New criteria for English courses puts forward that students should master basic knowledge of language, develop listening, speaking, reading, writing skills and cultivate the ability to communicate with others in English. Teaching aims for junior high school also point out that among the four essential skills, listening and speaking are most fundamental and important. Unfortunately, teachers often adapt traditional teaching methods, emphasizing the analysis of grammar construction, explanation and repeated rigid exercises, neglecting the training of listening and speaking, which not only disobey the “students centered” teaching principle, but also break the regular pattern of English teaching. In addition, some English teachers may have problems in pronouncing English words. For example, they have more or less accent when they speak English, which will affect the students’ listening and speaking ability. Take ZhouKou city in Henan province for example, the author finds that there are many English training institutions in Zhoukou, nearly all these part-time English teachers more or less have accent when they speak English. This is especially true in the central and western areas of China where the economy is not as developed as that of the eastern area. Obviously, this situation does not adapt to the increasing demand for the fluent and standard English.
Besides, there are three main problems in English learning in middle school. Firstly, the phenomenon of “dumb English” is usual. Quite a number of students are able to speak simple sentences, but they can not express their thoughts clearly and fluently. Actually, in English class only do those excellent and outgoing students dare to speaking English loudly and communicate with teachers freely, but those mediocre and introverted students who are unwilling to talk to others and also are afraid to be laughed and criticized by teachers. Secondly, “deaf English” phenomenon is very serious. Many students complain that although they can understand what teachers say in the class, they can not comprehend listening material purport. Thirdly, some students are not interested in English. The main reason is that they can not understand what teachers teach in the class, gradually they fell bored towards English. Finally they lost the interest and give it up.
With the development of science and technology, multimedia technology is widely used in English teaching. Due to the introduction of multimedia, English listening and speaking course enters a new space for development. Under network environment, the integration of multimedia technology and English curriculum changes the presentation of teaching contents, teaching methods, and the way of interaction, which promotes students’ capacity of solving complex problems in the real context, and enhances students’ overall quality to improve the efficiency of English class.
II. Network Environment and Multimedia Technology
2.1 The Definition of Network Environment
Network environment concludes the text, sound and figure, image and animation based on the multimedia technology, which also contains hypermedia techniques formed by these media. It also refers to visual environment which takes sharing resources and communicating with each other as major purpose. It is changing with the advance of high science and technologies, especially with the progress of information technology.
2.2 Application of Multimedia in English Listening and Speaking Teaching
At present, multimedia technology is widely used in English teaching, which plays an important role in the improvement of listening and speaking ability. As for the definition of multimedia, different experts have different opinions.
Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary defines the multimedia technology as “the transmission that combines media of communication or human-computer interaction involving text, graphics, voice, and video, often includes concepts from hypertext.” Now, let us see the multimedia assisted language learning together. Lock, Abrams and Many (1994) point out that “multimedia is the latest form of technology which allows information to be relayed by two or more media in a multi-textual environment using texts, graphics, sound, animation and video, capable of producing an output that appeals to the different sensory.” 网络环境下初中英语听说能力的培养(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_10212.html