IV. Answer the following questions briefly.
1. When listening to a piece of news, what should the listener focus his attention on?
2. Why is the interactional purpose of a language more associated with the top-down processing method?
3. What are some of the common activities in communicative practice?

V. Answer the following questions.
1. How can you get the students prepared and activate their background knowledge for better top-down processing?
2. What teaching activities can you do to apply the bottom-up processing to your class?

Suggested Answers:
I. 1.D 2.C 3.D 4.B 5.A
II. 1.attitude 2. ways 3.predict 4.target 5.top-down
III. 1-e; 2-d; 3-a; 4-b; 5-c
IV.
1. the event, time, place and result, etc.
2. because the contextual situation can help them understand the listening material.
3. self-introduction, interview, short speeches, role-play, retelling, story telling
V.
1. You can ask them to sit in groups of three or four to do some question-and- answer activities, or complete a chart, or read a related article, or have a warming-up chat with each other. Besides, you can give some visual supports, which could be accomplished through the use of photographs, maps, illustrations, filmstrips, or silent video, and the teacher's body language, such as gestures, facial expressions, eye contacts, physical performances, can also serve as visual support to present listening materials.
2. . a. identify the referents of pronouns used in a conversation
b. identify major constituents in a sentence
c. recognize time expressions and numbers in a discourse
d. distinguish between positive and negative statements
e. distinguish yes/no and wh-questions
f. recognize weak forms in a speech and so on

Comprehensive test 2 for Unit 5
I. Each question in this section consists of an incomplete statement and four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You are to complete each statement by choosing the most appropriate one from the given choices.
1. Language learners must employ a (an) ____thinking as they listen.
A. general B. comprehensive C. active D. Passive
2. Presentation involves the techniques in how to ____ .
A. prepare a teaching plan
B. design appropriate learning activities
C. stimulate students' interests
D. present the purposefully selected listening materials to the students
3.In bottom-up processing, students should pay special attention to ____ to gain accuracy in understanding an utterance.
A. grammar B. weak forms C. main idea D. specific facts
4. The ultimate goal of any language practice is to get students involved in ____.
A. real communication B. language training C. oral work D. paper work
5. In communicative practice, students' ____ should always be encouraged.
A. freedom B. originality C. creativeness D. motive

II. Fill in the blanks so as to complete the following statements.
1. Teachers must help their students develop active ____ for making sense of what they hear.
2. Bottom-up processing is to use the ____ aural message as a source of information.
3. Besides linguistic competence, a student's ____ knowledge also plays a very important role in listening comprehension.
4. Generally speaking, the interactional purpose of a language is more associated with the ____ processing method.
5. If a listener is unable to use top-down processing , an utterance or discourse may be ____.

III. Match the words/ statements in Column A with the definitions/techniques in Column B.

IV. Answer the following questions briefly.
1. What can serve as visual support to listening activities besides some concrete objects?
2. What is the difference between a real invitation and a closing sequence?
3. What is the basic principle for conducting communicative activities in listening?
VI. Answer the following questions.
1. What role does background knowledge play in listening comprehension? Illustrate it with an example.
2. What teaching activities can you do to apply the top-down processing to your class?

Suggested Answers:
I. 1.C 2.D 3.B 4.A 5.C
II. 1.strategies 2.incoming 3.background 4.top-down 5.incomprehensible
III. 1-e; 2-d; 3-b; 4-a; 5-c.
IV.
1. gestures, facial expressions , eye-contacts, physical performances
2. A real conversation should contain a specific event, time, place, and sometimes a reason, but a closing sequence just serves as a polite way to say good-bye.
3. The students, rather than the teacher, play the central role in listening activities.
V.
1. It is generally accepted that students can understand more easily those materials whose content they are familiar with. For instance, a Chinese student can understand better a material whose content is relevant to or closely associated with Chinese culture or customs. Thus, to design some tasks or activities, which can activate students' background knowledge, is another primary work of a teacher. The goals of these listening materials and activities are supposed to help students develop their ability to infer, say, the topic of a conversation, the relationship between people, the setting of an event, the implied details of a discourse, and the cause or effect of an event, etc. by making use of the background knowledge.
2. a. Listen to a conversation and infer the topic of the conversation.
b. Listen to a conversation and identify the setting.
c. Listen to a passage, then do some true or false questions and decide whether the information are mentioned or not.
d. Listen to a conversation and infer the relationship between people in a
situation.
e. Listen to one side of a conversation, say, a telephone conversation, and work out what the other speaker is saying.

Comprehensive test 3 for Unit 5
I. Each question in this section consists of an incomplete statement and four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You are to complete each statement by choosing the most appropriate one from the given choices.
1.It is vitally important for listeners to be engaged in ____and develop a desire to understand.
A. classroom activities B. the process of listening
B. assignments D. communication
2. Listening practice for junior high school students often begins with ____.
A. the distinguishing of similar sounds
B. teachers' explanation of the material
C. some pre-listening questions
D. some easy aural messages
3. It is generally accepted that students can understand more easily those material ____.
A. whose content they are unfamiliar with
B. which they have to know
C. whose content they are familiar with
D. beyond their linguistic competence
4. Students will find the listening activities more enjoyable and challenging if they combine listening with ____.
A. speaking B. the textbook C. other courses D. Translating
5. It is essential for teachers to make teaching activities as ____ to situation of real language use as possible.
A. close B. false C. similar D. different

II. Fill in the blanks so as to complete the following statements.
1.Listening ability is an important aspect of people's language ____ competence.
2. Like reading, listening is a path to the learning and ____ of language.
3. Pre-listening activities are almost equal to a "____"of the material to be heard in advance.
4. It is clear to any experienced English teacher that the combination of comprehension and ____ can increase the value of the listening activities.
5. Teachers should try their best to organize classes in ____ as much as possible.

III. Match the words/ statements in Column A with the definitions/techniques in Column B.

IV. Answer the following questions briefly.
1. What is your opinion on error correction in communicative practice?
2. What are the essential phonetic knowledge for a student?
3. Why is the transactional purpose more connected with the bottom-up processing?

V. Answer the following questions.
1. What is the interactional purpose of a language?
2. What are the transactional uses of language and what are the requirements of the transactional purpose?

Suggested Answers:
I. 1.B 2.A 3.C 4.A 5.A
II. 1.communicative 2.acquisition 3.skimming 4.production 5.English
III. 1-c; 2-d; 3-a; 4-b; 5-e.
IV.
1. a. error correction should be controlled
b. unsuitable correction would interrupt and even depress students
2.strong and weak forms, sound-linking, incomplete explosion,etc.
3.because listeners rely more on their linguistic competence
V.:
1. Interactional uses of language are those in which the primary purposes for communication are social. The emphasis is on creating harmonious interactions between participants rather than on communicating information. The goal for the participants is to make social interaction comfortable and non-threatening.
2. transactional: Transactional uses of language are those in which language is being used primarily for communicating information. In comparison with the vagueness of interactional language, transactional language requires accuracy, coherence, explicitness, directness, and confirmation that the message has been understood.