Three-Stage Theory of Listening Comprehension & Its Enlightenment for College English Listening Teaching

The listening process is a complex mental process of interaction of listener's linguistic knowledge,background knowledge and the acoustic signals of input. Listening comprehension is divided into three stages,namely language stage,cognitive stage and metacognitive stage. In listening comprehension teaching,teachers should start from the general laws of listening process,strengthen the teaching for the students on the three language elements(language,vocabulary,grammar),help students activate their related background knowledge in their own long-term memory,and guide students to use various strategies to improve their metacognitive awareness in listening comprehension,ultimately improve their English listening comprehension.