摘  要

随着我国社会发展和经济建设对人才的新要求，英语交流的能力逐渐成为衡量人才的一个重要标准。为了顺应全球一体化的发展，要想成为国际公民外语素养在其中起着至关重要的作用。而听力理解在听说读写四项英语基本技能中有着不可替代的作用。与此同时，在国内大规模推行各类英语考试的大前提下，听力的重要性也日渐凸显。本文在开头部分阐述了我国英语学习现状以及学习英语存在的问题，之后以在全世界范围内受众面最广的英语水平测试-——托福为依托，意图研究听力在英语学习中的中的重要性。同时，也提出一些针对听力提高的有效方法。

关键词：托福；听力；重要性

Abstract

In order to satisfy the development of society and economy and meet the needs for talents in China, the great ability of English communication has gradually become one of the significant standards to measure the talents. With the development of globalization, having a good master of English is the foundation for the one who wants to be successful. Among the four basic English skills, listening plays an irreplaceable role. At the same time, since more and more large-scaled English examinations have been held in the national range, the importance of listening becomes much greater than before. This thesis presents the current situation of English learning in China and the problems existing in English learning. Then, it aims to analyze the importance of listening in the study of English, based on the TOEFL which is ranked as the most welcomed English ability test system. Meanwhile, it suggests some useful methods to improve listening.

Key words: TOEFL; listening; importance

1 Introduction
This paper aims to put the importance of listening and discuss the current situation of English learning. Also, the TOEFL, as the examination which has appealed more than one million people on average every year, will be focused and analyzed in this paper. From this thesis, the English learners can have a clear idea about what listening is and the role of listening in English learning.
1.1 The importance of English
The changes of social life and the globalization of the economy make the significance of English soaring in a remarkable position. English as the most important of information carrier has become the most widely used language in the various fields of human life. According to 1986 statistics, there are nearly 400 million native English-speaking people in the world; almost among every ten people there is one person speaking English. The people from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries speak English. About 20 countries in the world have English as the official language or second language. In other words, among every five people in the world, at least one person, to some extent, is able to speak English. If the number of the English-learning students is counted, the total number of people who can speak English will be much bigger than we can image.