英語総合講座III-45　
HISAIZUMI TSURUO
久泉　鶴雄　		 4単位　
3〜4年　
後期　
Means and strategies to improve your listening comprehension of broadcast news in American English

CNN and ABC TV news on NHK satellite TV, and radio news programs such as Paul Harvey’s News and Commentary, the National Public Radio news, AFN local news, and announcements broadcast during station breaks on AFN, are recorded into a cassette tape and studied in full details in class and at home. The students are requested to acquire certain strategies to cope with the difficulty coming out of high speed in speech.
The hardest and the most important part of the class activities is the detailed study of perceptual problems in listening comprehension. The most outstanding difficulty to the speakers of Japanese is the sound changes in quickly spoken English.. Those changes result from reduced forms of function words, assimilation, linking of words, stress shifting, ellipses, and other changes which are less familiar to speakers of the Japanese language.
Don’t forget, however, that good comprehension will not come out if you solely concentrate on perceiving sounds of English without thinking of the meaning they are carrying. Therefore, recommend you to enter the world of sound exploration after checking the information or messages offered to you. For sure listening with good understanding must be your final goal.  

評価方法： (1) Attendance policy. If a student is absent from one 90-minute class period, he or she will lose 5% out of 100% grade points. If they are late for class they will lose 3%.
(2) Class participation: 50%. Students must prepare for the class participation at home by listening to the tape, by examining the meaning and usage of unfamiliar words and phrases, by interpreting parts of the news which they can manage to, and by transcribing whatever they can catch by intent listening. The degree of students’ preparation will be checked individually during the class and the evaluation will be recorded
(3) Quiz: 50%. A quiz will be given every Friday to check whether or not the students have completed the study of full details in the preceding class.
(4) Term-end exam. Those who fail to gain 60% by (1), (2), and (3) can be saved by this test if they can get more than 60 points out of 100, but the maximum grade point is not above 60.

テキスト名： Handouts／ Newspaper articles.

参考文献： Radio news program on AFN / International news programs on BS 1.

注意事項： Bring two 60-minute normal type cassette tapes to the first class in LL. Students need to have a strong motivation for comprehending broadcast news in English. Perseverance is highly requested to study spoken English in full details. 

授業計画――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
１．(1)Information on TV and radio news programs available. Listening to some samples. Recognition of news topics.
(2)Introduction to strong and weak forms of function words in English. Listening to the latest news in American English. What is the core, the central idea of each news story? Do you understand the headlines?
２．(3)What does each paragraph tell you? What does each sentence tell you? Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(4)Can you tell again the story of the news you’ve just listened to? Summarization of news in your own words. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
３．(5)After approximate understanding of the news you go into the details. Find out all the unclear parts of the expressions you’ tried to interpret. What are the causes of difficulty? . Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(6)Transcribe all the sentences in a given news item. Check whether or not you have completely understood the news. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
４．(7)Integrated skills in reading, listening, speaking, and writing will help you to make better your listening comprehension. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(8)Analysis of varieties of difficulties in listening comprehension. Common sense, background knowledge, cross-cultural information, difference in viewpoints, interference by your mother tongue, association difference in words, collocation, grammatical information will affect in the interpretation of difficult expression. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
５．(9)Stress, pitch, and juncture. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(10)Distinguishing one sentence from another. Study the pitch change in the end of a clause. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
６．(11)Strong and weak forms of conjunctions. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(12)The analysis of the inner structure of a clause will help you to distinguish one sentence from another. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
７．(13)Ellipsis. Pay attention to word endings when listening. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(14)How to cope with the problem of articles? Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
８．(15)The importance of studying a context to identify a dubious expression. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(16)Strong and weak forms of prepositions. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
９．(17)Strong and weak forms of auxiliaries in English. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(18)Strong and weak forms of pronouns in English. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
10．(19)Assimilation and other sound changes resulting from "linking", connection of a word ending with a word-initial vowel. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(20)Detailed study of articles in broadcast English. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
11．(21)Comparison of the weak forms of and, in, and an. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(22)Concentrated study on with. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
12．(23)Concentrated study on from. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(24)Concentrated study on the pronunciation of personal pronouns. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
13．(25)Sound patterns of a verb phrase beginning with a cluster of auxiliaries. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(26)Set expressions used in news broadcasting. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
14．(27)Making use of grammatical knowledge to cope with listening comprehension. Listen to some of the latest news in American English.
(28)Term-end examination.