Abstract Listening is one of the four basic skills for English learners and listening teaching is also quite a challenge for teachers。 It is completely agreed on that top-down processing and bottom-up processing are two main ways of listening teaching。 Some scholars also claim that they should be used simultaneously。 But many teachers ignore students’ actual level and even still adhere to some traditional modes, which brings an unsatisfactory effect into listening teaching and even distracts from the teaching purpose。 Thus, pointing out the problems existing in current Huai’an junior high school English listening teaching, this paper aims at dealing with the bottom-up and top-down processing strategies in the listening teaching, and then discussing how to achieve appropriate application of the two strategies according to different levels of junior high school students。75191

Keywords: bottom- up processing; top- down processing; students’ level; listening teaching

摘要听力对英语学习者而言是四项基本技能之一，而且听力教学对教师来说也是一项颇具挑战性的任务。目前人们完全认可的两种听力教学策略主要是自上而下与自下而上，一些学者也主张这两种策略同时使用。但是，许多教师忽视了学生能力水平这一因素，而且甚至仍然采用传统模式,从而并没有获得令人满意的听力教学效果而且甚至偏离了教学目的。这篇论文指出了目前淮安初中英语听力教学中存在的种种问题，讨论这两种主要听力教学策略以及如何根据初中生的不同能力水平来达到这两种策略的合理运用。

毕业论文关键词：自下而上；自上而下；学生水平；听力教学

Contents

1。 Introduction 1

2。 Literature Review 2

2。1 Previous studies 2

2。2 Theoretical basis 2

2。3 The definition of bottom-up and top-down processing 3

3。 Problems of Huai’an Junior High School English Listening Teaching 4

4。 Case Study of the Two Processing Strategies 5

4。1 Application of bottom-up processing 6

4。2 Application of top-down processing 8

4。3 Combined application of top-down and bottom-up processing 10

4。4 Comparisons between traditional listening teaching and the two processing strategies 12

4。5 Summary 13

5。 Conclusion 14

Works Cited 16

Appendix 17

1。 Introduction 

Listening is one of the most important pathways of language input。 Compared with other skills，listening skill was often overlooked by foreign language learners because of its abstraction and difficulty。 There was a time when listening was thought to be taken for granted and can be formed automatically without voluntary attention because it was seen as a passive activity。 For instance, listening was presumed as a reflex and something like breathing process (Morley 24)论文网

But with the increasing international exchanges, people’s demand for foreign languages especially English has been sharply highlighted and English communicative competence also began to exert a deep impact on people’s life。 Meanwhile, people are also fully aware that listening, as a matter of fact, should be a process with a particular purpose rather than a passive one in language learning。 Listening, as same as reading, is a receptive skill while speaking and writing are productive processes。 Reception is the guarantee of achieving high-efficiency production。 In other word, learners are required to cultivate the listening input ability, which plays a vital function in language acquisition。 To seek the appropriate ways for teachers to improve students’ listening comprehension, there also has been a growing tendency to have some different research studies into the methods of listening teaching。 According to Buck, bottom-up processing view and the top-down processing view are involved in the listening process system which contains linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge。 The point that bottom-up processing and top-down processing strategies are fatal to listening comprehension is out of question。 So, teachers should go all out to lead students to these two ways of processing information, which was pointed out by Marc Helgesen in the book Practical English Language Teaching (Nunan 115)。 At the same time, some potential factors ought to be taken into consideration, especially learners’ level, an aspect that is often neglected。 Therefore, this thesis elaborates the two processing strategies, points out some problems of Huai’an junior high school listening teaching and analyzes proper application of bottom-up and top-down processing strategies according to student’s level, combining with listening teaching cases in a Huai’an junior high school, and finally draws a conclusion that bottom-up-based strategy is well suited to lower-level students while higher-level students remain flexibility in the use of the two processing strategies, not restricted to one of them。