Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS effects of appropriate pre listening activities on 10th form students english listening comprehension a case study at buon ma thuot high school in dac lac

Chapter 3: Data analysis and major findings 3.1 Results of the questionnaires 3.1.1 Questionnaire for the teachers 3.1.1.1 Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activit

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THỊ HỒNG HÀ

EFFECTS OF APPROPRIATE PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES

COMPREHENSION: A CASE STUDY AT BUON MA THUOT

HIGH SCHOOL IN DAC LAC

(Hiệu quả của hoạt động trước khi nghe phù hợp đối với việc nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 10 Điển cứu tại trường THPT Buôn Ma Thuột

tỉnh Đắc Lắc )

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THỊ HỒNG HÀ

EFFECTS OF APPROPRIATE PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES

COMPREHENSION: A CASE STUDY AT BUON MA THUOT

HIGH SCHOOL IN DAC LAC

(Hiệu quả của hoạt động trước khi nghe phù hợp đối với việc nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 10 Điển cứu tại trường THPT Buôn Ma Thuột

tỉnh Đắc Lắc )

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

Supervisor: ĐỖ BÁ QUÝ, Med.

Hanoi - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration Acknowledgements Abstract

Part A: INTRODUCTION

1.1.3 Approaches to teaching listening 7

1.1.4 Factors in teaching and learning listening

1.2 What are pre-listening activities?

1.2.1 Definitions of pre-listening activities 12

1.2.2 Types of pre-listening activities 13

1.2.3 Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities 14

Chapter 3: Data analysis and major findings 3.1 Results of the questionnaires

3.1.1 Questionnaire for the teachers 3.1.1.1 Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activities 18

3.1.1.2 Teachers' purposes in using pre-listening activities 19

3.1.1.3 Teachers' activities to motivate students to listen and the frequency of using them

20

3.1.1.4 Pre-listening activities which help increase students' motivation from the teachers' points of view

21

3.1.1.5 Teachers' difficulties when applying pre-listening activities 22

3.1.1.6 Teachers' comments on the pre-listening activities available in Tieng Anh 10 23

3.1.2 Questionnaire for the students 3.1.2.1 Students' opinion about listening skill in learning a foreign language 23

3.12.2 Factors making students unwilling to learn listening English 24

3.1.2.3 Teachers' pre- listening activities that help to make listening easier for the students

25

3.1.2.4 Students' preferences for pre-listening activities 25

3.1.2.5 Benefits that students get when teachers employ the above pre-listening activities

28

3.1.2.6 Students' comments on the pre-listening activities available in TiengAnh 10 28

3.1.2.7 Students' suggestions with the changes in pre-listening activities in Tieng Anh 10

29

3.1.2.8 Students' self-evaluation of their ability of listening 30

Chapter 4: Recommendations for implementing pre-listening activities

4.1 Paying attention to students' personal factors and their proficiency 36

4.2 Using pre-listening activities in a flexible and appropriate way 36

4.3 Improving the pre-listening activities in the textbook 37

PART C: CONCLUSION

2 Limitations and suggestions for the study 39

References Appendices

be improved but in learning English listening still seems to be the most difficult skill for students of high schools We all know, listening comprehension is one of the four skills needed for effective communication in everyday conversation and it is also a source for obtaining the necessary input for language development In spite of teachers and students' efforts, there are still difficulties in listening acquisition Almost students who fail to take listening input hardly receive spoken messages as the result they get bored and ignorant in listening classes although they are aware of the importance of this skill Therefore, with the new English textbook for high school, the editors have paid attention to how to stimulate students to be keen on a listening class So, the application of pre-listening activities is considered the best way to motivate students' interests

As a teacher teaching English of Buon Ma Thuot High School for years, I find that although the text book has provided pre-listening activities for motivating students but the students do not achieve much from listening, they feel listening is boring because of the following reasons :

First, the teachers apply these pre-listening activities mechanically, uncreatively Next, some teachers even ignore pre-listening stage, they just begin the lesson with while-listening stage

Last, some employ inappropriate activities, which might be not suitable for students' interests and proficiency Therefore, it is essential for teachers to find out some ways to help students feel like studying listening and make them motivated in participating in all the activities in a listening lesson to improve their listening skills

All in all, the above has encouraged the writer of the thesis to carry out the study titled:

"Effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on 10 th form students' English listening comprehension A case study at Buon Ma Thuot High School in Dac Lac"

2 The aims of the study

This study is intended to:

1 find out teachers' and students' opinions about pre-listening activities;

2 find out which pre-listening activities are used frequently by teachers;

3 explore the students' preferences for pre-listening activities and identify the effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension;

3 Scope of the study

This study is carried out at Buon Ma Thuot high school in order to find out the effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension

4 Methods of the study

The study uses qualitative method This involves the following tasks:

- interview and discussion

- survey questionnaire

- class observation

5 The design of the study

This study includes 3 parts

- Part A: Introduction This chapter consists of:

+ The rationale for the research + The aim of the study

+ The scope of the study + The method of the study + The design of the study

- Part B: Development In this part, there are 3 chapters

+ Chapter 1: Literature review which deals with theories on listening comprehension, listening activities

pre-+ Chapter 2: Methods of the study The researcher investigated the setting of the study This chapter also includes the research methods which cover research questions, the subjects, data collection instruments

+ Chapter 3: Data analysis and major findings This chapter presents the data results, some major findings

+ Chapter 4: some recommendations for implementing the pre-listening activities are discussed in this chapter

- Part C: Conclusion This part summarizes what are addressed in the study and some

limitations and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the reexamination

of the concepts most relevant to the thesis topic Firstly, an account of the theory on listening comprehension in general is made Then, literature specially focused on the pre-listening activities theory will be discussed

1.1 Theory of listening

1.1.1 What is listening comprehension?

Listening is more than merely hearing words Listening is an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken and or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994) Having the same view, Brown and Yule (1983) state that listening is a demanding process, not only because of the complexity of the process itself, but also due to factors that characterize the listener, the speaker, the content of the message, and any visual support that accompanies the message

Howatt and Dakin (1974) states that listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This process involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously

According to Buck (2001), listening comprehension involves the continuing construction

of an interpretation of the spoken input, and the ability to adjust the interpretation in response to new information is especially crucial in the L2 listening Native speakers listen automatically without much conscious attention to word-by-word input; in contrast, the second language listener need to get the input more details, the construct, the meaning of the listening input On the other hand, Clark and Clark (1977) proposed two definitions of listening comprehension They suggested listening comprehension in its narrowest definition is the process by which listeners come to an interpretation for a stream of speech and listening in its broader definition involves the process by which listeners use those interpretations for their intended purposes Wolvin and Coakley’s (1985) approach to

to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy

Shelton (2006) believes that listening effectively is a demanding and involved process One must be able to deal with different accents of pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structure, competing background noise and also make a conscious effort to not

"switch off" or become distracted while listening All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given message

There are two dimensions often cited in relation to listening comprehension processes-

"bottom-up" and "top-down" Anderson and Lynch (1988) describe bottom-up processing as

"listener as tape recorder (p.9) that involves decoding or text-based processes while top-down processing relates to the "listeners as active model builder (p.11) and involves knowledge-based processes It means that listeners use top-down processes when they use context and prior knowledge (topic, genre, culture ) to build a conceptual framework for comprehension

Listeners use top-down processes when they construct meaning by accretion, gradually combining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-level features It is suggested that successful listening comprehension relies on the integration of and the balance between both bottom-up and top-down facets (Flowerdew & Miler, 2005;

Vandergrift, 2004)

In the view of Brown (1994), in bottom-up processing, learners rely on their linguistic knowledge to recognize linguistic elements - vowels, consonants, words, sentences to do the construction of meaning They build meaning from lower level sounds to words to grammar relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message In top-down processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make predictions about the text Prior knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term memory as schemata (Lingzhu, 2003)

In summary, listening comprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all then ignored while other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult material (Rivers Wilga, M (1986) Teaching Foreign Language Skill., The University of Chicago Press, p.157)

1.1.2 Types of listening

1.1.2.1 Real-life listening

Real-life listening is listening in daily life According to Adrian (1995), there are two ways that people often listen in real-life, they are: "casual" listening and "focus" listening

- "Casual" listening: people often with no specific purpose and spend not much concentration

listening, they may not remember what they have just heard For example, students often listen to music when they are doing homework or they turn on television set when they are chatting with friends

- "Focus" listening: listening for a particular purpose to get information We often pay

attention to what people are talking about to get the answer only, not pay attention to all the words in the text

1.1.2.2 Classroom listening

Ur (1984) states that classroom listening should be addressed accurately as real-life listening

in the classroom All the listening activities in classroom aim at equipping students with skills

to deal with real-life listening Some researchers agree to divide classroom listening into intensive listening and extensive listening

- Intensive listening: Rixon (1986) argues that in intensive listening students have to collect or

organize information in the listening passage Intensive listening often gives students the challenge and helps them develop listening skill

- Extensive listening: Rixon (1986) also states that extensive listening is listening for pleasure

and interest without having pay much attention to content and language Extensive listening keeps the students' motivation and interest high Story telling is an example of extensive listening

1.1.3 Approaches to teaching listening

When studying listening, Rost (1994) points out that foreign language has been taught for centuries and the record of language teaching materials has been around for over 500 years

And he also suggests some approach to teach listening such as grammar translation method,

teaching While Underwood (1989, p.90-109) mentions grammar translation method, grammar method, audio-lingual method and task-based method

- Grammar translation method: students listen to a description of the rules of the second

language in the first language As a result, when the second language is used, the focus of any listening is on translation of lexical items or grammar structures

- Grammar method: to follow this method, the teacher requires students to look at a written

text when they listen to a recording This forces them to do several things: identify words by their position in the sentence, work out the relationship between words and phrases, use forward and backward inferencing cues, and make intelligent guesses based on textual cues

- Audio-lingual method: audio-lingual method of listening emphasizes first listening to

pronunciation and grammatical forms and then imitating those forms by way of drills and exercises Dialogues and drills are the basic of classroom practice with this method Students are encouraged to listen carefully either to a tape recording or a teacher reading out, a dialogue or a drill Basically, the more the students repeat a correct phrase or a sentence, the stronger of their memory of the structures will be

- Task-based method: this method places stress on activities or tasks that learners do in class

in order to develop their community competence A task-based syllabus should be constructed according to the difficulty of the tasks required of the learners at different stages in a course

In summary, the four methods of the teaching of listening are not mutually exclusive and in reality they may be mixed in any particular course or classroom However, nowadays, with the appearance of Communicative Language Teaching, teaching listening seems to be more meaningful to students due to the fact that they have chance to develop their listening skills and other language skills as well

1.1.4 Factors in teaching and learning listening 1.1.4.1 The listening texts

A listening text may be a short story, dialogue, a piece of news, an announcement written or read by native speakers in authentic English Through a listening text, what students achieve are as follow:

- understanding the text correctly

- getting more new words, structures

- communicating with others with the same topic thy have just learned

Ur (1991) suggests that the effective listening texts should have such characteristics as informal talk, speaker visibility (or direct speaker-listener interaction) and single exposure

However, listening texts should be suitable for the listeners' ability So Buck (2001) states that providing suitable text is not a simple matter, it takes time, effort and some expertise"

1.1.4.2 Teacher's role

Rost (1994) argues that language teachers need to provide various types of support to their learners to help them to develop listening skills Including talking to learners in the target language, raising learners' awareness of their listening styles and strategies and introducing a range of materials, speaking styles and listening situations"

In Gardner and Lambert's opinion (1972), the way a teacher presents the content must be dynamic and interesting to get students' attention Moreover, foreign language teachers have

to look for activities and employ different techniques, especially at the pre-listening phrase that promote teacher-student relationship and interaction among students in the classroom

(Dornyei, 2001)

Having the same idea, Lewis and Hill (1992) think that before introducing listening tasks to students, teachers should organize something interesting for them in order to promote an active and flexible learning environment that helps increase students' motivation for learning

1.1.4.3 Students' role

Of course students themselves play an important role in improving their own listening skill

Nunan (1999) argues that in order to comprehend, listener need to reconstruct the original intention of the speaker by making use of the bottom-up and top-down processing strategies,

by drawing on what they already know to make use of new knowledge The students should

be given the chance to decide for themselves what will be interesting or useful and to work by them selves (Rison, 1986)

1.1.5 Stages of a listening lesson

In order to help learners get most from a listening lesson, a lesson plan of listening is usually divided into three stages: (1) Things learners do before listening; (2) Activities and exercises are done by learners when the discourse is played; (3) Things learners do after listening In short, the first stage is called "pre-listening", the second "while-listening", the third "post-listening"

There is an association between expectation, purpose, and comprehension, therefore a purpose should be given to our learners We should train students to understand what is being said in conversations to get them to disregard redundancy, hesitation, and ungrammaticality The major problem is the actual way listening material is presented to the students We should give a clear lead in what they are going to hear; use some kinds of visual back up for them to understand; give questions and tasks in order to clarify the things in their minds; and be sure that these tasks help in learning, not confusing Students should learn how use the environmental clues; the speaker's facial expression, posture, eye direction, proximity, gesture, tone of voice, and that general surroundings contribute information

In listening activities, we listen for a purpose We make an immediate response to what we hear There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard

Stretches of heard discourse come in short chunks, and most heard discourse is spontaneous, therefore differs from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy 'noise' and colloquialisms, and its auditory character

is generally described as "Pre-listening" work or just "Pre-listening""

Also according to Underwood (1989), pre-listening work can consist of a whole range of activities, including: the teacher giving background information, the students reading something relevant, students looking at pictures, discussion of a topic/situation, a question and answer session, written exercises, following the instructions for the while-listening activity and consideration of how the while-listening will be done

These activities may provide an opportunity for students to gain some knowledge and help them follow the listening text Moreover, each of the activities help students focus their mind

on the topic by narrowing down the things that students expect to hear

There are many kinds of pre-listening activities so teachers should be flexibly choose the most suitable activities for each situation

The topic and the content of the listening text plus the students' interest deicide the success of the while-listening activities Students may get bored if they have to do the same kind of work over and over again Thus, for each purpose and on different occasions, various activities are needed Moreover, it is advisable to have activities which are locally relevant, of the common interest and not too long or laborious

Activities of this stage should be suitable with students' ability This means that listening activities can be done by most students, from low students to the best one

while-Stating about this view, Underwood (1989) says that "teachers should consider some other points when selecting while-listening activities such as: the possibilities for varying the level

of difficulty if required, the inconvenience of carrying out the activities which required individuals to give their responses orally in the classroom, whether the work is to be done by the students with the teacher's presentation or whether it is to be done as private study either

in a listening center or at home and whether or not the while-listening activities generate material or ideas which might be used for others

1.1.5.3 Post-listening

This stage is carried out when the listening is completed Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stage According to Underwood (1989) the first purpose of post-listening activities is to check how well the students understood and whether they have completed the listening task The teacher may give an answer orally, showing the answer on the board or on the over-head projector or ask students to check again the answer in the book Students can work in pair to check each other answer or work in group to discuss any problem relate to the listening text The second purpose of post-listening work is to reflect on what some students have failed to understand or miss parts of the passage

Another purpose of post-listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of the listening text Students are asked to deal with activities with are more or less general language learning activities Sometimes, this does not mean that they should not be done but it should

be recognized they do not give practice in listening skill although the additional language learning can well enable students to listen more successfully in the future

The forth purpose is to give students opportunity to consider the manner and attitude of the speaker in the listening text This is also important because the listeners can see the aims of the speakers based on his/her attitude

It is important to note that post-listening work can also usefully involve integration with other skills through development of the topic into reading, speaking or writing activities

1.2 What are pre-listening activities?

1.2.1 Definitions of pre-listening activities

"Starting lessons with pre-listening activities brings a host of benefits to a language learning"

(Boyle, 1984, p.24)

Pre-listening activity is carried out before students start to listen to the listening text This activity should establish the purpose of the listening activity and activate the schemata by encouraging the learners to think about a discuss what they already know about the content of the listening text This activity can also provide the background needed for them to understand the text and can focus attention on what o listen for To regard students' motivation, teachers should choose a text and tasks suitable with students' interests and curiosity If teachers don’t carry out any pre-listening activities before listening, students will

certainly feel bored As the result, the passive attitude will prevent students from making progress in listening comprehension With the knowledge which pre-listening activities have offered and the comfortable atmosphere they bring about, students' confuse will be lowered and they will be confident to do all the tasks in the textbook

During the pre-listening phase, teachers should know that each student has their own backgrounds such as beliefs, attitudes and biases to the listening experience and how the backgrounds affect the messages they received Before listening, just knowing the topic seems

to be not enough, students need help to activate what they already know about the ideas they are going to hear

According to Medley (1977), pre-listening activities can be subdivided into "readiness activities" and "guidance activities" "Readiness activities" aim at activating students' prior knowledge by reading the title, new words of the text, sometimes looking at the picture given before the exercises in the textbook and also by asking provocative questions or introducing background knowledge "Guidance activities" are intended to specific aspects of language input by letting them bear certain purposes in mind in advance, in other words, letting students know what task or tasks they are going to do with the text, or letting the students themselves decide what they want to do with the text

Broughter (1978) argues that pre-listening technique keeps students' interest in learning and therefore, improve their language competence

Mary (1989) reminds "pre-listening work can be done in a variety of ways and often occurs quite naturally when listening forms part of an integrated skills course When planning lesson, time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and the activities should not be rushed."

1.2.2 Types of pre-listening activities

There are many kinds of pre-listening activities so teachers should be flexibly choose the most suitable activities for each situation in order to help them to catch the purpose a listening lesson requires

- Vocabulary introduction: is the basic step before listening to a text with a strange topic

Teachers must be aware of the fact that if the students are taught all the vocabulary, it is not sure that they can understand the whole text Therefore, teachers can list some important

words for students to look up while they have spare time and remember the meaning of the words in the context

- Brainstorming: to a familiar topic, this kind of activities is very helpful Before listening to a

text, teachers can let students work alone or divide them into groups to discuss the problems they are encountering This step helps students to activate students' poor knowledge and enable them to make inferences and form expectation about common situation The students can benefit a lot from such preparatory activities Before listening to a text, students think of the possible answers and they will perform the answers when needed With this kind of pre-listening activities, students can make efficient predictions for their coming listening text

- Asking questions: to avoid listening aimlessly, teachers can ask students some questions

beforehand to help them focus their attention on some particular aspects This approach is suitable to some long and difficult text

- Using visual support: such as pictures, maps, diagrams, graphs, visual support can helps

students predict incoming materials easily by necessary information Moreover, "Striking and simulate visual aids are likely to heighten students' motivation and concentration" (Penny Ur, 1984) Visual support is very helpful because students can easily guess the meaning and make the language in class more real and alive A picture is worth than thousand words

1.2.3 Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities

Before selecting a pre-listening activities to teach in class teachers should be aware of some elements below:

- The time availability

- The material availability

- The interest of the class

- The place where work is being carried out

- The nature and the content of the listening text itself

1.3 Summary

The chapter has presented relevant literature, which has helped to from the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study

A number of concepts about listening comprehension, pre-listening activities are given according to some leading scholars and then the types of listening, the approaches to teaching listening, the factors in teaching and learning listening, the stages of a listening lesson are presented

Chapter 2: METHODS OF THE STUDY

The study attempts to investigate the effects of pre-listening activities on the 10th form students at Buon Ma Thuot High School In order to achieve the mentioned aims, two kinds of questionnaire for both teachers and students were conducted to collect data for the study In addition, 3 class observations, interviews and discussion with teachers and students were also carried out

2.1 The setting of the study 2.1.1 English teaching and learning situation at Buon Ma Thuot school

This study was conducted at Buon Ma Thuot High School which was established 55 years ago Since then this school has increasingly developed and become one of the largest and most prestigious schools in Dac Lac The students of this school mainly come from Buon Ma Thuot city and they must take the entrance exam with high points in Math, Literature, and English so their ability of learning English as well as other subjects is quite good These students have been learning English since they were in the 6th form, which means that they have 4 years of learning English at junior secondary school and when they start learning in high school, their ability of using English is good enough to talk to one another However, chances for students to communicate with foreigners both in classroom and outside are limited Consequently, their habit of speaking and listening English cannot be improved In addition, most students are quite passive in class, they like to take reading, writing or grammar lesson rather than listening and speaking Moreover, they do not have to take English listening test in the graduation exam or entrance exam to university so they do not pay any attention to listening at all So, when being asked, students told me that studying listening with no purpose is boring and they get little benefit from listening class and it seems that there was no motivation for learning listening

1.2 The materials

Students are learning with the newly revised textbook "Tieng Anh 10" by Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong and Nguyen Quoc Tuan This textbook is theme-based one including 16 units and 6 Test Yourself sections Each unit has a specific topic and consists of 5 lessons: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing, and Language

Focus Generally, this book aims to develop the 4 skills of learning English of students The topic of each unit is familiar with students' daily life

According to the syllabus, students have 3 periods a week for their English class and each period lasts 45 minutes As a result, students have few chances to further practice with other listening materials prepared by the teachers Besides, students meet problems with some listening texts which contain many new words or sometimes speakers speak too fast for students to follow So when teaching listening as well as the rest 4 lessons, teachers should be flexible when dealing with the problems

2.2 Research methods 2.2.1 Research questions

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension at Buon Ma Thuot high school To achieve this aim, the following questions were proposed:

1 What are the teachers' and students' opinions about pre-listening activities?

2 Which pre-listening activities are frequently used by the teachers and which students like most?

3 What are the effects of applying appropriate pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension?

2.2.2 The subjects

The subjects for the study are 13 teachers teaching English at Buon Ma Thuot high school

Two of them are doing the post-graduate studies in the CFL, 6 teachers are over 40 with more than 20 years of teaching experience, 2 are nearly 40 and the rest are from 31 to 35 years old

Generally, all of them have experience in teaching English

The participants for the study consist of 135 tenth form students (age 16-17) from 3 classes 10A1, 10A4, and 10A5 60% of them come from Buon Ma Thuot city and the rest come from some communes such as Eakao, Hoa Thang or some districts like Cư M'gar, Ea H'leo, Ea Kar All of them have learnt English at least for four years (from grade 6 to grade 9)

However, their ability of using English is not the same

2.3 Data collection instruments

The questionnaires (see appendix 1) were delivered to both teachers and students, in which

there are 06 questions in English for teachers to answer The questionnaire designed for students consists of 07 questions aimed of finding out appropriate pre-listening activities that motivate students in the listening class and the effects of them on students' listening comprehension All the questions for students were translated into Vietnamese in order to help the students understand the questions deeply Total 13 copies for the teachers and 135 copies for the students were delivered and collected Data gathered from the responses of the students were sorted and analyzed statistically to gat the aim of the research

The observation (see appendix 2) was carried out three times for 3 different units in these

class (10A1, 10A4, 10A5) Each lesson lasted 45 minutes The observer wrote down what she heard and saw in the class carefully including teachers and students' activities, students' attitudes towards the lesson, the interaction between teacher and students while they were doing the tasks The observer especially paid attention to students' reactions to pre-listening techniques used in the lesson as well as their preferences for the techniques and their ability in listening and understanding the listening text

The interview (see appendix 3) helps to get better insights into research questions The

interview questions, including 10 items about the same matter as shown in questionnaire, with the participating of 1/3 of the students during break time (about a week)

The survey questionnaires, observational protocols and the informal interview are in the appendices

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND MAJOR FINDINGS

This chapter deals with the results from the questionnaire to the teachers and the students and the class observation as well as interview with teachers and students The findings from those results will lead to the suggested solutions to make improvement for applying pre-listening activities in a listening lesson

3.1 Results of the questionnaire 3.1.1 Questionnaire for the teachers

3.1.1.1 Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activities

Item Number of the teachers Percentages (%)

Table 1: Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activities

When being asked about this question, all teachers agreed that doing some lead-in activities before asking students to listen is quite necessary They said that it is important if teachers begin the lessons with some games or some questions related to the topic of the lesson

Through lead-in activities, students can guess what the listening text is about and an active and relaxing environment is created

3.1.1.2 Teachers' purposes in using pre-listening activities

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

A To help students predict the content of the listening text

B To increase students' motivation

C To teach new or difficult words

D To provide background knowlegde

E To get students involved in the text

Chart 1: Teachers' purposes in using pre-listening activities

According to the chart, teachers were favor of getting students involved in the text and this is the main purpose when they use pre-listening techniques, while 77% considered helping the students predict the content of the listening text is what they want to do Increasing students' motivation in listening to the text is the purpose of 69% of the teachers 7 teachers (54%) thought it is necessary to teach new or difficult words in the listening text because according

to them students' vocabulary is limited, if they are taught new words, they are able to understand the content of the listening text and do all the tasks easily Only 3 teachers use lead-in activities in order to provide background knowledge about the topic of the text In short, whatever purposes of teachers are, what they want to do is to help students to be able to hear and do all the tasks in the book

3.1.1.3 Teachers' activities to motivate students to listen and the frequency of using them

Always Sometimes Rarely Never

1 Using games to introduce the topic of the text 15% 62% 15% 8%

2 Using visual aids to introduce the topic of the text 15% 23% 47% 15%

3 Giving a brief introduction of the text 69% 15% 8% 8%

4 Explaining the instructions of the text 47% 30% 8% 15%

5 Pre-teaching new words in the listening text 77% 15% 8% 0%

6 Making students brainstorm words, structures or ideas related to the topic of the text

30% 47% 23% 0%

7 Using pre-listening questions 69% 31% 0% 0%

8 Making students predict the content of the text 31% 31% 23% 15%

9 Using group discussion about the topic of the text 23% 31% 31% 15%

10 Giving listening tasks to students 15% 70% 15% 0%

Table 2: Teachers' activities to motivate students to listen and the frequency of

using them

Looking at the table above we can see that nearly all teachers always begin the lesson by giving a brief introduction of the text (69%) or pre-teaching new words in the listening text (77%) or using pre-listening questions (69%), while some sometimes employ games, give listening tasks to motivate students Although visual aids are preferred by almost students but there are only 2 teachers (15%) always use it, 15% never uses it 33% sometimes uses it and 47% rarely uses it Perhaps, because of time-consuming on preparing the lesson with some objects, or teach students by using computers and projectors, teachers don't take care much on this activity Through this question, we can see traditional methods of teaching still affect teachers a lot

Discussing in group is rather easy to carry out because teachers can just prepare some questions or some topics or even they can adapt the questions in the pre-listening stage for students to discuss But the problem here is how to control the class? Because of the big size

of a class, teachers can hardly observe whether all students work or not So teachers apply these activities whenever they feel it is suitable

3.1.1.4 Pre-listening activities which help increase students' motivation from the teachers' points of view

Number of the teachers Percentages (%)

Giving brief introduction of the text 4 30,7 Explaining the instruction of the text 4 30,7 Pre-teaching new vocabulary 6 46,1

Using pre-listening questions 5 38,4 Predicting the content of the text 6 46,1 Using group discussion 7 53,8

Table 3: Pre-listening activities which help increase students' motivation from the

teachers' points of view

The table shows that over 90% of the respondents give the answer that using games or visual aids are the most motivational ones help students much on listening lesson Knowing this but teachers do not usually employ this way to teach students (the result in question 3), so increasing the frequency of using it should be paid attention to

31% highly appreciated giving brief introduction or explaining the instruction as the ways to motivate students Meanwhile nearly half of the teachers believed that pre-teaching vocabulary, making the students predict the content of the listening text and group discussion are the best ways to help students reach advanced progress Only 3 teachers (23%) often give listening tasks to students and 5 teachers making questions to the students

Although teachers know which activities are good for their students but they do not regularly use them just because the reasons of time-consuming in designing them or difficulty in applying them they have mentioned below The next question will show what problems the teachers encounter when using the pre-listening activities above

3.1.1.5 Teachers' difficulties when applying pre-listening activities

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

A Designing them is difficult

B Designing them is time-consuming

C Handling them is sometimes out of control

D Sometimes the techniques used are not of the students' interests

Chart 2: Teachers' difficulties when applying pre-listening activities

In fact, in textbook Tieng Anh 10, there are pre-listening activities but sometimes teachers add various kinds of activity to meet students' interests When doing this job, 85% of the teachers admitted that it is rather time-consuming, for instant, to prepare a game as crossword puzzle, it takes teachers at least a week to think of words, sentences, examples or how to arrange letters that would help students to think about what will appear in the lesson and when employing these activities in class, students spend much time to solve it This influences to the procedure of a lesson in a period Thus 82% of the teachers found it difficult to design a pre-listening activity while 56% complained they cannot control the class when students are working in groups or in pairs According to them, some students do not concentrate on what their teachers and their friends are talking, they tend to be lazy, just sit and hear or do something else, and they do not care how the result is