(SKKN 2022) the effectiveness of using pictures to improve listening skill for the 11th form students

I found outthat listening stages are very important in teaching listening and it also hassignificant effects on the students’ listening performance.. To foster the students’ listening co

A INTRODUCTION

I RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

Nowadays English has become more and more important part in Vietnamand it is an international language Therefore, it has been taught in Vietnamfrom primary schools to high schools as a compulsory subject Although Englishundoubtedly plays an important role in Vietnamese society, and everyone seems

to be eager to master English However, the truth is so surprising Most of thestudents are reluctant to study English because it is a compulsory subject inschool Therefore, they are afraid of learning English Only few of the studentswho are in the major classes find it necessary and interesting to master English,but the thing they are interested in is grammar only As a result, they are ratherweak at the 4 skills, especially listening

I have been teaching English at Nguyen Quan Nho high school for manyyears and of course I always try my best to teach English effectively I found outthat listening stages are very important in teaching listening and it also hassignificant effects on the students’ listening performance However, I haveencountered a lot of difficulties due to the level of the students, and we haven’tfound any effective solution yet, which makes me think a lot I am now incharge of teaching English in grade 11 During my teaching time, I have foundthat my students have many difficulties in listening as I have mentioned above

No matter how effective listening activities themselves can be, teachers andstudents are still facing obstacles in the lesson The first, compared to Readingcomprehension, Listening comprehension is considered more difficult forlearners in foreign language setting because there are more factors such as therate of speech, speaker’s accent or the cultural content of the talk that listenerscan’t control The second, according to the syllabus of English subject, there areonly three English periods per week for each grade; students do not have enoughtime to practice listening The third, the condition for learning English andcommunicating with native speakers is not good enough and we have to maketeaching aids for listening lesson ourselves That is also a big problem becausenot all teaching aids we made are effective tools The last, listening is the basiclanguage skill in language learning However, students always think it isdifficult to listen well To foster the students’ listening comprehension skills andprepare them as active listeners in language learning is a big challenge Scholarsand linguists have done a lot of research to help students to acquire the skills.However, we cannot rely on some methodologies completely So I believe thatlistening is crucially important for the whole learning process And my students’

experience and that of my own proved to me that we did not have much chance

to listening while in high school and we gradually got into a habit of learning

“mute English”, which was obviously harmful to a language learner.Additionally, the amount of students in each class does not permit teachers tomonitor all of them It is said that pictures play an important role in languageteaching Listening skill can be taught with the help of pictures because they are

an effective resource There have been a lot of research and studies done byscholars and researchers on the use of pictures to help improve students’listening comprehension

Therefore, I decided to choose the theme “The effectiveness of usingpictures to improve listening skill for the 11th form students” as the topic of myresearch

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study is aimed at:

- Investigating the situation of teaching and learning listening to the 11thgraders in classroom

- Investigating the effectiveness of using pictures in teaching listening tothe 11th graders at Nguyen Quan Nho high school

- Providing some suggestions and implications for the improvement oflistening teaching at Nguyen Quan Nho high school by using pictures in addition

to other techniques

3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

With this study, I put focus on investigating and discovering obstacles ordifficulties encountered by students in English listening lessons at Nguyen QuanNho high school From these findings, the internal and external causes areanalyzed to give some suggestions for tackling them in order to motivatestudents and help improve students’ listening competence by using pictures

The study was conducted on the students of grade 11 at Nguyen QuanNho high school with the textbook “Tiếng Anh 11”

4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This study is carried out to find the answer to the following questions:

1 How to motivate the students in English listening lessons?

2 To what extent does the use of pictures help improve my grade 11students’ listening comprehension?

3 How do the students feel about the use of pictures in improvingstudents’ listening comprehension?

5 METHODS OF THE STUDY

In order to get the goals of the study, I used some methods such as:

1 Observation method: The subjects performed self-exploration researchproject conducted classroom visits, attended colleagues’ lessons

2 Experimental methods: Teachers teach test conducted on each specificpurpose requires some listening lessons

3 Investigation method: Teachers ask questions to check understandingcontent assessment of the students’ lessons

In his article, Alex Case (2009), stated that students' listeningcomprehension can be developed with the help of pictures in various ways Heintroduced 100 activities that can be designed to improve the students' listeningcomprehension in a listening class Before listening to the tape, the teacherprovides his/her students with a picture and ask them write as many sentences asthey can describe the things in the picture and then listen to tape to see howmany of the sentences they hear are similar to one of the sentences they wrote,for example.

In a journal on using pictures in listening class, Zhang (2000), said thatthe advantage of using pictures is that it is easy to prepare, easy to organize,interesting, meaningful and authentic Images of reality in the unnatural world ofthe language classroom can be brought by pictures Moreover, the help ofpictures is very useful in developing students’ listening comprehension,particularly “directed listening” They both provide a general background andcontext and help to guide the students' listening This idea can be described asselecting the correct pictures from the provided ones after listening to the tapes,

or listen to the description of maps or diagrams and students have to draw thepictures they hear

It can be seen that the role of the use of pictures in improving students’

listening skill is quite effective Therefore, I would like to implement thestrategies in my classroom.

1.2 Review of theoretical background

1.2.1 An overview of language teaching and learning

1.2.1.1 Definitions of language teaching and learning

What is learning and what is teaching and how do they interact?

A search in contemporary dictionaries reveals that learning is "acquiring orgetting of knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction."

A more specialized definiton might read as follows: "Learning, is relativelypermanent change in behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforcedpractice" (Kimble and Garmezy 1963) Teaching may be defined as "showing orhelping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding inthe study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know orunderstand."

Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as

we did with language, domains of research and inquiry:

- Learning is acquiring or "getting"

- Learning is retention of information or skill

- Retention implies storage systems, memory, cognitive organization

- Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside orinside the organism

- Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting

- Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice

- Learning is a change in behavior

Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning Nathan Gage (1964) notedthat "to satisfy the practical demands of education, theories of learning must be'stood on their head' so as to yield theories of teaching." Teaching is guiding andfacilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions forlearning If you look at learning as a process of operant conditioning through acarefully paced program of reinforcement, you will teach accordingly If youview second language learning basically as a deductive rather than an inductiveprocess, you will probably to choose present copious rules and paradigms toyour students rather than let them "discover" those rules inductively.Jerome Bruner (1966) noted that a theory of instruction should specify thefollowing features: The first, the experiences which most effectively implant in

the individual a predisposition toward learning The second, the ways in which abody of knowledge should be structured so that it can be most readily grasped

by learner The third, the most effective sequences in which to present thematerials to be learned The last, the nature and pacing rewards and punshiments

in the process of learning and teaching

"Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learners tolearn, setting the conditions for learning" Foreign language learning, like othersubjects, is part of the overall development of all students Through learning aforeign language, the students can enrich their experience of life, broaden theirworld vision, and enhance their thinking skills Language learning is mosteffective when students' interest, motivation and attitudes are taken intoconsideration Therefore, evaluation should be summative and formative anddesigned and administered to encourage the learners rather to frustrate them Itshould be carried out in terms of what students can do rather than what theycannot do

1.2.1.2 The goal of teaching listening

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of listeningrather than on its product

- They develop students' awareness of the listening process and listeningstrategies by asking students to think and talk about how they listen in theirnative language

- They allow students to practice the full repertoire of listening strategies

by using authentic listening tasks

- They behave as authentic listeners by responding to studentcommunication as a listener rather than as a teacher

- When working with listening tasks in class, they show students thestrategies that will work best for the listening purpose and the type of text Theyexplain how and why students should use the strategies

- They have students practice listening strategies in class and ask them topractice outside of class in their listening assignments They encourage students

to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete listening tapeassignments

- They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and theirstrategy use immediately after completing an assignment They buildcomprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class listening assignments, andperiodically review how and when to use particular strategies

- They encourage the development of listening skills and the use oflistening strategies by using the target language to conduct classroom business:making announcements, assigning homework, describing the content and format

of tests

- They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task

to another They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in adifferent type of listening task or with another skill

“Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, andresponding to spoken Listening is the active process of receiving andresponding to spoken (and sometimes unspoken) messages It is one of thesubjects studied in the field of language arts and in the discipline of conversationanalysis Listening is not just hearing what the other party in the conversationhas to say "Listening means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is beingtold us," said poet Alice Duer Miller "You can listen like a blank wall or like asplendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer."

Listening is receiving language through the ears Listening involvesidentifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and sentences.When we listen, we use our ears to receive individual sounds (letters, stress,rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to convert these into messagesthat mean something to us

Listening in any language requires focus and attention It is a skill thatsome people need to work at harder than others People who have difficultyconcentrating are typically poor listeners Listening in a second languagerequires even greater focus Like babies, we learn this skill by listening topeople who already know how to speak the language This may or may notinclude native speakers For practice, you can listen to live or recorded voices.The most important thing is to listen to a variety of voices as often as you can

To become a fluent speaker in English, you need to develop stronglistening skills Listening not only helps you understand what people are saying

to you It also helps you to speak clearly to other people It helps you learn how

to pronounce words properly, how to use intonation, and where to place stress inwords and sentences This makes your speech easier for other people listening toyou to understand

1.2.2.2 Process of listening

- Receiving Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’smessage This stage is represented by the ear because it is the primary toolinvolved with this stage of the listening process

- Understanding In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn themeaning of the message, which is not always easy Deciding what the messagemeans to you

- Remembering Remembering begins with listening; if you can’tremember something that was said, you might not have been listeningeffectively However, even when you are listening attentively, some messagesare more difficult than others to understand and remember Highly complexmessages that are filled with detail call for highly developed listening skills

- Evaluating The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating.Evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to another.The stages two, three, and four are represented by the brain because it is theprimary tool involved with these stages of the listening process

- Responding Responding - sometimes referred to as feedback - is thefifth and final stage of the listening process Your reaction to the message It can

be emotional and intellectual For example, you are giving positive feedback toyour instructor if at the end of class you stay behind to finish a sentence in yournotes or approach the instructor to ask for clarification The opposite kind offeedback is given by students who gather their belongings and rush out the door

as soon as class is over This stage is represented by the lips because we oftengive feedback in the form of verbal feedback; however, you can just as easilyrespond nonverbally

1.2.2.3 The importance of listening

Listening plays an important role in communication in people’s dailylives As Guo and Wills (2006) state “It is the medium through which people

gain a large proportion of their education, their information, their understanding

of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of values” According toMendelson (1994) “of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up40-50 %; speaking 25-30 %; reading 11-16 %; and writing about 9 %”.Emphasizing the importance of listening in language learning, Peterson (2001)states that “no other type of language input is easy to process as spokenlanguage, received through listening…through listening, learners can build anawareness of the interworkings of language systems at various levels and thusestablish a base for more fluent productive skills” Listening has an importantrole not only in daily life but also in classroom settings Anderson and Lynch(2003) state that “we only become aware of what remarkable feats of listening

we achieve when we are in an unfamiliar listening environment, such aslistening to a language in which we have limited proficiency” Most peoplethink that being able to write and speak in a second language means that theyknow the language; however, if they do not have the efficient listening skills, it

is not possible to communicate effectively That is, listening is the basic skill inlanguage learning and over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in aforeign language will be devoted to listening (Nunan, 1998) Rost (1994)explains the importance of listening in language classroom as follows: Listening

is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner.Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner Becauselearners must interact to achieve understanding Access to speakers of thelanguage is essential Moreover, learners’ failure to understand the languagethey hear is an impetus, not an obstacle, to interaction and learning Authenticspoken language presents a challenge for the learner to understand language asnative speakers actually use it Listening exercises provide teachers with ameans for drawing learners’ attention to new forms (vocabulary, grammar, newinteraction patterns) in the language To summarize, listening has an importantrole both in daily life and in academic contexts as it is crucial for people tosustain effective communication

1.2.2.4 Teaching listening comprehension

In spite of the importance of listening in the development of thecommunicative and cognitive skills, it did not start to take its place in languageteaching curriculum until 1970s However, in recent years, with the emphasisgiven in communication in language teaching, listening started to take its longdeserved place in language programs For most second and foreign language

learners, being able to communicate in social contexts is one of the mostimportant reasons why they learn a language Through listening, the learnersreceive input that is essential for language learning to take place Therefore,teaching listening comprehension is important as listening lessons “are a vehiclefor teaching elements of grammatical structure and allow new vocabulary items

to be contextualized within a body of communicative discourse” (Morley, 2001)

In addition, since English is being used as an international language forcommunication by people from non-native English speaking countries lately,teaching listening has gained more importance lately On the other hand,teaching listening has also been a challenge for language teachers for severalreasons Mendelson (1994) proposes three reasons for why listening was poorlytaught First of all, listening was not accepted as a separate skill to be taughtexplicitly for a long time Supporters of the idea argued that language learnerswould improve their listening skill on their own while they are listening to theteacher during the day Secondly, teachers felt insecure about teaching listening.And finally, the traditional materials for language teaching were not efficientenough to teach listening Although it is a challenge to teach listening for manyforeign language teachers, there have been many improvements in teachinglistening over the years According to Rubin (1994), when teachers andresearchers understand the significance of the listening skill in language learningand its role in communication, they start to pay more attention to teaching thisskill in language classrooms The more teachers are aware of the stages of thelistening lesson, the more beneficial they would be to their students in terms ofhelping them related to their listening comprehension concerns and needs Asthe figures illustrate, there are three parts in a usual listening lesson: pre-listening, (while) listening and post-listening Pre-listening part, which involvestasks such as activating previous knowledge of the learners and teachingvocabulary, prepares students for the tasks that they are going to do whilelistening When current format of a listening lesson is compared with the earlyformat of a listening lesson, teaching unknown vocabulary items showsdifference Field (2008) presents several reasons for not teaching all unknownwords Firstly, it is time consuming to teach unknown words Field argues thatthe time spent for teaching unknown vocabulary can be used for listening to thetext again Secondly, it is not like real-life listening since students will encounterdifferent words and try to understand them at the time of speaking Last but notleast, by teaching all the words in a text without considering their importance inthe text, teachers divert students’ attention to form rather than meaning and that

is why Field suggests teaching only critical words which are highly important

for students in order to understand the listening text In the while-listening part

of the lesson, learners do activities such as listening for gist, and sequencing thathelp them to comprehend the text

1.2.2.5 Listening comprehension problems

Studies conducted on listening in the field of second and foreignlanguage learning revealed that listening is one of the most difficult skills forlanguage learners Because of the overemphasis on grammar, reading andvocabulary, learners who learn English as a foreign language have seriousproblems in listening comprehension Students find some features of listeningcomprehension easier than others In that sense, some of the main difficultiesthat the students encounter while listening are: “hearing sounds, understandingintonation and stress, coping with redundancy and noise, predicting,understanding colloquial vocabulary, fatigue, understanding different accents,using visual and aural environmental clues” Underwood (1989) lists thecommon obstacles that students experience while listening as speed of delivery,not being able to have words repeated, limited vocabulary, failing to followsignals like transitions, lack of contextual knowledge, being able to concentrate,and habits like trying to understand every word in what they hear In answeringthe question “What is successful listening?”, Anderson and Lynch (2003)emphasize four different ways in which the listener can or cannot processincoming speech: first, the listener may not hear adequately what has been said;second, speech may contain words or phrases that the listener can hearadequately but is unable to understand because of syntactical or semanticproblems; third, the listener may perfectly hear and understand the speaker buthave switched off consciously or unconsciously; and fourth, the listener attends

to the message fully and tries to construct a coherent interpretation from it One

of the main problems that English language learners encounter in listening isthat there are unfamiliar sounds that appear in English but not in their nativelanguage, and this leads to comprehension difficulties The use of intonation,stress and rhythm may also prevent learners’ understanding of the spokenEnglish For a language learner, comprehending the meaning of the spokenlanguage requires more effort when they are compared with native speakers ofthat language For instance, outside noise or pronunciation differences affectlearners more than the native speakers Although learners are able to cope withthis situation in their own language First of all, although language learners