Nowadays, English is the leading international language of the world. Many communication methods in official, governmental activities and documents are in English. English is also included in the exam and college entrance examination. We can see that English plays an important role in daily learning. English Listening is the most important part of English teaching. It is an important skill to acquire language information and language experience. It is a necessary part to promote the development of students’ English comprehensive competence. Therefore, teachers and students should be pay large attention to listening in English study. The teaching of English listening combining with communicative approach is an excellent method for both teacher and students to study English more effectively. 源.自|吹冰,:论`文'网www.chuibin.com

2. Literature Review

In the late 1960s, linguists discovered the communicative approach. At that time, people began to question about the current teaching method. Linguistics who were British applied began to emphasize that language should be with potential of communicative and functional. In 1957, Noam Chomsky, as a famous linguist, published “Syntactic Structures”. It challenges the theory of structuralism and behaviorism, which long-term affects the teaching of language. He believes that the form “stimulus-response-reinforcement” of behaviorism can not explain people’s original use of language. Moreover, he believes that mastering a language does not mean as what structuralism perceived to master pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. Correspondingly, in 1971, the American anthropologist Hymes made a famous paper “On Communicative Competence”, which advocated concept of communicative competence. He believes that integrating language should include two other aspects: communication and language. Acquisition should emphasize both the knowledge of the language and the competence of using the language. That is to say acquisition should emphasize both the accuracy of the structure and the suitability of use. What’s more, some English educators such as H.G.. Widdowson and D.A. Wilkins, who are representatives of the Anglo-American countries, believe that popular Audio-lingual Method cannot effectively solve the problem of students’ communicative competence. They believe the center should focus on the teaching of English communicative ability, not just the mastery of structure. In 1976, H.G.. Widdowson formulated “Notional Syllabus” while D.A. Wilkins published “Teaching Language as Communicative” in 1978.

Krashen and Swain’ language input & output theory believes that “comprehensible input” is the only information source of the second language acquisition. The main task of the teaching of foreign language is to offer sufficient “comprehensible input” to learners. Optimal language input should include not only the language knowledge that learners have mastered, but also new language knowledge. They particularly emphasize the importance of language output. They believe that language output can not only improve the fluency of language express, but also make learners compensate on what they are learning and cause reflection with conscious, from which to make learners to use language more accurately.