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the listener makes deductionsand seeks for optimal relevance through those clues offered by stimulus. To haveaccurately understanding of ostensive-inferential communication, three conceptsshould be explained clearly: informative intention, communicative intention andostensive stimulus (Meng, 2002).Sperber and Wilson define informative intention as: to make manifest or moremanifest to the audience a set of assumptions (2001:58). Taking a simply example,students A asks students B “when shall we have class tomorrow?” and B answers “teno’clock”. In this case, B is the expresser of intention information. In relevance theory,informative intention is accounted as the behavior that the speaker expressesinformation or further information to listeners.
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Chapter Three THE APPLICATION OF COGNITIVE CONTEXT IN ENGLISHLISTENING COMPREHENSION........ 35
3.1 Optimal Relevance in English Listening Comprehension....36
3.2 Maximal Relevance in English Listening Comprehension.......... 37
3.2 Script Knowledge Activated by Ostensive-stimuls in English Listening......... 38
3.3 Psychological Schema in the English Listening Comprehension.......40
3.4 Socio-psychological Representation in the English Listening Comprehension...........41
Chapter Four IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH LISTENING TEACHING........... 44
4.1 Major Problems in English Listening Comprehension......... 44
4.2 Implications for English Listening Teaching...........47

Chapter FourIMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH LISTENING TEACHING

4.1 Major Problems in English Listening Comprehension
From the perspective of cognitive context, there are three majors problems inlistening comprehension.The first problem is inconspicuous manifestation. As far asthe speaker concerned, it is clear that the manifestation stimulus he expressed shouldclearly and understandable. Inconspicuous manifestation means that the listeningmaterial is difficult to understand and the listener should pay much processing effortsto find the right answer. During listening process, once stimulated by signals fromrecording, the listener activates related contextual knowledge to find the optimalrelevance in materials. However, in many cases, looking for optimal relevance is not asimple matter for the reason that the stimulation signal is sometimes not very clear orseveral stimulation signals in same materials mislead understanding of listeners.Through comparison, only paragraph B mentions the keyword 'research' inabove question, therefore, listeners’ efforts have been focused on this paragraph.However, in this question, most students do not give the right answers because thespeaker (listening materials) tends to express more than one stimulus signals.(paragraphs B contains three stimulus signals: AIS scientists work across a number ofsports; applying skills learned in one to others; they all focus on one aim: winning.)The listener should select one he considered the most appropriate stimulus signals inorder to most effectively meet the communicative intention. When the listener can notfind the manifest information which consistent with inference target (a reason fornarrowing the scope of research activity), he can not decide the inference directionthus weakening the contextual effect. Because listening is a kind of specialcommunication, listeners can not change the speaker’s (recording) words, therefore, ifthe listener wants to