Using songs to encourage grade 10 schoolers to learn listening skill at Thuong Xuan 3 high school

Using songs to encourage grade 10 schoolers to learn listening skill at Thuong Xuan 3 high school THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THUONG XUAN 3 HIGH SCHOOL THE INITIATIVE FROM TEACHING EXPERIENCE “USING SONGS TO ENCOURAGE GRADE 10 SCHOOLERS TO LEARN LISTENING SKILL AT THUONG XUAN 3 HIGH SCHOOL” Teacher’s full name Cầm Thị Hương Position Teacher The initiative of Teaching English THANH HOÁ 2017 SangKienKinhNghiem net Table of contents 1 Introduction 1 1 1 Rationale 1 1 2 Aims of th[.]

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

THUONG XUAN 3 HIGH SCHOOL

THE INITIATIVE FROM TEACHING EXPERIENCE

“USING SONGS TO ENCOURAGE GRADE 10 SCHOOLERS

TO LEARN LISTENING SKILL AT THUONG XUAN 3 HIGH

SCHOOL”

Teacher’s full name: Cầm Thị Hương

Position : Teacher

The initiative of : Teaching English

THANH HOÁ 2017

Table of contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the study 1

1.3 The population of the study 2

1.4 The methodology 2

2 Content 2

2.1 theoretical background 2

2.1.1 Listening skill 2

2.1.2 Songs 3

2.2 The real situation before emplementing songs in teaching listening skill 4 2.2.1 Research settings 4

2.2.2 Students’ attitude and their difficulties in listening lessons 4

2.3 The solution of the problem 7

2.3.1 The seven-step process of the Action Research 7

Table 2.1 The integration of songs 8

2.3.2 Some teachniques in teaching listening skill 8

2.4 The findings 9

2.4.1 Results of students’ survey questionnaire B: Teachers and students’ attitudes toward the implement of English song 9

Table 2.2 Mean Values of questionnaire variable: “Students’ attitude towards the application of songs in the class” 10

2.4.2 Findings from interviews 11

2.4.3 Findings from classroom observation 12

2.4.4 Discussion 12

3 Conclusion and implication 13

3.1 Conclusion 13

3.2 Implications for effective listening lessons 14

3.3 Some considerations and suggestions on using English songs 14

REFERENCES 16

1 Introduction

1.1 Rationale

Regarded as an international language, English is spoken in most parts of the world - and is considered the principle means of communication among the trade, diplomatic, and airline communities English has been a compulsory subject among Vietnamese students for many years Teaching English in Vietnam will help our students take advantage of globalization, and teachers are always seeking ways to improve their techniques for more effective lesson plans and higher cognitive retention among their students at all levels As a teacher of English at a high school, the author constantly faces the many problems inherent

in helping students absorb and apply a foreign language Of primary importance

is teaching listening skill, which is a topic of much debate among researchers In English textbooks for Vietnamese upper secondary school students, listening is one of the four skills that students have to learn Listening is one of the fundamental language skills, and crucial in the development of the second language competence It is essential for language teachers to help their students become effective listeners By developing their ability to listen well, we develop our students' ability to become more independent learners, as by hearing accurately they are much more likely to be able to reproduce accurately, refine their understanding of grammar and develop their own vocabulary

However, among the listening lessons in textbooks for Vietnamese secondary students that I have taught, lessons are long and complicated, and contain needless repetition that is boring rather than inspiring to students Therefore, many of the students seem not to be interested in the listening lessons They have low motivation to study This problem is the foundation of

my thesis, and I address how to teach listening comprehension more attractively and effectively, so that more students will want to learn In this thesis, the author demonstrated the use of songs, and examined their effectiveness in opening the textbook’s content in such a way as to increase 10th grade students’ motivation

to listen and enjoy English Learners observations and student surveys were collected to determine the effectiveness of using these new techniques The results of this research will promote a new plan for using English songs to help teachers with teaching listening comprehension (with greater student enjoyment and retention) It is hoped that using English songs will be an effective technique for teaching listening in high schools in Viet Nam and elsewhere

1.2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

- Investigating the attitudes of the grade 10 students at Thuong Xuan 3 high school towards listening skill before implementing the use of songs in teaching listening

- Selecting and using English songs in teaching English listening to the grade 10 students at Thuong Xuan 3 high school

- Evaluating the effectiveness of applying English songs in encouraging grade 10 schoolers to learn listening skill at Thuong Xuan 3 high school to provide implications for English language teaching

1.3 The population of the study

Applying English songs in the class may bring about many benefits in terms of effective grammar learning, listening, pronunciation, and it can be implemented at different classes However, in this research, we would like to focus on the use of English songs in teaching listening and the participants are only students of grade 10 at Thuong Xuan 3 high school, Thuong Xuan district There are 40 grade 10 schoolers involving in this study They take part in the listening lesson with the use of songs and do the questionnaire

All the teachers of English in Thuong Xuan 3 high school, aged twenty-three to thirty-one years old, also take part in my study They shared their advantages and disadvantages of teaching Engish listening here and observed

my class to find out if the song using have positive effects on the learners’ attitudes towards listening lessons

1.4 The methodology

To fulfill the above aims, qualitative and quantitative method was chosen for the study All comments, remarks, assumptions and conclusion of the study were based on the observation, data and analysis Data collections for analysis in this study were gained though the following resources:

- Survey questionnaires;

- Interview;

- observation;

2 Content

2.1 theoretical background

2.1.1 Listening skill

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), listening is a receptive skill

along side with reading skills and the role of listeners is no longer passive but active

Listening skill plays a very importance role in foreign language teaching,

which is emphasized by Rost (1994) as the following:

Firstly, Listening provides input for the learner so it is vital in the language classroom Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin

Secondly, listening is the decisional factor of the success of the interaction Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner Since the learners must interact to achieve understanding, access to speakers of the language is essential Moreover, learners’ failure to understand the language they hear is impetus, not an obstacle, to interaction and learning

Thirdly, Listening lessons contain authentic language, which presents a challenge for the learner to attempt to understand language as it is actually used

by native speakers

Finally, Listening exercises provide teachers with a means for drawing learners’ attention to new forms (vocabulary, grammar, interaction patterns) in the language

In real teaching and learning, listening skill seems to be the most difficult

skill to be acquired by students of the four language basic English language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) According to Underwood (1989), there are seven problems in listening skill that students may encounter: (1) lack

of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (2) not being able to get things repeated; (3) the listener’s limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate and (7) established learning habit

From the students’ dificultties in mastering listening lessons, the educators organizing the teaching ang learning process should plan their listening lesson to encourage their learners to take part in the listening lessons positively

2.1.2 Songs

According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (2000, p.412), song is

“a short piece of music with words that you sing” It may be written for one or several voices and it is generally performed with instrument accompaniment Songs are part of daily life for most people The benefits of songs inELT have been well-documented by a myriad researchers The benificial roles os song using are revealed as the following:

Firstly, motivation is one of the things that can be gained by using songs in foreign language classroom Rogers (1999) found that “the use of songs creates

an atmosphere of interest in the study of English and can lead from a “teacher centered” to a “student centered” class Using music can lift the atmosphere in class, or develop a non-threatening classroom atmosphere, bring in a boost of energy and capture the children’s attention Besides, English songs can motivate them in their quest to learn English

Secondly, songs can be catchy and re-usable Songs are catchy and fun and ESL students will feel happy to hear them many times till they can sing along If teacher plays the recording of a dialogue the second time, students may get bored with it However, songs can be reused without making students become fed up with listening

Thirdly, songs related to cultural aspects could be chosen to present to students about social situations, historical events, geographical descriptions, and others The use of songs, according to Jolly (1975), gives students the opportunity to acquire a greater understanding of the culture underlying the target language

Besides, songs can help students remember vocabulary, grammatical structures and aid in comprehending the general meaning

In short, songs are proved tobe an effective tool for language teacher to enhance their learners to master the foreign language

2.2 The real situation before emplementing songs in teaching listening skill

2.2.1 Research settings

Thuong Xuan 3 High School has been founded for several years Though the school’s Board of Directors have always encouraged and supported the teaching and learning of the English Language at our school, the facilities for learning English, such as computers and projectors are very poor Therefore, there are many problems which need to be solved: The books and materials for students are limited Additionally, the students have no opportunities to practice English with native speakers- vital to anyone trying to improve their listening as well as verbal skills

Besides, In Thuong Xuan 3 upper secondary school, there are five teachers of English, aged twenty-three to thirty-one years old As rural teachers, they have few opportunities to upgrade their teaching skills, and the school does not have the resources to provide them with modern teaching aids and materials to help their work However, despite some disadvantages, they have been successful teachers- not only developing their own language skills, but improving their teaching methods There is an atmosphere of collegiality and support among the faculty and administrators, and we often share our teaching experiences in the hope that we can learn from each other

Most of the students in Thuong Xuan Upper Secondary School are living in the surrounding rural areas Our students are required to study 13 compulsory subjects, so they spend little time learning English, and their skills are weak Though they have been studying English for many years, their focus has been on learning syntax and grammar so they can pass regular examinations Moreover, because their parents are farmers who never use English in their daily lives, the students receive little encouragement at home to develop vital communication skills As a result, most of the students do not know what they are studying English for- except to pass their exams Although they know it is important to learn English in the modern life, they become bored with learning it In each class, there are only a few students really learning English- and it is those few who are interested in learning it The majority of the students usually forget most the things they have learned as soon as their testing period is over Once the students lose their motivation for learning, the quality of their classroom experience rapidly declines

2.2.2 Students’ attitude and their difficulties in listening lessons

The student’s survey questionnaire “A” was constructed with 3 questions The data collected is presented- along with answers from each of the 40 students who responded

This data provided a baseline of the student’s attitude towards their English language listening lessons, as well as their perceived difficulties After the students received their instructions, they put up privacy folders to block field-of-view from other students

4% 9%

50%

37%

Very intersed Rather interested Little interested Not interested at all

Question 1: What do you think about the listening lesson in the text book?

7,5%

62,5%

5%

5%

20%

Normal Interesting Difficult Boring Others

Figure 2.1 Opinions about the reading lessons

The chart in Figure 2.1 shows that about 25 of the 40 student-responders thought that the listening lesson are difficult, while 16 students said that they are boring At the same time, only four students agreed that the content

of the listening lesson is normal Only 7.5% of the students expressed the opinion that the listening lesson were interesting Further, four of the students thought that the listening lesson in the textbook did not relate to their life experiences

Question 2: How interested do you feel in listening lessons?

Question 2 was designed to discover how interested the students are in the listening lessons When asked about their interest in listening English in class, only 4% of students said they are very interested, with an additional 9% who indicated that they were somewhat interested

By contrast, 50% of the students revealed that they are not interested at all, with a further 37% indicating that they are only slightly interested These are dismal results

Figure 2.2: Students’ enjoyment to the listening lessons

In conclusion, students overwhelmingly lack interest in the material or find

it too hard This data reveals that the students’ motivation in listening lesson is very low If they do not like learning, they will not progress in the skill level and their language education will be lost This is both the challenge and the opportunity for the teachers to develop interesting methods of instruction to elevate the students’ motivation and interest in learning English

Question 3: What is difficult about the listening lessons?

฀ it is difficult to understand the main idea of the listening

lesson

35/40

87.5%

฀ it is difficult to understand the details of the listening lesson 37/40 92.5%

฀ doing listening tasks (answering questions, gap-filling ) 28/40 70%

฀ the topic is too difficult for my level of background

knowledge

20/40

50%

Table 2.1: Factors that negatively impact student’s listening

As we can see from the table, Question 3 focuses on the student’s expressed negative factors that impact their listening lesson - that is, the subjective elements that they think and feel Results were predicable: When the students responded whether they had any difficulties in English listening lesson, most of them say “yes” However, they had an opportunity to quantify their responses: Question 3 also includes the reasons why the students find listening lesson difficult

The statistical data shows that 67.5% of the students expressed that the longer listening lesson, the harder time they had understanding the whole text 90% of the students give the opinion that the factors which make the listening lesson difficult is that there are too many new words More importantly, 87.5%

of the students agree that it is difficult to understand the main idea of the listening lesson, and a further 92.5% find it hard to catch the detail of such a large section of text

About 50% of the students state that the topics chosen by the authors of the listening lesson pick subject with which the students have no prior background knowledge It would be better if the authors chose familiar subjects (ideally by interviewing students to learn what they know and like) In addition, Almost three-quarters of respondents (70%) have difficulty completing required tasks such as answering the questions

In summary, the data reveals that the students have no or very little interest

in learning listening lessons This data will allow teachers to search for (and adopt) tools which will overcome these many problems English song using will help in this regard

2.3 The solution of the problem

2.3.1 The seven-step process of the Action Research

My research focused on using songs to to facilitate our students’ listening learning, and we used songs by planning our lessons in the form of an action research with two cycles of a ‘spiral of cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting’ (Kemmis, 1988, p.168), which involves the seven-step process (Sagor, 2000) These seven steps, which become an endless cycle for the inquiring teacher, are the following:

Step 1: Selecting a Focus

This first step is vitally important because the action research process begins with serious reflection directed toward identifying a topic or topics worthy of a busy teacher's time Selecting a focus begins with the teacher

researcher or the team of action researchers asking: What element(s) of our

practice or what aspect of student learning do we wish to investigate?

Step 2: Clarifying Theories

The second step involves identifying the values, beliefs, and theoretical perspectives the researchers hold relating to their focus

Step 3: Identifying Research Questions

Once a focus area has been selected and the researcher's perspectives and beliefs about that focus have been clarified, the next step is to generate a set of personally meaningful research questions to guide the inquiry

Step 4: Collecting Data

Professional educators always want their instructional decisions to be based

on the best possible data Action researchers can accomplish this by making sure

that the data used to justify their actions are valid (meaning the information represents what the researchers say it does) and reliable (meaning the

researchers are confident about the accuracy of their data) Lastly, before data are used to make teaching decisions, teachers must be confident that the lessons drawn from the data align with any unique characteristics of their classroom or school

Step 5: Analyzing Data

Step 6: Reporting Results

Step 7: Taking Informed Action

When teachers write lesson plans or develop academic programs, they are engaged in the action planning process What makes action planning particularly satisfying for the teacher researcher is that with each piece of data uncovered (about teaching or student learning) the educator will feel greater confidence in the wisdom of the next steps

In this study, after identifying the topic ““Using songs to encourage grade

10 schoolers to learn listening skill at Thuong Xuan 3 high school”, we

identified two variables and two research questions The data would be selected

by both qualitative and quantitative methods Then we selected three English songs which related to the topics of three units in textbook These songs were

taught together with the lessons The three selected songs were integrated into the lessons as follows:

Unit 13: Films and cinema "My heart will go on "

Unit 14: World cup “The cup of life”

Table 2.1 The integration of songs

2.3.2 Some teachniques in teaching listening skill

There are several techniques that can be done by teachers when teaching listening in the classroom, including :

(1) Filling the Gap: This technique can be done by way of emptying a few

words in a paragraph or dialogue Ask students to listen to text spoken by the teacher or the tape and fill that empty words are

Example:

Listen and fill one suitable word in each gap below:

If I got (1)………on my knees and I pleaded with you

If I crossed a million oceans just to be with you (2)…… you ever let me down?

If I climbed the highest (3)………… just to hold you tight

If I said that I would love you every single night Would you ever let me down?

Well I'm sorry if it sounds kinda (4)………, it's just that

Worried, so worried, that you let me down.

Because I love you, love you Love you, so don't let me down

(2) Picture Guessing: This technique can be done by guessing the image

according to an oral text that was read or heard

Example: What do these pictures relate to?