【正文】 actice using one another’s language. Letters between penfriends are usually full of information about the writer’s own country: his own town, school, interests and so on. Penfriends often send one another stamps and coins and picture postcards of their own countries. The best place to find a penfriend is in a children’s magazine. Most magazines for young people list the names and addresses of children in different countries, who are looking for penfriends。 for example: John Smith, aged 14, living at 17 New Road, London, England, wants a penfriend in China. He is interested in collecting stamps and listening to music. Try to reduce students’ anxiety and make them be confident in listeningAlthough moderate pressure makes up part of students39。 motivation, evidence shows superfluous pressure can have bad effect on learners. So teachers should keep the class challenging while at the same time create an easy and happy input atmosphere to reduce their impediment or negative anxiety. Teacher should try their best to make students concentrate their attention on listening, which can avoid students fancying or thinking about other things while doing the listening work. Apart from that, for some students who are incapable in listening, they have no confidence or even fear of that. Selfconfidence is the psychological foundation on the way to success, it39。s more necessary to have it in learning a foreign language. It is natural that the confident and aspiring students usually can get good results, especially in speaking and listening. Sometimes teachers only give a little time for students to skim the questions and options before listening, and then go on to the next part of listening quickly. This certainly will make students bee nervous and eventually affect their prehension of the listening. Besides, the teacher should give students enough time to listen, and do not only pursue the speed and ignore the quality of the students’ study. Teachers should teach the students patiently and make sure the students could learn much knowledge during the English listening prehension. If teachers try to be patient with their students, the students will appreciate them and do their best on study. Explain the background knowledge and the difficult words if necessarySometimes students can’t understand the listening material on tape however many times the teacher plays the tape. In this case they are extremely anxious and depressed and may be ready to give up. On such occasions the teacher should only set easy and explain the background knowledge or the difficult words, For example,Thanksgiving Day is a holiday deserved in America。 the holiday is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. It es from an early history of America. The first settlers in America shared their first harvest with the hungry Indians and save many of them, and from then on Indians give thanks every year and the holiday is formed.This material is about Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated only in America and Canada. The majority of students may just know there is such a festival in America, but do not know the origin of it, thus teachers should try to tell them about the origin of the festival. After it, teachers surely can make students who are without the relevant background knowledge get rid of the anxiety and gain confidence in listening the material. Strengthen teaching of listening skillsIn listening prehension, the newlyheard sound will be kept for about one second in the echo memory, during which students match sound and word with linguistic knowledge and put the word in the shortterm memory. The function of shortterm memory is to remember the word until listener organize the word into sentence and grasp the idea of it, then clear up the memory of the word to keep another newheard information. If students try to remember each word and sentence, shortterm memory will be overloaded, and many words will be cleared up before being organized, thus they can just remember the last sentence they heard. So students should grasp some listening skills to improve their ability of listening. Make use of the questions and options before listening and predict the listening contentStudents should try to make full use of the time between the handing out of listening material and the playing of the material to skim the questions and the options fast. Then make efforts to predict the content of the listening materials, such as the time, place, people, figure, career, or the topic and purport. With such activities, students would gradually form the habit of making use of titles, topics or whatever clues to predict what was ing next. Only by doing so can they use their rich content and experiential knowledge to anticipate and predict what is going to be heard. It would be of great benefit for their listening prehension. For instance, look at the following questions. 1． What did the Frenchman e to England to do?A． To visit his friend. B． To study English.C． To read books.2． Where did the Frenchman live in England?A． Near a bird cage.B． In a language school.C． In an old lady’s home.3． What did the Frenchman often do in the morning?A． He sat in the garden.B． He saw the bird.C． He did some reading. 4． Where was the bird cage often hung in the morning?A． On the tree near the house.B． On the tree in the garden.C． Either on the tree in the garden or on the window upstairs.5． What happened to the old lady one morning?A． She dropped her cage.B． She went upstairs.C． She fell off the window.As long as students look at the questions and the options carefully before listening, they can predict the main idea of the listening. Then to listen with these questions in their mind they would easily catch the correct options. Catch the key point of the material, and make simple notes during listeningGenerally speaking