Listening Skills of VOA English Broadcasting (1)

Listening teaching practice shows that it is very important to master certain listening skills in order to listen to VOA radio special English, especially standard English, in addition to understanding the general situation of VOA programs, being familiar with the characteristics of broadcast news English and doing a lot of listening exercises. It is worth emphasizing that a lot of uninterrupted listening practice is the first, and learning and mastering the following skills is the second. Only by insisting on listening and using corresponding skills flexibly can we get twice the result with half the effort.

The following listening skills we are going to talk about mainly point out some problems that should be paid special attention to in the listening process, and emphatically introduce some solutions.

1. Get ready to listen to VOA English.

Psychological preparation, or mental preparation, for listening to VOA English radio mainly includes the following two aspects.

On the one hand, beginners must understand that listening to VOA English radio is very different from listening to ordinary tapes. The main difference is that if you listen to English tapes, you can listen to them repeatedly until you understand them, and many tapes have written materials, so you can look them up if you really don't understand them. In addition, learners can also ask teachers, classmates or colleagues around them for advice. However, listening to VOA English radio is completely different. The content of the broadcast is fleeting, and learners can only passively accept it. If they are not recorded, the sound cannot be reproduced. Therefore, the listener can't stop at a certain point to think repeatedly, nor can he listen repeatedly like a tape, or even compare it with written materials. Moreover, the general English teaching tapes belong to language and stories, while English news broadcast is to spread the global news and current affairs that have just happened or are happening to the audience at any time. Therefore, beginners will inevitably encounter or miss some new words or information in the process of listening. At this time, they should listen to the broadcast in time, otherwise more information and even the whole news will disappear.

On the other hand, learners should pay attention to overcoming the psychological state of being afraid of not understanding and the fear of hearing difficulties at the beginning. People who have just started listening to English radio always want to concentrate, but the more they want to concentrate, the more they don't understand. This is because you are too nervous to concentrate, but you will be distracted because you don't understand. So it is necessary and necessary to relax properly before listening. Try to concentrate and don't feel too nervous. After listening for a period of time, learners may still feel very tired, which is also natural. As long as you build up confidence, persist for a period of time and look back, you will find that your standing posture has made a qualitative leap unconsciously. Practice has proved that most people who have the ability to listen to VOA standard English have a hard experience. Therefore, as long as we make up our minds and persevere, it is entirely possible to listen to VOA standard English news broadcasts for free.

2. How can I hear the ideal sound effect?

The sound effect (mainly clarity) of VOA English broadcasting directly affects beginners' listening enthusiasm. China is located in East Asia. All English broadcasts of VOA to East Asia and Southeast Asia can be heard by listeners in most parts of China. However, due to the vast territory of China, the time and wavelength at which listeners in different parts of China can hear the effect (i.e. strong signal and low noise) are not consistent. In addition, the "small environment" around the audience, including the weather, will also have a significant impact on the listening effect. If there are other electromagnetic waves not too far from the radio, or the audience is surrounded by mountains or tall buildings, and there is no suitable antenna, the listening effect will definitely be unsatisfactory. Therefore, listeners need to adapt to local conditions. Voice of America is the international radio station of the American government, which broadcasts to all countries in the world in two bands: medium wave and short wave. (For details, please refer to the VOA broadcast time frequency table in the data center) But in China, most of them can only receive short-wave radio programs. In order to get a better listening effect, listeners must know and be familiar with the frequency and band range of VOA radio station, and combine their own objective conditions to properly tune and fix a certain frequency range in order to hear a better effect.

3. Be familiar with the schedule of VOA English radio programs.

From the previous introduction, we know that there are more than 30 VOA English radio programs, and 15 frequencies are used every day. If you want to listen to your favorite programs on time purposefully and selectively according to your different listening levels and professional hobbies, you must be familiar with their broadcast schedule and understand the corresponding relationship between program time and frequency use. (For details, please refer to the VOA broadcast time frequency table in the data center. )

Regarding the above-mentioned program arrangement and frequency arrangement, the following points need to be explained:

(1) Voice of America uses Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to tell the time. All times in the above table refer to this standard time, and this time plus eight hours is Beijing standard time, but the week or date used in the table or in the actual broadcast is consistent with the time of the audience.

(2)VOA Radio divides a year into two periods according to the changing rules of seasons and the length of days and nights, namely, April to September (the days are long and the nights are short in summer and autumn) and June 10 to March of the following year (the days are short and the nights are long in winter and spring), and adjusts the start time and end time in advance or later to provide convenience for listeners. Therefore, the start time and stop time of VOA radio in these two periods are different.

(3) The above is the program time frequency table of the station from June of that year 10 to March of the following year, which is relatively stable. However, radio stations often adjust and improve due to special circumstances or needs, so the time, frequency and programs in the table will change locally at any time. This requires listeners to be familiar with relatively fixed programs and frequency tables, but also insist on listening, so as to keep up with various new changes in radio stations and listen to their favorite programs in time and accurately.

(4) As can be seen from the frequency table above, radio stations use as many as eight or as few as five frequencies in a certain broadcast time, and the weather conditions affecting ionization in the atmosphere are changing at any time, resulting in different listening effects on the same frequency every day. This requires the audience to make a trial selection every time according to the time listed in the table and its corresponding frequency (mainly in the range of 9.4-2 1.85 MHz of shortwave 2). On the other hand, the changes of seasons and weather have certain regularity, and the geographical location and environment of the audience are relatively stable. Therefore, most of us can find 2-4 frequencies with satisfactory results and relatively fixed positions in shortwave 2 through repeated trial acquisition practice according to our own situation.

4. Familiar with the common expressions of VOA English broadcasting.

The lingua franca of VOA English broadcast runs through the whole radio broadcast. It is like a link to organically connect the programs of the whole day, and has many functions, such as telegraph signal, time-telling, program introduction, program preview, various notifications, announcement of the end of broadcasting and so on. On the surface, it belongs to topic programs, which are actually equivalent to abstracts and indexes of books, periodicals and newspapers, and play an important role in guiding listeners how to listen. On the other hand, common words have their own characteristics in vocabulary, speech speed and grammar, so it is also one of the difficulties for beginners to listen. To this end, we will introduce the main commonly used expressions and some other typical expressions of VOA Radio during the day as follows:

After the ending song, the announcer usually broadcasts the following sentence: This is the voice of America, Washington, D.C. Welcome to watch (VOA Radio broadcasts from Washington, D.C.). Washington D.C. in the sentence is the abbreviation of Washington D.C., which is translated into "Washington D.C.", that is, Washington, the capital, to distinguish it from Washington State; Sign the contract! It means "the broadcast begins". Every time the clock strikes the hour, you can hear the announcer's voice: It's 0: 00 GMT, and this is the news from VOA. I'm Bill Hansen in Washington. (Just now, it was 0: 00 GMT. Please listen to the news program of VOA. Bill Hansen will report to you in Washington. )

Another example: It's 23: 00 GMT, and this is the news from VOA. I'm John Trembling from Washington. This sentence has the same meaning as the previous one. Please pay attention to the pronunciation of time in these two sentences.

In addition, Special English tells the time every half hour, but there is no chime. For example, it's 2230 GMT. This is VOA from Washington. This is the news in Special English. 2230 in the sentence is read as 22 hours thick.