On the Effect of Short-Term Memory on College English Listening Comprehension 英语毕业论文.doc

On the Effect of Short-Term Memory on College English Listening Comprehension 1. Introduction Language is the bridge of communication, and English is one of the most important medium languages to transfer all kinds of information from all over the world. As a vital skill, listening is the first step of learning English and communication. Therefore, listening plays a rather important role in English learning for Chinese learners who take English as the foreign language. Listening is one of the most important language skills. The contemporary society exhibits a shift away from printed medium towards audio-visual one and people need to develop a high level of proficiency in listening .Besides, various tests carried out by educational institutions, such as Band Four and Band Six of CET, Band Four and Band Eight of TEM, TOFLE and GRE all contain listening comprehension. Therefore, improving listening ability is a problem most English learners are faced with. 2. Importance of listening comprehension Listening comprehension is a rather complex mental process, and it is a central subject that linguists, psychologists and teachers are studying. Listening is one of the fundamental language skills (Bulletin, 1952, cited in Hui, 2004). It plays an important role both in our daily life and in language learning. Its a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values and their appreciation(Arif,2005). Listening ability is essential among the five basic skills-listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. In foreign language learning, the improvement of listening ability can reduce the difficulties which the learners meet in speaking, spelling and reading. According to Gary(1975),there are four advantages: cognitive advantage, efficient advantage, affective advantage and utilitarian advantage in foreign language teac