tailieunhanh - Possible Strategies for Listening Comprehension: Applying the Concepts of Conversational Implicature and Adjacency Pairs to Understand Speaker Intention in the TOEFL Listening Section

Recently, reflecting the growing needs of young people who intend to become more competent in the English language and plan to go abroad for study and work, not only universities but also more high schools in Japan have started to conduct preparation courses for English proficiency tests such as TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), in addition to ordinary English classes. Also, the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT) has encouraged high schools to enhance students’ communicative competence in foreign language education so that they can. | Accents Asia Citation Matsuoka Y. 2009 . Possible strategies for listening comprehension Applying the concepts of conversational implicature and adjacency pairs to understand speaker intention in the TOEFL listening section. Accents Asia Online 3 2 27-56. Available http 3-2 Possible Strategies for Listening Comprehension Applying the Concepts of Conversational Implicature and Adjacency Pairs to Understand Speaker Intention in the TOEFL Listening Section Yaoko Matsuoka Introduction Recently reflecting the growing needs of young people who intend to become more competent in the English language and plan to go abroad for study and work not only universities but also more high schools in Japan have started to conduct preparation courses for English proficiency tests such as TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language and TOEIC Test of English for International Communication in addition to ordinary English classes. Also the Ministry of Education Sports Science and Technology in Japan MEXT has encouraged high schools to enhance students communicative competence in foreign language education so that they can play an active part in international society. I currently teach a preparation course using TOEFL ITP an assessment tool composed of previously administered TOEFL tests at a co-educational high school attached to a university in Tokyo. A pre-course questionnaire shows that many of the students who enrolled in this elective class are eager to improve their overall English ability especially listening and speaking and some of them are planning to study abroad in the near future. Furthermore according to the questionnaire many of the students expressed their preference of learning listening to reading and writing though they acknowledged listening is the skill most difficult to master. Listening is essential not only as a receptive skill but also to the development of spoken language proficiency Rost cited in Nunan and Miller 1995 and my .