浅析不同体裁的会话是否会对英语专业学生的听力理解产生影响

摘要  本论文试图回答不同体裁对英语学习者的听力理解是否产生影响的问题。本研究以广州某普通高校30名英语专业本科生为实验对象，以全国高校英语专业四级20##年考试听力理解部分的三篇会话和六则新闻为听力测试材料。考查学习着对整体问题和局部问题的理解结果。考查结果表明受试能更好地捕捉会话体裁的整体信息，却能获取更多新闻体裁的局部信息。本研究认为，会话和新闻的体裁特点导致受试在整体和局部问题上的听力理解发生偏差，证实了不同体裁的确会对英语专业学生的听力理解产生影响。因此，本文建议英语教学中，教师帮助学习这熟悉各种体裁的典型特点，以便产生更好的理解结果。

关键词  英语听力理解； 体裁；听力输入； 新闻体裁；会话体裁

Abstract  In order to answer the question “Does genre of the listening input affect the listening comprehension?”, the study examined participants’ performance on the global questions and local questions by taking 30 English majors from a university in Guangzhou as the participants and taking 3 conversation and 6 pieces of news broadcast extracted from the listening comprehension part of TEM-4 20## as the listening input of the test. The result showed that participants had better performance on the global questions of conversation while they had better results in answering the local questions. Therefore, this study claimed that the distinct generic characteristics of conversation and news broadcast led to the deviation of participants’ listening comprehension on the global and local questions. That was to say, genres had effect on English major’s listening comprehension. Hence, it was suggested that in English teaching, teachers should help learners to learn more knowledge about the typical generic characteristics of different genres so that learners can comprehend different genres better.

  

Key Words  English listening comprehension; genre; listening input; news; conversation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

Abstract in Chinese

Abstract in English................................................................................................................ 1

1. Introduction...................................................................................................................... 1

2. Literature Review............................................................................................................. 3

2.1 The Definition of Genre.................................................................................................. 3

2.2 The Genre theory............................................................................................................ 3

2.3 Previous Research on Genre and Listening Comprehension.......................................... 4

3. The Study.......................................................................................................................... 5

3.1 Research Questions......................................................................................................... 5

3.2 Participants...................................................................................................................... 5

3.3 Instruments..................................................................................................................... 6

3.4 Procedures....................................................................................................................... 7

3.4.1 Pre-test......................................................................................................................... 7

3.4.2 Test............................................................................................................................... 8

3.5 Data Collection and Results........................................................................................... 8

3.5.1 The test questions on TEM-4 listening comprehension................................................ 8

4. Discussions and Implication............................................................................................ 11

4.1 Discussions.................................................................................................................... 11

4.2 Implication.................................................................................................................... 16

5. Conclusions..................................................................................................................... 16

References........................................................................................................................... 17

 

 

 

1. Introduction

‘Genre’ is originally a French word means ‘kind’ and ‘type’. In English, the term refers to classification of the literary works. In order to achieve certain social purpose, a genre of text has its own typical and particular structure and textual feature. That is to say, the social function of the genre of a text can be reflected in the macrostructure of the text. Is it possible that genre is among the factors that affect English learners’ listening comprehension since the listening process involves the “top-down process” which deals with the information process of the macrostructure? Besides, according to “genre analysis theory” (秦秀白, 1997:8-15) , the typical generic characteristics of a genre of text consist of three factors include the linguistic factor, the generic factors and the register factors. And the three factors should be paid attention to when analyzing a genre of text. As each genre has its own particular generic characteristics, do the typical generic characteristics of listening input influence English learners’ listening comprehension?

The main concern of this paper is to answer the question “does genre of listening input affect the listening comprehension?”.

The rest of this thesis consists of four parts: Section Two is a related literature review; Section Three describes the methodology and result of data analysis; Section Four presents the discussions and implications; and the last section is devoted to conclusions.

2. Literature Review

2.1 The Definition of Genre

As the genre theory did not arouse linguistic scholars’ interest to employ this term in the field of discourse analysis until 1970’s, the definition of genre has not come to an agreement. There are two schools studying the genre theory, the ‘Swalesian School’ which is represented by J M. Swales, and the ‘Australian School’ which is represented by J R. Martin (秦秀白 2000:42-46). Based on the study of many linguists, Chinese linguists made an interpretation: First, types of spoken and written discourse are classified into different genres according to the social communicative purpose of the social intercourse. Second, the pattern of one genre is variable. Third, the social communicative purpose retrains the content and the format of the text. And the content and the format of the text are conventional, stable, repetitive and habitual. Fourth, genre is closely related to cultural background and contextual configuration. Under certain cultural context, the communicative purpose of a social intercourse is usually achieved by several conventional stages, the characteristic of one particular genre will be presented in the particular structure and the language style which are determined by its social communicative purpose. Hence to attain certain social communicative purpose, we have to construct a particular discourse in typical structure and textual configuration in order to make the relevant community understand.（梁文花、秦洪武, 2009:44-48）

2.2 The Genre theory

Under certain cultural context, in order to achieve the communicative purpose, a social intercourse is constructed in certain conventional stages and in particular language style. Hence it is necessary to focus on the macrostructure, the textual features or the rhetorical devices and the register of a genre of discourse. According to Qin Xiubai (秦秀白，1997：8-15), the analysis of a genre of discourse should be analyzed from the following three aspects. Firstly, textual analysis such as linguistic description and the communicator’s appropriate employment of language. Secondly, the analysis of the context of situation which consists of field, tenor and mode of the text. As a particular genre of discourse is produced under certain context, one would produce discourse in tactful language according to the social reality. Thirdly, the analysis of the ‘moves’ that construct the macrostructure of a genre. According to Bhatia, an application letter in English obviously is a particular genre, and in order to gain the opportunity to get the job, the candidate should constructed the letter in certain stable moves that are accepted and understood by the employee and the candidate (Bhatia 1993, qtd. in 秦秀白 1997). Hence, it is known that a particular genre is constructed in certain typical ‘moves’.

In this paper, Qin Xiubai’s viewpoint will be employed to analyze the test materials which contain the genres of news broadcast and conversation for it emphasizes on the whole analysis of the text of one particular genre.

2.3 Previous Research on Genre and Listening Comprehension

There are a few studies concerning the influence of different genres on English learners’ listening comprehension. Elana Shohamy and Ofra Inbar (1991:23-40) investigated the effect of both texts and question types on participants’ scores of listening comprehension tests by taking 150 EFL learners who were from Hebrew as the subjects. The test material consisted of three text types, i.e. news broadcast, mini-lecture and consultative dialogue, which were of the same topic and vocabulary size but the different literary style. The consultative dialogue was oral-oriented and was characterized by simple expression, spontaneous language and many redundancies and repetitions, while the news broadcast was literature-oriented and was characterized by complex sentences, specialized language and a lack of redundancies, and the reporter did not interact with the audience (Berne, 1992: 6-7). It was found out that the degree of orality affected participants’ performance. The result showed the more one text contained listenable features, the better the subjects performed. That was to say, news broadcast was the most difficult to comprehend for it was literature-oriented, followed by mini-lecture and followed then by consultative dialogue. Moreover, the questions were classified into global and local type to explore how the question types affected the participants’ performance. The result showed that local questions were easier than global questions because it was more difficult to deduce and construct the whole meaning of the text than to locate the detail information in the text.

The subjects of Shohamy’s experiment were Hebrew. Hebrew shares the similar language system with English, so the difference between Hebrew and English is lower than that between Chinese and English. Therefore, in order to check whether the result would be the same as Shohamy’s, this paper aims at the investigation of the effect of different genres on the listening comprehension of English majors who are from China, and the question types are global and local questions just as Shohamy’s. 

3. The Study

In this study, an experimental design is used to test the effect of the genres of news broadcast and conversation on 30 English majors’ listening comprehension. And the connection between the generic characteristics of news broadcast and conversation and the factors lead to the deviation of English majors listening comprehension will be verified. In this section, the participants, instruments, procedures and data collection and analysis will be described.

3.1 Research Questions

From Section Two, it is obvious that different genres have their own characteristics due to their social communicative purpose. And the research question addressed by the study is as follow:

Do the participants have different performance on different generic input of the listening comprehension test?

3.2 Participants

The participants of this study are English majors from Grade 20## of the School of Foreign Language, Guangzhou University. A total of 30 students are chosen to participate in the listening test because they got the scores from 60 to 65 in the pre-test, which qualifies the participants are at the same level. And as they are all at the average level, more typical mistakes can be seen in their performance, and it helps to study the research questions.

3.3 Instruments

The pre-test material is in fact the final examination of ‘An Integrated English Course’ which is the English course for English majors of Guangzhou University. Students are asked to finish multiple choice questions of the problems include general knowledge and reading comprehension and open-ended questions of four types of problems include paraphrase, correcting errors, translation and writing in the final examination. The total score of the examination is 100, the multiple choice questions worth 40 points (1 point per multiple-choice question) and the open-ended questions such as translation and writing worth 60 points (20 points per open-ended question). The aim of the examination is to check up on English majors’ comprehensive ability of English, so it is a standard criterion to evaluate students’ English level in order to choose the participants.

The test material is three conversations and six pieces of news extracted from the listening comprehension part in TEM-4 (Test for English Major-4) in 2010. TEM-4 is of great significance to English majors because it is an examination officially accepted by China Education Ministry and the aim of it is examine English majors’ capacity for overall English skills and mastering of grammar structure and vocabulary. Participants are asked to finish the multiple choice questions of the conversation section and the news broadcast section of ‘Listening Comprehension’ and there were both 10 questions in news broadcast and conversation. But only 8 of these 10 questions would be chosen as the global and local questions. And in ‘conversation’ section, participants will totally listen to 3 conversation items and they will finish 3 or 4 questions that are based on one conversation item at each time. Then in ‘news broadcast’ section, participants will listen to total 6 news items and they will finish 1 or 2 questions that are based on one news item at each time.

The global question refers to those which participants need to answer by understanding the main idea and the causation of the conversation or news items. And a global question may like ‘What is the news item about’. But as there is not a typical global question in the questions of conversation, a why-question is chosen to be the global question of conversation as participants had to deduce the answer according to their summary of the information they got. And the local question is those which participants need to answer by locating the detail information and recognizing the information of the conversation or news items, and it may like ‘How many people were rescued from the apartment building’. Hence in this paper, each 7 questions will be employed as the local questions of conversation and news broadcast and each 1 question will be employed as the global questions of conversation and news broadcast. The measurement is to count the total number of the participants’ correct answers to the local and global questions.

3.4 Procedures

The test is consisted of two parts. In the first part, a pre-test is done to decide who will be the participants so that the participants are at the same level; the second part is the test about how the texts of news broadcast and conversation affect the participants’ listening comprehension.

3.4.1 Pre-test

The aim of this part is to evaluate the students’ English level to determine which one can be the participants of the test. Because the typical mistakes are more tend to be seen in average students. And due to the practical factors, the results of English majors’ final examination were employed as the criterion to decide who would be the participants for it is authoritative. With class for the unit, all of the English majors in Grade 20## were required to have the final examination on a particular day at the end of the term. During the final examination, the participants had to finish the exam independently and there were two teachers monitoring one class to have examination. And the duration of the examination was 2 hours. Moreover the exam papers were revised by the English teachers of Guangzhou University according to the model answer given by the teacher who set the exam papers.

3.4.2 Test

The test was conducted in the form of quiz in a random ordinary classroom. The researcher firstly copied the clips of the 3 conversation items and 6 news items to a personal computer and then brought the computer to the classroom. The 30 participants were gathered and instructed to listen to the test material carefully. Before that, the participants were issued the answer sheets, and then they were required to go over the questions on the answer sheets first. After that, the researcher played the clips of the test material one by one. All of the clips were played once only. And after each clip was played, one minute was given to participants to answer a series of questions based on the clip of conversation or news broadcast. Then the clips were played in order until the tape came to an end. And the participants finished the questions independently and were monitored by the researcher and another person. After the participants finished, they were required to hand in their answer sheets and the researcher graded the answer sheets of the participants according to the model answer from the exercise book ‘Tests with Advice on How to Prepare TEM-4’.

3.5 Data Collection and Results

3.5.1 The test questions on TEM-4 listening comprehension

There were 7 local questions and 1 global question in the test material of conversation and news broadcast.

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1   Comparison of the Accurate Rates of Global Questions of Conversation and News

According to the table, the accuracy of the global question of conversation was higher. That was to say, more participants could answer the global question of conversation correctly. There was each one global question in conversation part and in news broadcast part and the global question of conversation was question number 10 and that of news broadcast was question number 27. According to the table above, there were 24 right answers of participants in conversation part while there were 21 right answers of participants in the news part. And the accurate rate of conversation was 80% while that of news broadcast was 70%, that was to say, the global question of conversation and that of news broadcast were not difficult to the participants. But generally speaking, the accurate rate of conversation was10 percent higher than that of news broadcast.

Table 2   Comparison of the Overall Accurate Rates of the Local Questions of Conversation and News

From the table, the accuracy of news broadcast was higher. That was to say, more participants could answer the local questions of news broadcast correctly. There were each 7 local questions in conversation part and in news part. According to table 2, there were total 117 right answers to the 7 local questions of conversation, however there were 129 right answers to the local questions of news part. In consequence, the accurate rate of news broadcast was 61%, which was 5% higher than that of conversation.

Table 3   Accurate Rates of the 7 Local Questions of Conversation

According to the table above, question number 4 had the lowest accuracy, which was 20%. Question number 5 had the second lowest accuracy, which was 30%, and question number 6 had the third lowest accuracy, which was 40%. Moreover, as mentioned in the instruments part, question number 4 to 7 were based on the second conversation, and apparently, the second conversation had the fewest right answers. That was to say, compared with other conversations, the second conversation was the most difficult to answer for the participants.

Table 4   Accurate Rates of the 7 Local Questions of News Broadcast

From the table above, question number 24 and 28 had the lowest accuracy, which were both 40%. And question number 25 and 29 had the second lowest accuracy, which were both 50%. Besides, as mentioned in instruments part, the second and the fifth news items were the most difficult to answer for the participants for the accuracy of them were the lowest.

 

Table 5   The comparison of the accuracy rates of the 7 local questions of conversation and news broadcast

According to the difficulty level of the questions, the question can be divided into three levels: easy question; medium question and difficult question. And the accuracy of an easy question is higher or equal to 90%; the accuracy of a medium one is from 41% to 89% and the accuracy of a difficult one is lower or equal to 40%. And a brief conclusion could be drawn that in conversation part, question number 4, 5 and 6 were difficult questions, question number 1 and 7 were medium questions and question number 2 and 8 were easy question. As for news part, question number 24 and 28 were difficult questions, question number 25 and 29 were medium questions and question number 21, 26 and 30 were easy questions.   

4. Discussion and Implication

4.1 Discussion

It is reasonable to come to the conclusion that the participants can understand the global type of question of the conversation better because the accuracy of conversation is higher than that of news broadcast. That was to say, participants could understand the whole meaning of the text of conversation better. In general, the design of the global questions was to check up on participants’ ability to reconstruct the whole meaning of the text and to have a basic concept of the internal macrostructure of the text. So participants needed to make use of the contextual clues and their background knowledge to conclude the facts they heard and to construct the main idea of text. Hence, from the text of the global question of the conversation, the information participants needed was delivered in order of the event because it was repeated to A speaker Mary by B speaker James for it was James who received the call from the manager and he had to repeat the whole thing to Mary. So what participants heard was an organized part of the text and participants didn’t need to reconstruct but to get the answer directly. As for the accuracy of the news global question was lower was because actually participants were not familiar with the topic of the news item as it was about the political policy of foreign country. Besides, they had not a clear idea about ‘genre’ and didn’t pay attention to the information in the specific location of the news.

A conclusion can be reached that the participants can acquire the detail information of conversation better because the accuracy of the local questions of news broadcast was 5% higher than that of conversation. The design of the local questions was to check up on participants’ ability to grasp details. So the immediate sound and meaning recognition was emphasized. For example, in question number 29, the answer to the question ‘How many people were rescued from the apartment building?’ could be found in a sentence ‘21 people have been rescued’ in the middle of the news. It is just accord with the generic characteristics of news broadcast that the useful information is plainer and more direct and can be gained directly from the text. It was the reason why participants could acquire the detail better. As for the accuracy of local questions of conversation was lower was that, for example, in question number 4, apparently the key information that participants needed was followed by the inferring information such as ‘their husbands or wives’ and ‘the transport’ disturbed the participants. They needed the information ‘I haven’t counted the numbers of delegates’, but between the key information “haven’t counted” and “the number of delegates” of the sentence above were mixed 4 sentences about other things. The generic structure of conversation resulted in the distribution of key information, and it was the main cause of the wrong answers to this local question.

The factors led to the deviation of participants listening comprehension of global and local questions could be found by analyzing the text of the news and conversation that had the lowest accuracy. The difficult questions from the second conversation and question number 28 from fifth news item (question number 4 was skipped for it was analyzed above and question number 24 is also skipped for it was from the second news item with a question which had nothing to do with this study) were about to be analyzed for they were typical and had the lowest accuracy. Firstly as the second conversation was a communicative event of having phone calls, the social communicative purpose of the second conversation determined the loosely organized structure of the text. As it was spontaneous, the language was oral and nature. And the speakers changed the topic so quickly that the key information of the text was mixed with other information. Besides, the register of the text should be considered. That was to say, as the two speakers were partners from two different companies, they tended to speak in a consultative way rather than requiring the other one to do something. For example in question number 5, the question was “what does Linda want to know”, so participants would more likely to pay attention to the key phrase “want to know”. But actually Linda said ‘you’ll let me know when they are arriving, won’t you?’ but didn’t point it out she “want” directly to show their relation of equality. The relationship between them determined Linda had to express her request in a euphemistic way. This special generic characteristic of the text made participants have to guess what they really wanted to say. As regard question number six, participants were request to deduce ‘how many performances have been planned for the conference’. But the useful information “a local-style dance” and “a piano performance” were mixed with 4 sentences between them, which were about Linda’s opinion on the performance and the arrangement for the performers. So it was the particular structure of the genre of conversation led to the participants’ mistakes. Secondly, as for question number 28, the fifth news item was well organized. It’s an inverted pyramid form. And as it’s a “correct-or-not” question, participants had to find out the detail information to finish the question. Although the key information from the different options was distributed in different part of the text, participants could still get each useful information point in one sentence. And the language style was plain and direct. So participants could judge the options were right or not immediately because what they heard were not question-answer sentences like conversation but the accurate news information, and speakers would not overturn what they said in the beginning so participants would not get confused. However, the main cause led to the most wrongs to this question was the language style of news. There were a lot profound words and expression to participants. For example, the word blizzard did not belong to the TEM-4 vocabulary, but it was the key word of the text. So participants spent too much time on guessing the meaning of this word, and thus missed other key information. Besides, the employment of the complex sentences also led to the participants’ mistakes.

To sum up, firstly the main factor led to the deviation of participants’ miscomprehension of conversation was the typical macrostructure and the spontaneousness of conversation text result in the key information was scattered distributed and was mixed with other redundant and invalid information. In consequence, participants were needed to deduce the answer to the questions of conversation. Besides, participants’ incorrect consideration of the register and the background context of the conversation text would also lead to the miscomprehension. Secondly, the main factor led to the deviation of participants’ misunderstanding of news broadcast was the linguistic factor of the news broadcast. As the news was pre-written in professional terms and complex sentences, so the intensive information was conveyed continuously by the reporter with fast speed. That made it too difficult for participants to understand the news just by listening to the information. What’s more, participants’ unfamiliarity with the topic and background knowledge of news broadcast was also a main factor led to the deviation of participants’ miscomprehension.

The generic analyses of conversation and news broadcast are about to be made to find out the effect of the characteristics of genres on the participants’ performance. And according to section two, the generic characteristics of one particular genre should be consist of three parts including linguistic features, generic features and register features. Take the second conversation and the fifth news item for example. The second conversation was a communicative event of having phone calls, the social communicative purpose of this conversation was the two speakers wanted to exchange their information. And it determined the question-answer format and the loosely organized structure of the text. Accordingly it was spontaneous, the speakers changed the topic so quickly that the key information points were mixed with other invalid information and the key information was scattered distributed in different part of the text. As for the linguistic characteristic, speakers tended to use daily expressions so it was easier for participants to comprehend. From the above discussion, it was easy to detect that the generic characteristics of conversation were none other than the factors led to participants’ deviation of listening comprehension of conversation. A conclusion can be drawn that it is exactly the typical and particular generic characteristics lead to English majors’ listening miscomprehension of conversation.

Secondly, the fifth news item was an inverted pyramid news format. It was well organized and the main idea of the news was written in the very beginning, which told readers the basic element of the news. So the participants could easily find specific information for example in the very beginning or at the end of the news. And for the authority, news must be pre-written with professional terms and expressions, and employ complex and coordinate complex sentences to show its accuracy. Therefore, participants could answer the local questions of news better for its particular macrostructure. That was to say, it was the generis characteristics of news led to the result that the local questions of news broadcast were answered better. Besides, the linguistic generic characteristic is just in accord with the main factor led to the deviation of participants’ listening comprehension. Hence we can conclude that it’s the generic characteristics of news led to the deviation of English major’s listening comprehension.

From the above discussion on the research question, we can conclude that there’s a connection between the factors led to the deviation of English major’s listening comprehension and the generic characteristics of conversation and news broadcast. The particular generic characteristics which consist of three factors brought about the participants’ miscomprehension of the listening test. Therefore, different genres of listening input do affect English major’s listening comprehension.

4.2 Implication

As has been proved that different genres of listening input affect English major’s listening comprehension, it is vital that we should get to know more about the definition and the theory of genre. Result in English learners and English teachers’ neglect of the knowledge on ‘genre’, the theory of genre is barely known to English learners. Consequently, to popularize the theory of genre is of great importance in English teaching for English learners can comprehend the text better if they have a proper understanding of the theory of genre. So in English listening classes, the concept of genre and the generic characteristics that consist of the three factors should be emphasized by teachers. That is to say, not only the textual features of the text of genres but also the macrostructure and the register of the text of genres should be taught to English learners.

And to develop English learners’ ability to comprehend the text of genre, the following are the suggestions for English teachers to follow.

Firstly, teachers should have a conscious awareness of the theory of genre and to introduce the significance of the theory of genre to English learners in class.

Secondly, certain particular and common examples of different genres should be provided for English learners so that they have a basic understanding of the social communicative purpose and the generic characteristics of the genres.

Thirdly, learners should be examined by identifying several genres to consolidate their generic knowledge.

Fourthly, the learner should build up their vocabulary and native expression day by day to deal with linguistics factors of different genres.

5. Conclusion

This study aimed at exploring the effect of genre of listening input on EFL learners’ listening comprehension. And thus by having the listening test of news broadcast and conversation, the result showed that English majors had a better understanding on the overall idea of conversations while they can grasp the detail information of news broadcast better. Furthermore, from the analyses of the factors led to participants’ miscomprehension on the global and local questions of conversation and news broadcast and the generic characteristics of conversation and news broadcast, a conclusion is drawn that it is the typical and particular generic characteristics of conversation and news broadcast lead to English majors’ listening miscomprehension of conversations. That is to say, different genres of listening input do affect English major’s listening comprehension. Besides, the listening miscomprehension of English majors can be reduced if they have a conscious awareness of the significance of genre theory and more knowledge of the generic characteristics of different genres.

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