语篇长度对英语新闻听力任务难度的影响.pdfVIP

Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Rationale News listening has become increasingly important in college English instruction. College English Curriculum Requirements (2007) has stipulated that, at the basic level of requirements, students should be able to understand English radio and TV programs spoken at a speed of about 130 to 150 words per minute (wpm), grasping the main ideas and key points; at the intermediate level of requirements, students should generally be able to follow talks and lectures in English, to understand longer English radio and TV programs on familiar topics spoken at a speed of around 150 to 180 wpm, grasping the main ideas, key points and relevant details; at the advanced level of requirements, students should, by and large, be able to understand radio and TV programs produced in English-speaking countries and grasp the gist and key points. And many college teachers are already using authentic news reports produced by VOA, BBC, CNN, AP News, NPR and so on, as the listening materials for the students. Besides, the Internet-based College English Test Band 4 and 6 has increased the weighting of English news comprehension in its listening part, which imposes higher requirements on students’ English news listening abilities. Although the Internet is rich in English news resources, huge variations in the length of the news exist. For example, BBC has One-Minute World News; ABC produces News in 90 seconds; VOA, BBC and NPR have five-minute news consisting of three or more short news items; on the homepage of VOA and NPR, news of every length is available. Some language teachers choose shorter listening passages for students with the idea that longer ones may overload them. However, little research has been