2. Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical issues

2.1.1 Listening comprehension

The importance of listening has led to abundant studies on the nature of listening comprehension. Traditionally, listening and reading are considered as sharing a number of similarities. However, compared to reading, listening is less studied. As Weir(1993) claimed, ” much of the current thinking on the nature of listening comprehension is based on the earlier work of reading comprehension.”

In recent years, with the development of cognitive theories, people begin to gain a better understanding of the nature of listening comprehension. In contrast with behaviorists, cognitive researchers hold that listening comprehension involves more than simply perceiving aural stimuli, and listeners are considered as active rather than passive. More specifically, listening comprehension is now considered as an active process, in which listeners focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge(O#8217;Malley amp; Chamot,1990).

In the issue of how we comprehend language, many researcher have shown their agreement on the language understanding system(LUS), which consists of several language processors and a general problem-solver(GPS). The language processors, on receiving linguistic stimuli, process lexical, syntactic and semantic information respectively. The GPS, by collecting and reconstructing information from the subsystems, is responsible for decision-making in language comprehension.

In this way, listeners are not regarded as passive tape-recorder, but as an active processor. In the process of listening comprehension, the unitary human system-LUS functions to elicit or activate two types of knowledge: linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge which are two main sources of information we might resort. In listening comprehension, linguistic knowledge refers to knowledge of phonological, syntactic and semantic components of the language system. Non-linguistic knowledge constitutes knowledge, experiences and beliefs about the world. It has been generally acknowledged that linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge are activated differently in terms of the processing models.

2.1.2 Question preview