【作者】 王洁；

【导师】 陈新仁； 王艳；

【作者基本信息】 南京大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2016， 硕士

【摘要】 作为日常交际的一个重要环节,听力理解的准确与否影响着整个交际的进行。而对于英语学习者,听力理解已不仅仅局限于实现日常交际,他们更加期望自己能在国际事务中有所承担,这对他们的听力理解能力是极大的挑战。英语专业四级新闻听力则是对这一能力的全面测试,而这一部分往往是考生失分最严重的。我们认为非常有必要探究导致这一现象的原因,以便为新闻听力的教学提供借鉴,使新闻材料更好地为二语领域研究者和学习者所用。基于以上研究背景,结合前人对影响二语听力理解的文本因素的探讨,本文首先从词汇、句法和语篇三个方面研究专业四级新闻听力的文本所具有的特征,在此基础上进一步探讨了专业四级新闻听力的文本特征与其理解的关系。针对上述问题,作者从2005年到2014年的英语专业四级新闻听力中选出30篇,然后利用相关软件将30篇新闻的词汇、句法和语篇的特征数据化。听完每篇新闻,受试者需要回答一个关于此新闻的话题熟悉度问卷和一道关于新闻的理解题目。为了使第一个研究问题的结果显得客观,作者将专业四级新闻的文本特征同前人所用的记叙文的文本特征作对比,发现在词汇方面,专业四级新闻的高频词较多,低频词较少;实词较多且实词的具体程度高;专有名词和学术名词较多;语块较少。在句法方面,专业四级较多使用简单句并在简单句的基础上通过添加形容词、副词修饰成分对句子进行扩展,较少使用从属结构;专业四级新闻使用形容词、副词修饰语较多,使得新闻文本的句子比记叙文的长。在语篇方面,专业四级新闻较少使用时间连词,导致句子之间的时间顺序不够明确;较多使用表增补关系的连词使句子之间存在较高的语义相近或相反的情况;因果连词使用较少导致句子之间的因果关系不够明确;相邻句子之间存在较多指代关系。为了回答第二个研究问题,作者运用社会科学统计软件SPSS将30篇新闻数据化后的文本特征和听者对新闻的理解作相关分析。结果发现,在实验探究的三类文本特征中,只有语篇特征与新闻的理解呈显著相关关系。具体来讲,语篇特征中的所有连词和表示时间顺序的连词与新闻的理解相关。这样的结果与作者的预期基本吻合。考虑到新闻文本的特征,作者又研究了背景知识与问题类型与新闻听力的关系,结果发现听者对所听新闻越熟悉,对其理解就越准确;其次,比起宏观题,听者更擅长回答细节_题。鉴于以上发现,作者总结出几点关于二语新闻听力教学的启示。教师应注重培养学生的语篇连贯意识,学生不应只停留在对新闻词汇和语法理解的层面,应理解整篇新闻的来龙去脉;其次,教师应引导学生注重知识,如时事新闻和百科知识的积累;再次,教师应注重提高学生的宏观理解能力,如篇章能力、对信息间逻辑关系的推理能力等。更多还原

【Abstract】 Listening comprehension plays an indispensable role in daily communication.For English major students,however,keeping basic English conversations is far from enough.They are in pursuit of higher challenge,that is,to be actively involved in international affairs,which can be approached via news broadcasts.In fact,news broadcasts have long been regarded as effective in improving second language learning,for which the comprehension of them is included in the test for English majors.This part,however,has always been reported to be a headache to most test-takers.In view of the above facts,it is highly necessary to explore the factors that cause difficulty in comprehending news broadcasts,to provide pedagogical implications for English practitioners and to ensure more effective use of news broadcasts.Given the above research background and previous research regarding the role of textual characteristics in second language listening,this study first examined the textual characteristics of the news broadcasts in TEM-4 across three levels,lexical,syntactic and discourse,then explored the role of textual characteristics in the listening comprehension of news broadcasts in TEM-4.Thirty news items were extracted from TEM-4 tests ranging from 2005 to 2014.The textual characteristics of the thirty news items were coded with the help of analytical tools.After listening to each news item,the participants were asked to answer a topic familiarity questionnaire and a listening comprehension question.To answer the first research question,comparisons were made between the textual characteristics of news broadcasts in TEM-4 and those of narratives used in a previous study.The lexical characteristics of news broadcasts include higher level of high-frequency words,larger proportion of content words,larger proportion of off-list words but less formulas.As for the syntactic characteristics,most sentences structures used in the news are extension of the basic sentence structure instead of complex sentence with subordinations,and there is a large number of modifiers per noun phrase contributing to longer average sentence length of news in contrast to that of narratives.As for the discourse characteristics,news broadcasts tend to be loosely-knitted in a time sequence with less temporals,and due to higher proportion of additives,there exist higher level of semantic similarity or dissimilarity between sentences in news.The cause and effect relationship among sentences is also vague,and there exist frequent anaphoric references in adjacent sentences in news.To answer the second research question,a series of correlations were run between textual characteristics and the score of listening comprehension.The study found that only discourse-level characteristics,specifically,all connectives and temporals,were related to participants’ listening comprehension performance.Considering the textual characteristics of news broadcasts,the researcher fiurther delved into the role of background knowledge and question type in the listening comprehension of news broadcasts and found that the more familiar they were with the topic of the news,the more precise their comprehension would be;and compared with global questions,participants answered local questions with more accuracy.Several pedagogical implications were drawn from the research findings:first,second language teachers are suggested to introduce to students the news broadcast as a cohesive whole instead of a basic lexical and syntactic construct;second,more background knowledge might be accumulated through comprehensive listening of news broadcasts;third,more efforts should be spent on improving students’ ability in synthesizing news broadcasts,such as working out the logical relations between sentences by making inference.更多还原