Chunyan Shao (Shandong University)

A person who does know English is a miserable guy cut from the rest of the world, because English is the most popular language spoken throughout the world. Fully aware of the importance of English, our government requires that English should be included in College Entrance Examination. However, listening is reported to be cancelled from the year 2014 in CEE. It is actually unwise for people to make such a rash decision.

The first time I met my spoken English teacher, I liked her. She was a very nice teacher from Australia. She spoke very slowly so that we could all follow her. I felt that English listening is easy. However, we had a new spoken English teacher next year, and he is from USA. He speaks very fast and it was really hard for me to follow him. I felt anxious about my oral English and was always afraid of going to classes. These experiences tell me how important listening comprehension is. It is one of the essential skills in language learning. However, people are considering cancelling it from CEE, which I strongly object.

When I was in High School, listening comprehension was always a nightmare for me. I hated it and suffered from it. I had been hoping that one day it would be excluded from CEE. Fortunately, there is such a determination nowadays. That is, some provinces are considering cancelling it, which I think is a wise decision.

Do you still remember how sweet it was to listen to the wonderful music in the early morning about English listening comprehension? Do you still remember those diversified accents on the radio? DO you still remember how excited we were when we understood a word spoken by a news announcer on the radio? Listening is one essential part of English learning, but some provinces are cancelling it, which I disagree.

There are many controversies concerning listening comprehension. For a country, which pursues development by cultivating intellectuals, excluding listening is not reasonable. Intellectuals of the time aim at all-around development, and listening is a key to both intellectual and national development. It will do harm to the students if listening is excluded. It is an ability for people to learn and communicate. There is a possibility that most students will ignore listening if it is excluded. We should stay with it.

According to the American professor Paul Rankin’s survey, listening accounts for 45% in people’s daily language activities, with speaking 30%, reading 16% and writing only 9%. These statistics fully prove that listening plays an important role in the language communication. Therefore, most high school play a high value on listening comprehension, which has even been added into University Entrance Examination. In the context of globalization in the world, it has been proved that having well-developed listening skills is of far-reaching significance.

But does this effort, which is including listening comprehension into university entrance examination, really do much goods as expected? Students’ phobia of listening comprehension and low level of listening skill deny this. With high standard of listening comprehension exam and inadequate listening resource, students have been burdening overmuch pressure.

Consequently, listening comprehension has been, in a sense, reduced to an obstacle that has to be overcome in the way towards the dreaming universities. So, nowadays, many people in different fields hold the opinion that it’s better to exclude listening from CEE while implement outer proposals in developing students’ listening skills.

If a person wants to drive a car, he needs to use his two hands to steer and his feet to put on the brakes. Can someone imagine that a man without hands or feet could drive masterfully? The answer is likely to be negative. Similarly, when learning a language, how can one expect to have a good command of it if he quits listening? However, a new policy, which signals the end of decades of listening comprehension test in CEE seems to challenge this idea. Although several explanations have been put forward to provide ample justification for this policy, this essay would like to refute these arguments from different prospects and prove the irrationality of the cancellation.

Historically, almost every adjustment of social policy is based on an explicit objective, holding a moral high ground. Affirmative movement in America aimed at eliminating discrimination while the reform and open policy in China contributed to economic development. In general, educational reformation has a long endeavor to the equality of educational opportunity as well as the educational balance of regions.

With an original purpose of equal education, a new adjustment of educational policy was made. Listening comprehension, a fundamental part in the English test of CEE, is going to be cancelled. Without any practical experiences, the operation of this adjustment presents the characteristic of uncertainty, which affect both obviously and implicitly on educational system, language learners and examinees.

Nowadays, acquiring a foreign language has become more and more popular in such an interconnected world of globalization. Particularly, English, as an international language, plays an important role in multi-national communication and cooperation. Therefore, learning English has become almost an necessary mission for the students of many countries, and there is no exception with China.

However, there will be more Chinese students, who cannot follow the foreigners words and communicate with them freely, just because listening comprehension will be excluded from CEE. That has absolutely aroused some opposite voice believing that this decision seems to be unwise in improving students’ language skills, companies’ competitiveness, as well as governments’ administration.

Have you ever taken an English listening comprehension test in the College Entrance Examination (CEE)? In most provinces of China, this test is an essential part for high school graduates to complete. Since the CEE is the biggest examination held only once-a-year, it matters to millions of students and their families, every point is vital, because it directly determines which college you can go, one more point may send you to a better one, but one more lose may destroy your hope for entering a Top 10 university.

The Exam also indirectly influence your future, generally speaking, a Top 10 university graduate is more likely to enter the higher level of the society, whether in China or America. Therefore, every policy concerns the CEE makes it a big social issue, for it may bring some chances for the students who struggle in the sea of endless studying materials. The policy of including the listening comprehension test in the CEE has been going for several years, but recently there has raised some objections against it, meanwhile a heated discussion has been held nationwide about whether to exclude it from the CEE or not. On behalf of me myself, I am determined to veto the exclusion.

Thesis statement: Fine.General statements: Introduce the general topicAttract readers’ attentionBut it cannot be too general to mean

anything. It has to be relevant to the topic. It cannot be too far from the topic to

make any sense.

Two parts of the topic sentenceThe topic names the subject of the

paragraph. The controlling idea limits or controls

the topic to a specific area that you can discuss in the space of a single paragraph. E.g.:

Immigrants have contributed many delicious foods to U.S. cuisine.

1. Driving on free ways requires skill and alertness.

2. The Caribbean island of Trinidad attracts tourists because of its calypso music.

3. Special beaches make Puerto Rico a tourist paradise.

4. Moving away from home can be a stressful experience for young people.

5. Participating in class discussions is a problem for several different groups of students.

6. It is an expensive luxury to own an automobile in a large city.

Paragraph

Essay

Topic sentence

SubjectGeneral statement Opening

paragraphControlli

ng ideaThesis statement

The definition you gave about College Entrance Examination

When you define an item, you group that item into a category and this category is often as far as you can go.

Three parts: item, category and features.

Item category

features

A forsythia

is a flowering shrub

with yellow bell-shapedblossoms.

Herbivores

are animals

which feed on plants.

Change is a type of process

which involves passing fromone state or phase to another.

Examining the topic “Excluding English Listening from CEE” What can serve as the background? CEE? English? Cancellation? Answers to the question lead to different

categories. CEE: English as a criterion of selection Language: English as a medium of communication Cancellation: English as a change to the old

system of examination

The different perspective you took in the discussion of “Listening excluded”?

Students, employers, companies, universities, high schools, etc.

Perspective not only in terms of the people involved, but also the different aspects of the issue, such as CEE, language, cancellation.

Different categories lead to different general statements.

CEE: English as a criterion of selection Focus on the importance of English as a criterion

of selection for both students and universities Language: English as a medium of communication Focus on the importance of English as a

communicative medium for individuals and employers

Cancellation: as a change to the present system Focus on the impact of the change to the existing

system.

Did you confuse the three points?Cancellation as a change to the

present system of listening which represents one essential part of the medium for communication and also the essential criterion to select students?

What is the focus of your essay?

1. CEE as a criterion

2. English as a language

3. Cancellation as a change

Finish your opening paragraph before Friday

On Friday: 1. Group reading2. Group discussion3. Final revision and submission