Step by Step 3000 第2册 Unit5:Creative Minds(4)

 　　Part 4. Short talks on listening skills.

　　Listen to the short talk entitled "Letting things go——speed and vocabulary".

　　Some important words are taken away from the written passage.

　　Supply the missing words.

　　Letting things go——speed and vocabulary.

　　Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks.

　　They feel that the utterances¹ disappear before they can sort them out.

　　Whereas, the words in a written text remain on the page where the reader can glance back at them or reexamine them thoroughly².

　　This frequently means that the students who are learning to listen cannot to keep up.

　　They are so busy working out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part.

　　Or they simply ignore a whole section because they fail to sort it out quickly enough.

　　Either a way, they fail.

　　Another difficulty is that the listener is not always in a position to get the speaker to repeat what has been said.

　　And of course, repeats cannot be asked for when listening to the radio or watching television.

　　Choice for vocabulary is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener.

　　Although in some circumstances, it is possible to stop the speaker and ask for clarification.

　　Sometimes, listeners can get the meaning of a word from its context.

　　But very often for people listening to a foreign language, an unknown word can be like a suddenly dropped barrier causing them to stop and think about the meaning of the word, and thus making them miss the next part of the speech.

　　In listening, it really is the case of "he who hesitates is lost".

　　Indeed, determination to listen to what is coming and letting things that have passed go, rather than dwelling³ upon them, often gives surprisingly good result.

　　Speakers often say things more than once, or rephrase them, or another speaker echoes what has been said.

　　The listener, who has not stopped, to dwell on a half missed point, gets a second, or even third chance to fill the gap in the message he or she is receiving.

　　In fact, when we listen, we actually listen with a purpose.

　　Although it is sometimes necessary to get detailed⁴ and specific information on the subject.

　　It is, more often than not, quite enough for us to grasp the key words and the main points.

　　Students need to develop the skill of keeping up with the speaker, even being ahead of the speaker.

　　Even if this means letting parts which they have failed to sort out pass.

　　Professor H. H. Stern says that the good language learner is the one who can tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of knowledge.

　　This is especially true of good listeners.

1 utterances   

n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论

参考例句：

• John Maynard Keynes used somewhat gnomic utterances in his General Theory. 约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在其《通论》中用了许多精辟言辞。 来自辞典例句
• Elsewhere, particularly in his more public utterances, Hawthorne speaks very differently. 在别的地方，特别是在比较公开的谈话里，霍桑讲的话则完全不同。 来自辞典例句

2 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

3 dwelling   

n.住宅，住所，寓所

参考例句：

• Those two men are dwelling with us.那两个人跟我们住在一起。
• He occupies a three-story dwelling place on the Park Street.他在派克街上有一幢3层楼的寓所。

4 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。