(SKKN HAY NHẤT) SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE 12 STUDENTS listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

INITIATIVE: “SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE 12 STUDENTS' listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL” PART 1: REASONS FOR TOPIC CHOICE No one can deny

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGES

1 Students’ psychological characteristics in learning Englis 4

2 Importance in stimulating participation of students in English lesson

1.1 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation 7

1.3 Using visual aids in teaching listening 9

1.4 Raising students’ awareness of the usefulness of English 10

2 Training students to become efficient listeners 11 2.1 Making students aware of the nature of the listeninging process 11 2.2 Making students aware of the purposes of listening 11 2.3 Teaching students different listening strategies 11 2.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit 12

3 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques and subject background knowledge

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3.1 - a Pre-listening Stage 3.1- b While-listening Stage 3.1- c Post listening stage

13,14,15

3.1-C 1 Some sample activities used for post-listening stage: 15,16

3.1-C 2 Improving teachers’ professional knowledge 17

2 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 19

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INITIATIVE: “SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE

12 STUDENTS' listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER

SECONDARY SCHOOL”

PART 1: REASONS FOR TOPIC CHOICE

No one can deny the importance of listening skills in foreign language learningbecause the key to acquire a language is to receive language input Krashen, Terrell,

Ehrman, & Herzog (1984) claim that acquisition takes place only when students absorb

enough comprehensible input The same claim was supported by Rost (1994) who

confirmed that listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input for

learners As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’

languagedevelopment Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by

understanding the linguistic information they hear Thus language acquisition is achieved

mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical

component in achieving understandable language input Without understanding inputs at

the right level, any kind of learning simply cannot occur Thus listening is a fundamental

language skill, and as such it merits a critical priority among the four skill areas for

language students As an English teacher, with her own knowledge and experience in

teaching, the author finds interested in studying the difficulties in learning the listening

skill in English She would like to present the thesis “An investigation into difficulties

in learning English listening skills at Leloi high school" She chooses this matter due

to the following reasons

PART 2: CONTENT

I THEORETICAL BASIS

1 Students’ psychological characteristics in learning English.

Students own age characteristics and innate skills which help them in learninglanguage process Teachers must fully understand and take full advantages of them

effectively These specific characteristics are: They learn a foreign language naturally as

they learn their mother tongue They learn it through encouragement, which depends on

each teacher’s methods If they are effectively motivated, they will perform better and

more enthusiastically Besides, they learn through their listening and repeating, through

cooperation and reciprocation in reliable atmosphere; and through interesting activities

from which they gain their aims

One of the things that makes teaching a source of endless fascination is the fact that

no two classes are ever the same There always exists the complex interpersonal

chemistry between teacher and students and between student and student In any given

classroom, the factors such as position attitudes and individuals’ personalities will be in

constant interaction creating a dynamic, unstable environment that can either facilitate

the learning process or seriously impair it The role of expectations of both teachers and

learners will be conditioned by individual personality factors such as introversion,

cognitive style, prior learning and teaching experiences, and cultural factors

Real-life observation also tells us that even if language learners can be shown to befollowing a common developmental route, they differ greatly in degree of ultimate

success which they achieve As a teacher, one should be aware that learners differ in

ways that careful thought when making decisions about what to be taught and how to

teach Social psychologists have argued consistently that differences in learning

outcomes must be due to individual differences between learners, and many proposals

have been made concerning the characteristics which supposedly cause these differences

Gardner and MacIntyre (1992, 1993) divided what they saw as the most importantlearners’ traits into two groups, the cognitive and affective Cognitive factors include

students’ intelligence, language aptitude and language learning strategies Most

discussions have limited affective factors to personality characteristics, language

attitudes, motivation and emotional responses to the language learning process or

language anxiety

Krashen (1985) has suggested the notion of the affective filter This is arepresentation of the way in which affective factors such as attitudes, anxiety,

competitiveness and other emotional responses can help or hinder language learning A

learner who has generally negative attitudes towards learning A learner who has

generally negative attitudes towards learning English will have a high effective filter and

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the task for the teacher will be sustantial The precise functioning of this filter highlights

the role of the teacher in creating beneficial conditions for language learning

The degree to which any of the factors discussed will become significant in aparticular learning and teaching situation will depend partly on the reasons why learners

are learning English Any individual may be influenced by a variety of motivations which

will affect such things as anxiety, attitudes or willingness to try new learning strategies

In short, there exist individual differences among learners and these differencesplay a significant role in language learning For a teacher, the challenge must be how to

enable each learner according to his or her individual characteristics and cultural

background

2 Importance in stimulating participation of students in English lesson.

Students’ participation is very necessary for learning process to occur Lack ofparticipation will have negative influence on all the learning process Through

interacion in the target language students learn to communicate Hence, speaking skill is

quite important

3 Listening skill

First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the real life

Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication They are closely

interdependent We are only able to talk sensibly when we understand what is said to us

If we fail to understand spoken language, we may miss important information and

respond in a funny way Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means of

providing learners with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the

whole language learning process And teaching listening skill in classroom helps

learners make transition from classroom English to real- life English more easily and

effectively Therefore, the author would like to do this research so as to help teachers

and learners pay more attention to this skill

Secondly, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreignlanguage Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most daunting for

learners When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to the text

to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in most listening contexts such as

TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures or conversations As Harmer said:

Whereas the written word stays on the page and can be looked at more than once, the

spoken word, unless recorded on tape or record cannot be repeated Of course in a

conversation it is possible to ask someone to say something again, but the fact remains

that while a reader can look back at something as many times as he wants, the listener

cannot

(Harmer, 1991)

What is more, in teaching and learning English listening skill in Vietnam ingeneral and in TanKy in particular, teachers and learners cope with a lot of problems

and difficulties because of both objective and subjective reasons Thus, the author

chooses this topic to point out the main difficulties which the learners have met and to

find the reasons for them

The last but not least reason for choosing this thesis title is that many learnersare not interested in learning the listening skill They find listening classes boring On the

other hand, practicing listening skill is difficult and it takes long time It is necessary for

teachers to foster the passion for regular listening and to cater for some learners’ need to

listen for relaxation and pleasure That is the reason the author would like to work out

some suggestions so as to help teachers motivate their learners to study listening skill

more excited and better

II THE REAL STATE OF AFFAIRS

the causes of their unsuccessful listening comprehension Thus, it was designed in an

attempt to seek answers to the following questions:

1 What are the students’ difficulties in learning English listening at Le Loi highschool?

2 What are the causes of those difficulties ?

3 What are the possible pedagogical implications that can help to reduce those

difficulties ?

3 Results of the survey.

At the beginning of the school year, before applying the new teaching ideas, Iconducted a survey and the following are the results In terms of students’ attitude, they

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show a very negative one to the current teaching method 37% disliked listening too

many notes when learning English 72% indicated that they had few opportunities to

understand because there are too many difficult words Only 25% said that they liked

English listening lessons

The majority of the interviewees are experienced teachers in teaching English

They all agreed that the difficulty they regularly met was the listening comprehension

and stratagies to listen Table of how often students participate in different activities

Activities Never Rarely Occsionally Usuallyindividual work ( 2 teams / class) 28,7 54,3 16,8 1,2

Group work ( 4-5 students / group) 12,4 41,5 45,1 0

From the above real situation, the participation in English class in Le Loi uppersecondary school is not high and should be paid attention to Only a small number of

students are interested in class activities such as pair work, group work, compared with

individual activities It proves that the interaction among students is rather limited

Consequently, listening skill is also limited This reality urged me to find some ways to

improve my teaching and applying them to my everyday lessons

III SOLUTIONS

1 Suggested solutions to learn English listening skills at Le Loi high school

The study has shown that the mastery of listening skill was a problem for manystudents at Tan Ky high school The listening difficulties fell into three categories:

language problem, listening skill problem and subject background knowledge problem

The major causes include the students’ limited linguistic and background knowledge, and

unsuitable teaching methodology This part suggests some possible ways to reduce the

students’ difficulties in listening lessons and improve the quality of teaching and learning

English listening These suggested solutions include: increasing students’ interest and

motivation; training students to become efficient listeners; improving teachers’ classroom

techniques and subject background knowledge

1.1 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation

According to the results of the research, one of the causes of English listeningdifficulties is that a considerable number of students in our school have negative, low

interest and motivation in learning listening Therefore, to reduce the difficulties in

listening, the teachers should arouse students’ passion for listening by making English

listening lessons more interesting and useful

1.2 Making English listening interesting

As we have found from the questionnaire and from the small talks with thestudents, listening lessons turned out to be boring and not motivating enough for

students This is because the lessons contain long texts with too many new words and

about unfamiliar professional topics Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to make

the materials interesting enough to draw the students’ attention

Firstly, teachers should provide easy listening lessons by simplifying, adapting thematerials to suit the students’ level of proficiency so that the students can find themselves

at ease and listen to Then, teachers should have a well-prepared pre-listening stage

because this stage plays an important role and affects largely the effectiveness of the

learning process In this stage, the teachers can utilize different techniques, for example:

pictures, real objects, charts and diagrams, flash cards to stimulate the students After

that, teachers can apply other various techniques to help students deal the listening tasks,

for instance: pair work, group work, discussion, role play, interview Finally, teachers

should create different activities or tasks in each lesson so that the students can avoid

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boredom Teachers can utilize a variety of techniques to draw students’ interest, the

techniques are discussed herebelow

1.3 Using visual aids in teaching listening

Visual aids not only are very helpful in motivating students but also so helpstudents to understand the meanings of words clearly and memorize them quickly,

especially in the vocabulary Most vocabulary are terminologies which are highly

specialized, therefore it is advisable for teachers to use visual aids in teaching ESP

vocabulary Visual aids can be: pictures, real objects, flash cards, charts, maps, diagrams,

blackboard… Visual aids are better than any other explanations when introducing a word

because it can give what exactly what students need to know without translating into

their mother tongue Here below are some pictures that the teachers can use when

teaching vocabulary

Unit 13: hobbies

Unit 15: Space conquest

1.4 Raising students’ awareness of the usefulness of English

In order to enhance the students’ listening interest and better motivate the students

to listen, it is important for the teachers to help the students realize how useful listening

is Firstly, listening is one of the four language skills which are integrated So, listening

well will help the students pick up vocabulary, structures or ideas to speak and write

Secondly, once the students become proficient listeners, they can find listening the most

effective way to get information and increase their professional knowledge and the most

meaningful way of relaxation When the students have high motivation to listen

materials, they will be more studious and will manage to overcome difficulties

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2 Training students to become efficient listeners 2.1 Making students aware of the nature of the listeninging process

It is the teachers who should help their students realize that listening is an active process

which involves the use of a number of skills and strategies and the drawing on

socio-cultural knowledge, knowledge of the language of the text and strategies for accessing

meaning such as predicting information, sampling, deducing meaning or other listening

techniques like bottom-up processing and top-down processing This understanding

enables the students to actively take part in the listening process and overcome their

problems such as vocabulary difficulties, lack of listening strategies and limited

knowledge of the subject, to comprehend the text in the most effective way It may also

help students to develop a positive attitude towards English, which is one of the factors

that determines the success of the listening process

2.2 Making students aware of the purposes of listening

When the students have purposes in the mind, they know how to channel theirenergy in the right direction Thus, helping the students to identify the purpose of a

listening text is an useful aid in their listening process Glancing at titles, subtitles,

headings and subheadings can give students the clues for the listening purposes

Moreover, the teachers should teach the students to look for purposes in the light of the

situation and the type of materials Effective listening involves clearly identifying the

purposes of listening with which the students know what they are looking for and can

eleminate potential distracting information

2.3 Teaching students different listening strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that support the listening comprehension

by providing how the listening input is processed by the listeners Researchers have

categorized them into two types of strategies such as bottom-up processing and top-down

processing

Bottom-up technique is text based The listeners catch the meaning based on the

language in the message such as the combination of sounds, words and grammar

According to Rubin (1994: 210), the listeners make use of “his knowledge of words,

syntax, and grammar to work on form” This process is in the close relation with the

listeners’ linguistic knowledge Therefore, we can ask students to listen for specific

details, recognize cognates or recognize word order patterns Listening for exact phrases

or words, individual grammatical structures or sentence structures would be considered a

bottom-up listening

However, bottom-up technique has its own weakness To understand the text, the

listeners must have an interactive process between their previous knowledge and the text

Top-down processing is listener based The listeners use the knowledge inside the

head which is not directly encoded in words While few English learners would have

little trouble in comprehending the sounds, words and clauses in the given messages, it is

unlikely that they can demonstrate comprehension by listening to the text and writing a

précis or providing a verbal account If we apply this technique, we can ask students to

listen for the main idea, predict what is happening, draw inferences and summarize

Top-down processing requires listeners’ background knowledge about the text.

However, the listeners may fail to understand unfamiliar information unless they only

depend on their background knowledge They need the linguistic knowledge in listening

comprehension Top-down processing refers to how we use our world knowledge to

attribute meaning to language input; how our knowledge of social convention helps us

understand meaning

To deal with the disadvantages of both processes, the interactive processing that is

a combination of both techniques has been given out since the early 1980s In this

process, listeners use both their background knowledge information, contextual

information and linguistic information to create comprehension and interpretation The

listeners will employ the background knowledge to make predictions when the content of

the material is familiar to them Otherwise, if they are unfamiliar with the content of the

listening text and lack of language proficiency, they are able to make sense of

information based on their linguistic knowledge especially the lexical and syntactical

knowledge Besides, students can have a chance to interact with each other before and

after listening to share the knowledge

2.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit

As shown in the study, most of the students reported that the most difficult part inlistening is vocabulary This means that they lacked necessary vocabulary related to the

subject matter and limited knowledge of the subject So, teacher should encourage

the students to form the positive and extensive listening habit Listening extensively

outside the classroom can help them enrich their vocabulary and knowledge of the

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subject matter Teacher should provide students with the materials related to the topics

they are learning, the source of these materials (from some books, websites ) and

the way to listen effectively

3 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques and subject background knowledge 3.1 Suggested Activities for English listening

3.1 -a Pre-listening Stage

During the pre- listening phase, the teacher needs to recognize that all the studentsbring different backgrounds to the listening experience Beliefs, attitudes, and biases of

the listeners will affect the understanding of the message In addition, to be aware of

these factors, the teacher should show students how their backgrounds affect the

messages they receive Before listening, students need assistance to activate what they

already knew about the ideas they are going to hear Simply being told the topic is not

enough The pre- listening activities are required to establish what is already known

about the topic, to build necessary background, and to set purpose(s) for listening

Students need to understand that the:

Act of listening requires not just hearing but also thinking, as well as agood deal of interest and information that both speaker and listener musthave in common Speaking and listening entail three components: thespeaker, the listener, and the meaning to be shared; speaker, listener, andmeaning form a unique triangle (King, 1984, p 177)

Some sample activities used for pre-listening stage:

 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs and (answering the questions,discussing as teachers’ requirement)

 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures

 words form

 reading something relevant and discussing in pairs or in groups

 playing a short game

 constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showinghow they are related)

 pairs or groups discussing to answer the guiding questions

 Predicting the topic/content of the listening text: Students predict what they expect

to hear from the listening, work in pairs, and feedback ideas to the board/teacher