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emorize something while listening, especially for some long passages. They often forget the preceding information that heard just now so that they cannot get the general idea of the listening text. The memory is a serious problem; it directly affects the listening comprehension. 4. Countermeasures to improve listening 4.1 Attach importance to spoken English Most students have never been exposed to spoken English before, so they tend to be insensitive to the features of spoken English such as liaison, stress, weakening, loss of plosive, assimilation, elision and so on. These features of spoken English made students feel that they have never heard English spoken like that, because their former teachers have never taught them to speak English in that way. To this problem, students should practice more reading in order to be sensitive to these phonetic phenomena. First of all they must get familiar with the phonetic symbols and correct the articulation of certain vowels and consonants with the help of their teachers. Only do this can they better recognize words and sentences correctly while listening. Secondly, students should do phonetic practices such as sounds discrimination, liaison, elision, loss of plosive, assimilation and so on so that they can master these features of spoken English. They also should understand the stress, rhythm and intonation of the words and sentences in the speech in order to get rid of the listening barriers in phonetics. Thirdly, they must be able to distinguish the differences between the British English and American English. For the English they learned before is British English; therefore, they will be at a loss when they meet the American English. Only know them clearly can they pave the way for listening comprehension. 4.1.1 Practice for sound discrimination When listening, teachers should help students distinguish differences between sounds. Do more practices so that they are sensitive to the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, as well as the tension of tongue and larynx, and able to distinguish some vowels and consonants. Practice in identifying each word in minimal pair set in context will help to develop the students’ listening capacity for phonological features. The students can be asked to listen to a number of sentences containing minimal pairs of words. They can either be asked to repeat the sentence aloud or write it down. For example, distinguishing between/ r/and / l/ in contexts as the following: (19). Uncle Tom always took the ⑴ wrong road. ⑵ wrong load. ⑶ long road. ⑷ long load. Besides the above practice, students can also do tongue twisters to distinguish sounds, such as “Five wives drank five bottles of fine wine.” 4.1.2 Practice for liaisons and incomplete plosives Many students are not familiar with liaisons and incomplete plosives in listening; we can develop students’ habits in listening to songs, because there are many liaisons and incomplete plosives in English song. If the students listen to English songs regularly, they will get used to liaisons and incomplete plosives. When they come across problems of this kind once again in their listening, they can deal with it skillfully. 4.1.3 Recognize stressed words to get the main ideas Stress of English is often put on the part that the speaker emphasizes. Stress may indicate the speaker’s purpose or attitude and in many cases it is