ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET AND REPORT MTESOL

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL 97 Vo Van Tan, District 3, HCMC, Vietnam ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET AND REPORT – MTESOL017A Student name and number: Tran Tuan Khanh - 1

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL

97 Vo Van Tan, District 3, HCMC, Vietnam

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET AND REPORT – MTESOL017A

Student name and number:

Tran Tuan Khanh - 1781401110010

Name of Coursework Subject: Applied Linguistics

Title of This Item of Work:

THE APPLICATION OF INFORMATION PROCESS MODEL TO TEACHING

ENGLISH LISTENING Name of Lecturer: Nguyen Thanh Tung (PhD.)

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP:

I certify that the above assignment is my original work; it is based on my own research All sources used by me have been documented No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement This piece of work has not previously been submitted for assessment in this or any other subjects or courses at this University or elsewhere

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL

97 Vo Van Tan, District 3, HCMC, Vietnam

Student name: Tran Tuan Khanh

Student number: 1781401110010

Name of Coursework Subject: Applied Linguistics

Title of This Item of Work:

THE APPLICATION OF INFORMATION PROCESS MODEL TO TEACHING

ENGLISH LISTENING

Name of Lecturer: Nguyen Thanh Tung (PhD.) Due Date: 28/02/2018

CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The importance of listening skill 1

1.2 Characteristics that affect listening 1

2 Literature review 2

2.1 What is listening? 2

2.2 Top-down and bottom-up processing approach in Teaching listening 2

2.3 Information process model 3

3.Applying Information process model into teaching Listening for workers and University students 5

3.1 Traditional lesson plan for Teaching listening 6

3.2 Lesson plan for Teaching listening using information process model 9

3.3 Expected outcome for applying information process model in teaching listening for workers and University students in my situation 10

REFERENCES 12

1 Introduction

1.1 The importance of listening skill

As one of the world’s international language, English language has become an indispensable factor in almost all parts of a modern life From students who wish to acquire academic purposes

to job seekers who want to find good jobs, they must achieve certain level of English language During my experience as a teacher of English for workers and University students, I recognize that they are especially lack of listening skills and this has led to the consideration of listening as

a nightmare to all of them This matter is a major obstacle which prevent them from reaching their goal of learning As listening comprehension is one of the most important components of oral speech communication: about 40-50% of communication time is spent by adults listening (Gilman, R A & Moody, L M., 1984) Moreover, according to Hunsaker (1990), more than three quarters of what children learn at school is achieved by listening Listening might be a primary skill among the others (speaking, writing and reading) and it provides the basement to develop these skills Therefore, the negligence to listening seems to be a big problem for overall language performance

1.2 Characteristics that affect listening

To solve the problems in learners’ listening skill and make listening classes be more approachable to learners, factors which contribute to the difficulty to understand a listening passage need to be listed Following the surveys conducted by Rubin (1994), Brown (1995) and Lynch (1995), Buck (2001) presented some characteristics that have influences on listening, such

as Input characteristics which involve language (speech rate, unfamiliar accent, etc), explicitness (implicit ideas, lack of redundancy), organization (Events narrated out of natural time order, etc), Content (Unfamiliar topics, number of things and people referred to, etc), context and task

characteristics which referred to the complication of the listening task the learners have to deal with

2 Literature review

2.1.What is listening?

In the past, listening is considered as a passive process, in which our ears take their function as receivers to be poured by information Currently, this traditional belief has changed to view listening as an active process when good listeners are active when listening as what they perform

as speakers Moreover, listening is not simply an auditory version of reading or a spoken version

of writing Listening has its own features that need to be clarified, such as its ephemera, one-shot nature; the presence of a rich prosody, the presence of natural fast speech as assimilation and the frequent need to process and respond immediately (Lynch, T and Mendelsohn, D.J., 2010) 2.2 Top-down and bottom-up processing approach in Teaching listening

Specifically, listening process is divided into ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach First,

‘Bottom-up’ processing considered listener as a ‘tape recorder’ (Anderson, A and Lynch, T., 1988) Learners’ comprehension is achieved by dividing and decoding the sound signal bit by bit The ability to separate the stream of speech into individual words becomes more important This processing involves perceiving and parsing the speech stream at more complex level beginning with auditory-phonetic, phonemic, syllabic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, propositional, pragmatic and interpretive (Field, 2003) This approach supports paradigm number 1 in applied linguistics when it focused on the language knowledge in detail On the other hand, top-down processing is going from whole to part and concentrate on meaning in context rather than the recognition of sounds, words and sentences In top-down processing, learners use background knowledge in understanding of the message Background knowledge consists of context which are situation, topic and what came before and after Hence, this processing considered listener as ‘active

model-builder’ (Anderson, A and Lynch, T., 1988) Leaners use what they know of the communication context to predict what the message will contain and uses part of the message to confirm, correct or add to this This approach supports paradigm number 2 in applied linguistics which is context-dependent

2.3.Information process model

One of the most important models in applied linguistics that focuses on how people manage to make sense of what they hear is the information process models In this model, Three phases are identified as ‘Perception, Parsing and Utilization’ (Anderson, 1995)

Figure 2.3 Cognitive Process in L2 listening and their interrelationships

These three phases have a two-way relationship with one another and reflect the integrated nature

of the way bottom-up and top-down processing occurs In the perception phase bottom-up

processing is applied to recognize sound categories (phoneme) of the language Then it was pauses, emphasized on sounds and hold these in memory Listeners decode the speech by attending to the text, excluding other sounds in the environment; noting similarities, pauses and acoustic emphases relevant to a particular language; then grouping these following categories of identified language This is the initial stage in the word segmentation process and the materials for the parsing phase However, the development of word segmentation skills is a major challenge for L2 listeners Some difficulties in this phase were studied by Goh (2000) including not recognizing words, neglecting parts of speech that follow, not chunking the stream of speech, missing the beginning of a sentence or message and concentration problems Next, for the parsing phase, learners parse the phonetic representation of what were kept in memory and begin to activate potential words in their long-term memory Learners will use one or more cues such as word onset, perceptual salience, or phonotactic conventions to create proposition (an abstract representation of an idea) in order to hold a meaning-based representation of these words in their working memory for any new inputs to occur Difficulties for learners on this phase include quickly forgetting what has been heard, being unable to form a mental representation from words heard, and not understanding subsequent parts because of what was missed earlier (Goh, 2000) Finally, at the utilization phase, learners will mediate the meaningful units which have been created from previous phase to information sources in their long-term memory in order to interpret the intended or implied meanings Top-down processing of the parsed speech is a major tool for this phase Learners use information from outside the linguistic input from pragmatic to prior knowledge or any relevant information from the listening context to interpret what they kept

in mind from the parsed speech The difficulties which were found in this phase are understanding the words but not the message and feeling confused because of seeming incongruencies in the message (Goh, 2000)

3 Applying Information process model into teaching Listening for workers and University students

As most of my students are workers and University students, on the listening course, although they have basic knowledge about grammar and vocabulary, they cannot get the meaning of a certain listening text This is mainly derived from the traditional learning context which they have been taught in Vietnam with little concentration on Listening and without testing on this skill The students from this circumstance have difficulties in recognizing the words which they have already known when listening and combining them together to get the meaning for their purpose

of communication Therefore, the information process model can be applied to thoroughly explain why I choose the combination of two paradigms in applied linguistics for my target students However, most of my students have already experienced the context in their workplace,

so the top-down processing in utilization phase can be less focused By the familiarity of what happen regularly in their workplace, the context has been built and their responsibility is just to decode right message to achieve the requirement in their work checklist Instead, bottom-up processing in perception and parsing phase needs to be prioritized to help them involve in the listening text and have enough raw materials for the next phase

Following is the comparison between traditional teaching approach for listening and the application of information process model in teaching listening

• Aims

- To practice the language of food, making plan to eat out, ordering a meal in a restaurant

- To be familiar with the popular structure using in restaurant context

- To be able to understand basic communication in restaurant context

• Students

- University students

- Workers

• Level: B1

• Time: 45 minutes

• Materials: Richards, J., C., Hull, J And Proctor, S New Interchange 1: English for international communication Unit 13, 80-84 Cambridge University Press

3.1 Traditional lesson plan for Teaching listening

Stage Book section Teachers activities

1 Lead in: (10 minutes)

Task 1 (7 minutes)

Playing games to

practice vocabulary

about food

Part 5:

Word Power

- Divide the class into two groups

- Write name of the fruits, popular dishes and comments on food in English without any translation on the board

- Ask for volunteers in two group go on the board and show flashcard of the written words for them to underline the correct words The winner is the one who is the first to underline the correct word Group that has more words is the winner

Task 2 (3 minutes)

Clarification

Part 5:

Word Power

- Correct students’s works

- Ask students to repeat the vocabulary and do the excercise in the textbook in pair

2 Pre-listening (10 minutes)

Task 1 (5 minutes) - Introduce students that they are going to hear

Introduction people talking in a restaurant

- Ask students to close their book

- Provide students with some popular structure use for restaurant context (e.g Would you like ; What kind of )

Task 2 (5 minutes)

Role play 1

- Ask students to work in pairs with one is the waiter and the other is the customer

- Ask students to use the structure they have been introduced to perform their role

- Go around the class to observe students and support if any

(Teachers encourage students to ramdomly select the topic they like and perform with all the words they knew in the target language L1 can be used to discuss new words or the situation that students cannot understand))

3 While-listening (15 minutes)

Task 1 (5 minutes)

Listen to the

conversation

Part 6:

Conversation

- Write some basic questions on the board and inform students that they have to answer the questions after first listening (e.g How many dishes are mentioned? What are they? How many speakers? What is the role of them in the listening?)

- Ask students to listen for the first time and note

down the answer

- Ask students to open the book and work in pairs

to practice the dialogue Task 2 (5 minutes)

Role play 2

Part 6:

Conversation

- Ask students to perform again the role play that they have finished in previous activities At this role play they mimic the conversation they have heard

- Give support for new words and structure if any Task 3 (5 minutes)

Listen to people

ordering in a

restaurant

Part 9 Listening

- Ask students to listen to the recording and fill in the form

- Ask students to share the results with peers

4 Post-listening (10 minutes)

Task 1 (5 minutes)

Pronunciation focus

Part 4 Pronunciation

- Ask students to listen to the recording to practice stress for the target structure

- Ask students to work in pairs to practice Task 2 (5 minutes)

Homework task

- Ask students to work in groups of four to prepare

a conversation for 3 topics: in a Vietnamese restaurant, in a United Sates restaurant and in a coffee shop

- Students will work at home and practice fluently

to be ready to perform in front of class on next classes