Listening Skills and English Teaching【Abstract】 Listening plays an important role in foreign language learning.Among the four skills （listening， speaking， reading and writing） ， it is considered the most important ability in English learning. This paper points out the chief factors which influence students listening level and offers some approaches to improve their listening comprehension. 【Key words】English， ； obstacle； listening skills； strategies 1.Introduction The importance of mastering listening skills and improving listening comprehension has been widely accepted. Traditionally， if the students can not catch the meaning after listening，usually the teacher encourages students in time before providing the students with correct answer and asks them to do much practice after class. Such listening is by no means an effective way to radically improve students listening comprehension.It gives no instruction on how to do listening training ， but just test the students listening ability.Therefore， the major targets are to find more effective listening teaching methods and enable students to become more competent listeners. This thesis presents some useful listening skills to promote students listening comprehension. 2. The main difficulties students encounter and the solutions in listening We know that there are many factors influencing students listening comprehension. But I think the following six factors are the most obvious ones： A. New words The appearance of new words in listening turns out to be the biggest obstacle. Further investigation shows that for most of the time the new words are not virtually new words. They may help students build up vocabulary and develop strategies for guessing the meaning of the word from context and background knowledge.（Su Yuan lian，2003） B. Anxiety while listening Of all the major difficulties students encounter in listening， anxiety comes second. This obstacle is bad for students performance indirectly and directly. It is is bad for their performance and reduces their participation， which will cause loss of confidence and motivation in the long run. Many students will fell frustrated when they come across new words and phrases， and fail to figure out the meaning. “Human comprehension actually does not function in the way that requires us to catch every bit of information.”（Brown， 2001）Teacher should guide students to face the difficult tasks， and assist them to recover confidence after setbacks. In addition， teacher should make the students fully aware of the fact that language anxiety can be transient. Self-talk and self-monitoring might solve this problem. C.Unfamiliar topic Unfamiliar topics are also identified as a factor causing comprehension problems. To broaden their horizons by reading widely is an effective step. A brief introduction to the related background knowledge before listening is also a good way to deal with this problem.（Su Yuan-lian， 2003） D. Forgetting what they hear too quickly Some students often complain that they forget what they hear too quickly. Creating mental linkages by relating new information to concepts in memory，or relating one piece of to another and visual imagery will help help memorize what they hear. 3. The listening skills in English teaching The analysis of the obstacles and the methods above may help students overcome their major difficulties in doing listening activities. Next， I will give a brief introduction to some listening skills，hoping ，that help improve their listening comprehension. A.Phonetics skill The students should learn phonetic knowledge and do some training at the very beginning. （1）Words link together（liaison） If a word ends in a consonant and the next starts with a vowel，the words link together. The ending constant jumps over to the next word， which is called liaison. （2）Vowel weaken （the central vowel） The vowel in the function words become weak. That is， the vowels are changed into central vowel， the unstressed vowel. They are weak and pronounced lightly， which make them difficulty to catch. （3）Assimilation Sometimes phonetic changes in a speech sound when it becomes similar to another sound next to it. There is assimilation between would and you in the sentence “Would you like to go with us？”. （4）Elision It is the act of leaving out the sound of part of a word when you are pronouncing it.，as in well， dont， and lets. （5）Ellipsis It indicates （grammar） leaving out a word or words from a sentence when the meaning can be understood without it or them. The sentence “ He is dead and I alive.” contains an ellipsis， i.e. “ am ”. B.Strategies in listening （1） listening for key words Key words and phrases understand the general idea. Students When students are doing listening practice ， they must take notes and write down key words like persons name， place name， year， age， price，time， numeral， etc. In addition， Some signal words such as however， although， because， first， befo