each about 28 members. Consequently, class one listened to the 4 passages at normal speeding materials, and class two listened to the 4 slower speeding materials. After the listening test, all the students were asked to write their answers on the answer sheet. Then the researcher collected the data to analysis. The first group stood for the normal speeding group, whose score ranges from 44 to 69, and the second group represented lower speeding group, whose score ranges from 59 to 88.

2.4 Data analysis

Analysis of the consists of two stages: applying readability and SPSS V21.0 to obtain the difficulty of the materials, and coding all the syllables, clauses, words, error-free clauses and errors. In this way, listening materials were divided apart. We have both easy and difficult listening materials.

After gaining all the dataset, the researcher applied SPSS V21.0 to make mixed ANOVA to answer the research questions.