A Psycholinguistic Analysis of English Listening

A Psycholinguistic Analysis of English Listening谢怡/重庆人文科技学院外语系[ Abstract] Listening is an important part in language learning and it plays an importantrole in communication. This paper tries to find out the overlapping part of listening andpsycholinguistics. It analyzes listening in the eye of psychology especially cognitive psychology,which should be the root listening which is very useful and significant for language teachersto unders tand.[Key Words] listening;process; psychol inguisticsUnderstanding PsycholinguisticsPsychology and, in particular， psychol inguistics- -- the psychological study of the mentalmechani sms and processes that underlie our ability to use language- - - is a relatively youngsci ence. Psycholinguistics， based on the cognitive approach, mainly studies the psychologicalprocess of language acquisition and performance. So far, researchers have been concerned withthe usefulness of psychol inguistic approaches to general issues in language learning andprocessing. They have set up a fundamental theory that people can make sense of informationprocess ing. There are three informat ion-processing stages of input, central processing and output.The three stages also lay a foundation for different components of aptitude， since thethree-component structure can be linked to three stages. First， phonemic coding ability can belinked to input process ing; second, language analytic ability is more relevant to centralprocessing; third, memory， except the basic learning of new information， concerns thereinstatement of information and fluency in output. Knowing the three stages， we want to digout more facts about mental activities in processing language.2 Understanding ListeningAs an essential part of communicative competence， listening is a skill which deserves equaltreatment with the other basic skills of speaking，reading, and writing. Listening is the firstlanguage mode that children acquire. It provides a foundation for all aspects of language andcognitive development， and it plays a life-1ong role in the processes of learning andcommunication essential to productive participation in life. A study found that people listen45 percent of the time they spend communicating， is still widely cited. It was found that 30percent of communication time was spent speaking，16 percent reading， and 9 percent writing.That finding confi rmed what Rankin had found in 1928 that people spent 70 percent of their wakingtime communicating and those three- fourths of this time were spent listening and speaking.Psychol inguistics and Its Relationship with ListeningPsycholinguistics is the study of psychological processes involved in producing orunderstanding language. The aim of most psycholinguists is to constrict general theories of howhumans manage to process particular aspects of language， given the incredible speed at whichhumans do this.Informat ion- processing theories are very important in the analysis of listening.Information processing is the term used to describe the actives of the human mind in acquir ing,storing，retrieving and using information. The general idea of informat ion-processing modelsis that information is processed within three temporal stages of memory: the sensory memory,the working memory，and the long- term memory. Human memory actively selects the sensory datathat are to be processed， transforms the data into meaningful中国煤化工much ofthe information for later use. A set of control processes,gulates theflow of information from one stage to another.MHCNMHGBased on findings in the information theories， we can classify comprehension into threeinterrelated stages: percept ion, parsing，and utilization. Percept ion concerts translation fromsound to a word representation. Pars ing concerns translation from the word representation toa meaning representation. Util ization concerns the use to which the comprehender puts the meaningof the message.Listening is actually a complex, active cognitive activity. Listening to and unders tandinga spoken language can be described as a series of processes through which the sounds associatedwith a particular utterance are converted into meaning. In the act of transactional listening,listeners engage in a variety of mental processes in an effort to comprehend information fromoral texts， and employ different strategies during each of the three stages of listeningcomprehension，i. e. perception, parsing and utilization. .The first stage, the perception stage，is a stage of attending to stimuli. Listeners focustheir attention on the oral text and the sounds entering into the audi tory system of the listeners.They are retained in a sensory store called echoic memory or audi tory sensory memory. These soundsare initially recognized and identified into words. A major characteristic of audi tory sensorymemory is that duration is extremely limited. It' s been exper imented that information in audi torysensory memory can only be retained for no longer those 4 seconds. Thus, attention plays a crucialrole in selecting among the vast array of aural input for further processing. Many researchershave emphasized that the role of attention in listening comprehension process. We can considerlistening as a selective process and holds that“ what listeners decide to select for process ingis crucial for successful comprehension” .0' Mafey also notes that factors concern at tentiondur ing perceptual processing are fundamental for comprehension. To the beginners， whosecomprehension has not yet become an automatic process; attention is the primary resource at theirdisposal. It is through the process of attention that information is transferred from audi torysensory memory to working memory. Therefore， selecting strategies such as selective attentionare important because they enable listeners to focus their attention on information that arerelated to the current goals， so they can relieve the load of audi tory sensory memory.4Conclusion“Listening is a critical element in the language performance of second language learners,whether they are communicating at school, at work, or in the community Listening is used nearlytwice as much as speaking and four to five times as much as reading and writing”(Rivers, 1981).Yet listening remains one of the least unders tood processes in language learning despite therecognition of the critical role it plays both in communication and in language acquisition.Assisting learners in the development of listening comprehension is a challenge. It is a challenge .that demands both the teacher' s and the learner’ s attention because of the critical role thatlistening plays， not only in communication, but also in the acquisition of language. Know ledgeof the listening process and factors that affect listening enable teachers to select or createlistening texts and activities that meet the needs of the their ESL learners. Maybe our teachersshould involve these listening activities into the curriculum to create a balance that mirrorsthe real-world integration of listening with speaking， reading， and writing.Bibl iographyAbbott, G. & Wingard, P. (1985). The Teaching of EngI ish as an International Language: A Pract icalGuide. Great Britain.Gordon, R. D. (1985) Empathy: the state of the art and science. Irternot中国煤化工ence of the .World Communicat ion Association.MYHCNMH G