(SKKN 2022) Improving 11th form students listening comprehension through modified listening fasks on the textbook English 11 at Tinhgia4 upper secondary school

For the above reasons, especially for the researcher’s desire to help her students better at listening, the choice of the study entitled “Improving 11 th form students’ listening compreh

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 1

1.3 Scope of the study 1

1.4 Research questions, methods and instruments 2

2 Content 2

2.1 Theoretical background of listening skill 2

2.2 English teaching and learning at Tinh Gia 4 Upper Secondary School 2 2.3 Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT 3

2.4 Data analysis and findings 3

2.4.1 Initial data 3

2.4.1.1 Results from pre-listening test 3

2.4.1.2 Results from pre-action stage observations 4

2.4.1.3 Results from students’ questionnaire 1 5

2.4.1.3.1 Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competence

5 2.4.1.3.2 Students’ opinions about listening tasks in English 11 5

2.4.1.3.3 Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 6

2.4.1.3.4 Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to their listening competence 6

2.4.1.3.5 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 6

2.4.1.3.6 Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks 7

2.4.2 Results from document analysis 7

2.4.2.1 English 11 7

2.4.2.2 Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 7

2.4.3 Conclusion 9

2.4.3.1 The hypothesis 9

2.5 Data collected in the action stage 10

2.5.1 Results from action stage observations 10

2.5.2 Results from Questionnaire 2 10

2.5.3 Results from teaching diaries 11

2.5.4 Results from post-test 12

2.5.5 Summary of major findings and discussions 12

2.5.5.1 The unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook and its effects on students’ listening comprehension 12

2.5.5.2 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 13

2.5.5.3 Modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension 13

3 Conclusions and recommendations 13

3.1 Conclusions 13

3.2 Recommendations 14

3.3 Limitations of the study 15

3.4 Suggestions for further study 15 References

Appendices

Appendix 1: Pre-test

Appendix 2: Điều tra nghiên cứu

Appendix 3: Phiếu điều tra nghiên cứu

Appendix 4: Observation sheet

Appendix 5: Teaching diary

Appendix 6: Post - test

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

- EFL: English as a foreign language

- AR: Action research

- TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

1 Introduction

1.1 Rationale for the study

The years 2006, 2007 and 2008 marked a milestone in the ways ofteaching and learning English when the Ministry of Education and Training(MOET) introduced the new sets of English textbook English 10, English 11 andEnglish 12 to school curriculum The aim of MOET is to develop students’communicative competence so as to meet the demand of integration andglobalization That is the reason why in the new textbooks, four skills includingreading, speaking, listening and writing are put in priority and integrated

Of the four skills mentioned above, listening is considered to be the mostchallenging one Most students find it hard to master this skill and soon feelbored with listening periods The reasons for this are various, such asuninteresting topics, fast speed, students' poor pronunciation or lack ofbackground knowledge and cultural understanding

Eleven graders at Tinh Gia 4 upper secondary school have encounteredsuch a lot of difficulties when dealing with listening lessons However, aftereighteen years of teaching English 11, I also discover that the listening tasksthemselves are also a factor affecting students’ listening comprehension

It is obvious that suitable tasks make students more interested in thelistening passages and then help them develop their listening skills.Inappropriate tasks, on the contrary, can demotivate students In listeningsections of English 11, some tasks are too difficult or too long and some areboring In this case, it is necessary for teachers to modify listening tasks to makethe tasks more suitable and interesting for learners, even though it is not an easyjob for the teacher as modifying tasks means having to take many things intoaccounts such as the objectives, the criteria or the student’s needs However, forthe benefit of students, it is worth doing so

For the above reasons, especially for the researcher’s desire to help her

students better at listening, the choice of the study entitled “Improving 11 th form students’ listening comprehension through modified listening tasks of the textbook English 11 at Tinh Gia 4 upper secondary school, Nghi Son” is not

accidental

1.2 Aims of the study

The main purpose of this research is to study the effects of modifiedlistening tasks of English 11 on improving 11th form students’ listeningcomprehension at Tinh Gia 4 Upper Secondary School The specific objectives

of the study are:

 To investigate students’ attitudes towards listening tasks in English 11and the difficulties they face

 To study whether the modified listening tasks could help studentsimprove their listening comprehension

1.3 Scope of the study

Due to the limited knowledge, energy and time, the researcher wasunable to carry out the investigation on a large scale This action research was

only conducted for only 8 weeks with the four listening lessons and in thecontext of 42 eleventh-grade students at Tinh Gia 4 upper secondary school inthe academic year 2021-2022 only Hence, the results of the study is onlylimited to the above teaching context and participants.

1.4 Research questions, methods and instruments

In the attempt to achieve the afore-mentioned aims, the following researchquestions are formulated so as to gather necessary information and data:

i) What is the level of the 11th graders’ English listening skill, and

what difficulties they may face with in listening? Why?

ii) What makes listening lessons in English 11 difficult and why?iii) What additional activities can be designed to help the students

address those difficulties?

To seek answers to the three research questions above, I will applythe following methods and instruments:

Question 1:

- Interviewing a number of 11th graders to find out what difficulties theyexpect to encounter in listening lessons in the 11th grade and causes ofthose difficulties;

- Discussing with English teachers at my school to gather more information

on difficulties 11th graders have faced with, or may have to face with, andtheir causes Part of the information from teacher discussions will alsohelp answer question 2 below

Question 2:

Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in English 11 toidentify problems and their possible causes, including new words,pronunciation, speed, intonation, etc

Question 3:

Designing supplementary activities and modifying listening tasks to helpaddress the difficulties identified so that listening tasks are easier, more suitableand interesting to the students

2 Content

2.1 Theoretical background of listening skill

In our daily life, outside the classroom, listening is used twice as often asspeaking, which in turn is used twice as much as reading and writing (River,1981) Inside classroom, the two often used skills are listening and speaking(Brown, 1994) Therefore, listening plays an important role in the processes oflearning and communication essential to productive participation in life

In short, no matter how variously listening is defined, it is obvious thatlistening is the most important skill for learning to speak a language It provides

a foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development

2.2 English teaching and learning at Tinh Gia 4 Upper Secondary School

As you know, Tinh Gia 4 Upper Secondary School is located in a coastalarea Thus its English teaching and learning has several difficulties Firstly, the

class size far exceeds the standard number for a language class, withapproximately or more 40 students each Secondly, the number of technology-aided classrooms is very limited; therefore, teachers cannot apply electroniclessons to the extent that they desire for Moreover students’ motivation inlearning foreign language is quite weak, especially listening skill Finally, there

is lack of visual aids such as pictures and portable boards from the school.Thus, the teachers and students are not offered the most convenient andmodern environment to the teaching and learning of English

2.3 Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT

CLT underpins the design of English Textbook 11, so the structure ofeach unit includes four skills: reading, speaking, listeningand writing Linguisticknowledge such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar areconsidered the means

and condition to form and improve communicative ability In fact, the

learner-centered approach is also adapted in order to promote students' activeness and

creativeness, in which teachers act as theorganizer and facilitator in the class

The content of the book is theme-based, with 16 units covering different

topicswhich were contextualized to be suited to Vietnamese students Further,

learning is task-based, with the activities are designed in the way in which

students are offered opportunities to interact and co-operate

In English Textbook 11, Listening is the most challenging and importantskill in each unit It is put after two other skills due to its productive nature anddependence on input from other skills In the 11th grade, students are expected towork on a variety of listening tasks, each of which goes with a particular topic

2.4 Data analysis and findings

This section, first of all, analyzes the initial data collected from pre –listening test, questionnaires and teaching diaries Then, the hypothesis andplanning and action phases are presented Finally, the researcher discusses thetechniques used for supplementary listening activities and modifying listeningtasks as well his attempts to evaluate the action research

2.4.1 Initial data

2.4.1.1 Results from pre-listening test

As stated in Chapter 2, on the first day of week 2 students would do a test

to measure their level

Below are the results of the test

Table 1: Results of the pre-test

Marks Marks 1-2 Marks 3-4 Marks 5-6 Marks 7-8 Marks

students were quite weak at listening skill Students need to be helped toimprove this skill.

2.4.1.2 Results from pre-action stage observations

At pre-action stage, the researcher taught Unit 1 (Friendship) and Unit 2(Personal experiences) with non-modified tasks The lessons were observed byanother teacher During the observations, this teacher took notes and gave thetotal marks of students’ involvement in the tasks in the two periods Thefollowing is the description of one lesson:

ask about their best friends in 4 minutes After calling one pair to ask and

answer in front of the class, the teacher introduced the lesson (Today we will

listen to two monologues of Lan and Long They are talking about their best friends) Before students listened to the passages to complete the tasks, teacher

introduced some words and phrases Then students continued the lesson withtask 1 deciding True/False statements They were asked to work individually,run through the 11 sentences in task 1 and underline the key words Thenteacher played the tape twice

After that, the teacher asked students to give answers However, few of themhad all the answers Some even paid no attention to the task The teacherstopped by each sentence for checking

Students, then, came to task 2 in which they had to take notes of what Lanand Long like about their friends and how and where they met The teacheragain played the tape twice However, this task seemed to be difficult forstudents as almost no student noted down anything The teacher had to providehelp The lesson flew slowly

Finally, the teacher gave some cues and asked students to work in pairs totalk about Lan’s and Long’s best friends

Here are the results from the observations First, it should be mentionedthat the observation sheet had six items, but during unit 1 and 2 the observeronly used four items to observe students’ involvement in the tasks The highestmark for each item was 5 and the highest mark for the whole class in each lessonwas 20 The highest total mark for the observations during two lessons was 40

Below are the concrete results:

Table 2: Students’ involvement in the tasks

(Friendship) (Personal experiences) Unit 2

involvement in the tasks

It can be seen from the table that level of students’ involvement in the

tasks was quite low In Unit 1 (Friendship), the percent of students who involved in the tasks accounted for 40%, while in Unit 2 (Personal experiences)

was a bit higher with 45% This figures showed that more than half of thestudents paid no attention to studying listening They barely participated in thelessons This may be resulted from two main reasons: the first one, maybe, isthat the tasks themselves are uninteresting; the second one is probably due tostudents’ low level of listening competence

2.4.1.3 Results from students’ questionnaire 1

2.4.1.3.1 Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competence

(Questions 1 and 2)

When answering the first question about their evaluation about learninglistening skill, most of the students (96 %) admit that learning listening skill isdifficult, even extremely difficult

Regarding to students’ self-evaluation about their own listeningcomprehension ability, only 1 out of 42 students confidently said that herlistening ability was very good; whereas 78% thought that they were very bad atlistening In listening lessons, they almost hear nothing

2.4.1.3.2 Students’ opinions about listening tasks in

English 11

(Questions 3, 4 and 5)

When answering the question how often they completed listening tasks inlistening lessons, 2% of the students said that they always completed listeningtasks, 14% often finished, but 84% sometimes could finish the tasks The resultalso showed that 66% of the students confirmed that kinds of listening task inthe textbook were not very diversified

Question No 4 tried to seek the frequency of listening tasks in listening

lessons The results are clearly presented in the table below:

Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons

Decidin

g T/F stateme nts (%)

Numberin

g the pictures (%)

Multiple choice questions (%)

Completing missing information

in the table/

charts (%)

Ticking the things you hear (%)

As can be seen that the most frequently used tasks in listening lessons areanswering open-ended questions Filling missing words and deciding T/Fstatements rank second with 24% for each kind Such kinds of task asnumbering the pictures, multiple choice questions and ticking the things you

hear are sometimes present Only the tasks of completing the missinginformation in the table/charts are rarely used The information in this table onceagain confirmed that listening tasks in English 11 are not very plentiful.

2.4.1.3.3 Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11

Question No 6 examines students’ feelings when doing listening tasks inEnglish 11 The results can be seen in the following table:

Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11

Very interested

(%) Interested (%) Normal (%) Bored (%) Very bored (%)

When asked to express their feeling when doing listening tasks in English

11, the majority of the students (accounting for 54%) said they felt very boredwith the listening tasks in the textbook 38% of them felt normal and only asmall number of students were interested in the tasks

It is obvious that listening tasks in the textbook dissatisfy most of thestudents, which can not motivate students to participate in the lessons as well asnot to encourage them to develop their listening skill

2.4.1.3.4 Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to their listening competence

Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks

Very effective

(%) Effective (%) Not clear (%) Ineffective (%)

Table 5 presents that only 6% and 8 % of the students thought that

listening tasks in the textbook were very effective and effective, while 34% of

them spoke that they were not clear whether the tasks could help them improvetheir listening comprehension Especially, 52% believed that their ability forlistening comprehension was not improved They claimed that the tasks weretotally ineffective

2.4.1.3.5 Students’ preferences for listening tasks

Question 8 was used to collect information about the listening tasks thatstudents preferred The results are shown in the table below:

Table 6: Students’ preferences for listening tasks

Deciding T/F statement s (%)

Numberin

g the pictures (%)

Multiple choice question s (%)

Completin

g missing informatio

n in the table/

charts (%)

Tickin

g the things you hear (%)

According to the information in the table, the most preferred listening task

is multiple choice questions The next one is tasks with filling missing words.Tasks of deciding T/F statements rank third Followings are such kinds of tasks

as ticking the things you hear and completing missing information in the

table/charts respectively The least favorite one is answering open-ended questions.

2.4.1.3.6 Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks

Table 7: Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks

In what way does your teacher teach listening tasks in the Textbook?

Most of the students said that their teacher always follows the given tasks

in the textbook without any adapting, while 16% stated that the teacher usuallymodifies listening tasks to help them listen better and 8% admitted that theirteacher occasionally replaces the difficult tasks for easier ones These figuresclearly show that most of the teachers still depend too much on the textbook.They hardly have any changes to fit their students’ level

2.4.2 Results from document analysis

2.4.2.1 English 11

English 11 was officially in use in the year 2007 It is developed from atheme-based syllabus Like English 10, English 11 consists of 16 units Eachunit presents a topic as shown in the below table:

Table 8: Topics in English 11

2 Personal experiences 10 Nature in danger

4 Volunteer work 12 The Asian Games

7 World population 15 Space Conquest

8 Celebrations 16 The wonders of the worldThere are five parts in each unit arranged as follow: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language focus Each part starts with the items: pre-activities, while-activities and post-activities with a variety of activities and tasks All the tasks and activities are designed to help students develop

communicative competence

2.4.2.2 Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11

For listening sections in English 11, the main aim is to help studentsimprove their listening comprehension relating to the topics of the units.Therefore, all the activities and tasks are designed with the hope of achievingthis goal fully

Normally, a listening section consists of two tasks Task 1 often involvesfilling in the gap, deciding True/False statements or choosing the best answer.Task 2 often deals with comprehension questions The table below shows moreclearly types of listening tasks in English 11:

Table 9: Types of listening task in English 11

True/False statements Multiple choice

True/False statements True/False statements

True/False statements Multiple choice

questionsComprehension

Gap-filling Multiple choice

questionsComprehension

questions Comprehensionquestions

Multiple choicequestions True/False statementsComprehension

True/False statements True/False statementsComprehension

questions Comprehensionquestions

Multiple choicequestions True/False statementsComprehension

questions Comprehensionquestions

Task 1Task 2Task 1

Task 2 ComprehensionTicking ComprehensionGap-filling

questions questions

As can be seen from the table, listening tasks in this textbook are not

various in forms and styles There are always repetitive tasks such as deciding

on True/False statements or comprehension questions, which can lead to

students’ boredom in listening lessons

In addition, when perusing these tasks, it appears that not all the tasks aresuitable with students’ background and knowledge, especially, with students in

an area like Nghi Son

For example, in Unit 3 (A party) although the listening topic is quite

familiar; task 2 is too long with seven comprehension questions, not to mention

some questions which can cause students’ difficulties in answering

In Unit 4 (Volunteer work) the listening passage is about a special school

named Spring School in Ho Chi Minh City It can be certain that most of thestudents have never heard about this school before Besides that when dealing

with task 2, students can meet difficulties in answering question 3 (Why do

children participate in fund-raising performances?) and question 5 (Why are foreign volunteers needed?) as to get answers, students must listen to very long

sentences, which require them to have good skills of remembering and takingnotes

In short, despite some good points, listening tasks in English 11 are notreally diversified Some tasks seem not to be appropriate as they do not fitstudents’ level This unsuitability of the original tasks might lead to the boredomand then affect students’ listening comprehension

2.4.3 Conclusion

The data analysis at the initial stage of this research clearly shows thatmost students are not very interested in doing listening tasks in English 11 Infact, they feel very bored with the repetitive tasks and believe that these taskshardly help them improve their listening competence It is due to theunsuitability of the original tasks which discourages students from engaging in

listening Then the answer for the first research question ‘What makes students

uninterested in listening lessons?’ was found out.

Furthermore, basing on collected data, the researcher can draw out somecauses of unsuitability of the original listening tasks First of all, some originaltasks are beyond students’ knowledge and competence Secondly, some tasksare too long Finally, the repetition of some kinds of task can not attractstudents’ attention

them more appropriate and interesting to students when they deal with listeninglessons.

2.5 Data collected in the action stage

2.5.1 Results from action stage observations

In the action stage, the researcher applied modified listening tasks in threelistening lessons (Unit 3, 4 and 7) Three observation sheets were completed by

a colleague teacher The sheet included six items, the highest mark for each itemwas 5, the highest mark of the whole class in each lesson was 30 and the highestmark for three observed lessons was 90

Table 10 shows score for students’ involvement in tasks:

Table 10: Students’ involvement in tasks

up to 76.7% Obviously, modified listening tasks increased students’ interest inlearning listening However, the average percentage of students’ involvement intasks in three lessons (71.1%) was not so high as it is expected There weresome students uninterested in modified listening tasks This encourages theresearcher to continue adjusting modified listening tasks so as to increasestudents’ participation in the lessons

2.5.2 Results from Questionnaire 2

Questionnaire 2 (Appendix 2) was delivered to each student after finishing each lesson during three weeks (from week 4 to week 7) to see how students

evaluate the modified listening tasks

The total number of questionnaires collected during three lessons was

150 The questionnaire had four items and highest mark for each item was 5, thetotal score for a questionnaire was 20 and the total score of the whole class was1000

The results of the questionnaire were illustrated in the table below:

Table 11: Students’ evaluation about modified listening tasks

population)