Some solutions to teaching of esp listening to architecture students at ho chi minh city university of architecture

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES -R- LUU HOA LY SOME SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING OF ESP LISTENI

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

-R-

LUU HOA LY

SOME SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING OF ESP

LISTENING TO ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AT

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF

ARCHITECTURE

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL

HO CHI MINH CITY - 2002

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

-R-

LUU HOA LY

SOME SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING OF ESP LISTENING TO

ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AT

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE

M.A THESIS IN TESOL CODE NUMBER: 5.07.02

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL

Supervisor: PHO PHUONG DUNG, M.A

HO CHI MINH CITY - 2002

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

SOME SOLUTIONS TO TEACHING OF ESP LISTENING TO ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH CITY

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, LUU HOA LY, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s theses deposited in the University Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the University Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, November 2002

LUU HOA LY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been done and finished without the help and co-operation of a large number of people who now deserve my heartfelt thanks

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor,

Ms Pho Phuong Dung, M.A., who has critically read the thesis and offered her intelligent comments on my thesis at various points in its development

in an attempt to ensure that I make sense most of the time though she worked far from here Similar thank must go to Ms Ngo Thi Phuong Thien, M.A., who has inspired me to initial thoughts of the thesis

My thanks also go to the organizers of the Master course and other staff members for instructing me to do coursework and admitting me to perform the thesis

I would like to thank the Rector of Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture and the Dean of Applied Science Department and the Dean of Basic Science Department at this University who have enabled me to use both school time and resources while I was doing this thesis

My sincere thanks also go to those who have allowed themselves to

be observed and surveyed in the class observations, the interview sessions and the questionnaire responses

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my dead mother who used to encourage me to take this Master course and support

me with her love; and my affection must alsogo to my beloved son

ABSTRACT

Teaching English listening has not been paid sufficient attention to in many technical universities and colleges, especially at Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture, where ESP listening seems to be neglected However, listening plays an important part in communication Many architecture graduates have encountered difficulties with listening comprehension at building sites or civil engineering offices where English

is a means of communication

The purpose of this study was to identify learners’ problems in learning ESP listening and applicable methods to employ in ESP listening classes A questionnaire was designed to survey these issues and several listening classes were observed To clarify the data from the questionnaire and classroom observations, short interviews were also conducted with architecture students and ESP teachers at Architecture University

The findings of the study demonstrate that proper criteria for selecting materials appropriate to architecture students may facilitate their ESP listening learning In addition, the study concludes that the harmonious combination of applicable methods can improve ESP listening teaching at Architecture University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Theoretical background 2

1.3 Overview of the thesis 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 The importance of listening 5

2.1.1 The nature of listening 5

2.1.2 Listening competence 6

2.1.3 Purposes of listening 8

2.2 Listening stages 10

2.2.1 Pre-listening stage .10

2.2.2 While-listening stage 11

2.2.3 Post-listening stage 13

2.3 Learners’ potential problems in learning listening 14

2.3.1 Learners’ lack of experience in listening 15

2.3.2 The factors of a listening text 15

2.3.2.1 Sounds and pronunciation as obstacles to learners’ listening acquisition 15

2.3.2.2 Vocabulary 17

2.3.2.3 Grammatical structures 17

2.3.2.4 Information structures 18

2.3.2.5 Reduction 19

2.3.2.6 Colloquial language 19

2.3.2.7 Background knowledge 20

2.3.3 Distractors 20

2.4 Materials 21

2.5 Methods for teaching listening 22

2.5.1 Grammar-Translation Method 23

2.5.2 Audiolingual Method 24

2.5.3 Communicative Language Teaching Method 25

2.6 Summary of literature review 26

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Aims of the study 28

3.2 Hypotheses 29

3.3 Methods for the study 29

3.3.1 Questionnaire 29

3.3.1.1 Purpose 29

3.3.1.2 The subjects of the study 30

3.3.1.3 The description of the questionnaire 31

3.3.2 Classroom observation 32

3.3.2.1 Purpose 32

3.3.2.2 The subjects 32

3.3.3 Small interviews 34

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 35

4.1 Experience of the students’ learning of listening 36

4.1.1 The background of architecture students 36

4.1.2 Issues concerning the experience of learning listening 36

4.2 Issues concerning listening learning at HCMC University of Architecture 38

4.2.1 Learners’ difficulties in learning listening 38

4.2.2 Issues concerning the three stages of learning listening 43

4.2.2.1 Pre-listening stage 43

4.2.2.2 While-listening stage 46

4.2.2.3 Post-listening stage 49

4.3 Suggested solutions to teaching and learning of ESP listening via the questionnaire and focus group discussion 51

4.4 Approaches to teaching of ESP listening via the classroom observations and the small interviews with the three ESP teachers 54

4.4.1 The first class observation 54

4.4.1.1 Primary comments 54

4.4.1.2 Suggestions 55

4.4.2 The second class observation 56

4.4.2.1 Primary comments 56

4.4.2.2 Suggestions 56

4.4.3 The third class observation 56

4.4.3.1 Primary comments 56

4.4.3.2 Suggestions 57

4.4.4 Summary 57

4.5 Lesson plan for teaching ESP listening 59

4.5.1 A lesson plan for teaching ESP listening 59

4.5.2 Comment on the lesson plan 64

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND SOLUTIONS 67

5.1 Conclusion 67

5.2 Suggested solutions 68

5.2.1 Suggested criteria for selecting listening materials 68

5.2.1.1 Identifying suitable topics while selecting listening materials 69

5.2.1.2 Considering grammar structures and specialized terms or unfamiliar words 69

5.2.1.3 Choosing authentic and up-to-date materials 70

5.2.1.4 Choosing recorded materials with high quality 70

5.2.2 Suggested methods for teaching listening 71

5.2.3 Appropriate techniques for teaching of listening 72

5.3 Limitation of the study and recommendations for future research 73

REFERENCES 74

APPENDICES 79

APPENDIX A 80

APPENDIX B 86

APPENDIX C 90

APPENDIX D 91

APPENDIX E 96

APPENDIX F 99

APPENDIX G 105

APPENDIX H 106

APPENDIX I 107

APPENDIX K 113

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 4.1 37

FIGURE 4.2 43

FIGURE 4.3 44

FIGURE 4.4 47

FIGURE 4.5 48

FIGURE 4.6 49

FIGURE 4.7 50

FIGURE 4.8 51

FIGURE 4.9 52

LIST OF TABLES TABLE 3.1 29

TABLE 3.2 30

TABLE 4.1 65

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Other Languages

Chapter 1: Introduction

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study

Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture, a state-owned university, is allowed to admit approximately 500 students annually Through the five years’ syllabus for a degree in architecture, the students are equipped with, in addition to their major subjects, a necessary amount

of foreign language knowledge Though they are not English-major students, they are given quite a great deal of time to learn English Totally, the English course consists of 270 forty-five-minute periods, half of which

is devoted to General English and the other half to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) A point worth noting is that the teachers at the University

of Architecture realized that listening to ESP is more difficult to teach and learn than reading an ESP text Listening to English for architecture takes the teachers and students at the University of Architecture in Ho Chi Minh City much time and effort Though the students always obtain bad scores on listening tests, they can easily pass their English exams thanks to the scores

on other skills such as reading, speaking, writing and grammar Since 1996 many things have been done to solve this problem but they have brought about no effectiveness so far

Another thing worth mentioning here is that although Vietnamese engineers and architects at building sites or workshops of construction may

be able to understand written materials in English, they find it difficult to

Chapter 1: Introduction listen to spoken English Therefore, the problem here is not their lack of knowledge of specialized terms in architecture but their unfamiliarity to listening to such terms

Moreover, ESP listening has not been taught systematically at the University of Architecture in Ho Chi Minh City The individual teachers teach ESP listening to their students in their own ways Listening texts are personally and randomly selected providing that students master some terms used in specific situations

In order to understand the nature of listening teaching, theoretical background of listening literature needs to be considered

1.2 Theoretical background

Listening plays an important part in our life As Duzer [11] points out,

it is “used nearly twice as much as speaking and four to five times as much

as reading and writing” [11; 1] This is the reason why listening is paid a lot

of attention to by language researchers as well as teachers and students Many language specialists studied and proposed theories concerning the teaching and learning of listening such as Anderson and Lynch [1], Nunan [27], Richards [27], Underwood [41] and Ur [43] However, the studies tend

to focus on teaching General English; many particular issues related to teaching of ESP listening were not mentioned There were even fewer studies on teaching listening to Vietnamese students; in fact, there was only one thesis titled “Teaching Listening Comprehension to Non-language Postgraduate Students at Hanoi Water Resources University” written by

Chapter 1: Introduction Ngo Thi Mai Hien [26] However, the difficulties in ESP listening of Vietnamese learners have not been solved in her thesis She only offered ten sample lessons for teaching listening to non-language postgraduate students, yet the content of each lesson was not related to the students’ speciality at Hanoi Water Resources University

In brief, there have not been any particular studies which can satisfy the demands for teaching ESP listening systematically and effectively The present study, therefore, tries to investigate the characteristics of listening

as well as factors that make it difficult for architecture students and teachers to teach and learn ESP listening A questionnaire and a focus group were designed to ask the students of architecture about their present learning of ESP listening Furthermore, some classrooms were observed in order to explore the current situation of teaching ESP listening so that some solutions may be suggested to help them to overcome the difficulties in ESP listening atHo Chi Minh CityUniversity of Architecture

1.3 Overview of the thesis

There are five chapters in this study Chapter 1 introduces the background to the study Chapter 2 presents a literature review on the importance of English listening, listening stages, learners’ potential problems in learning listening and methods related to teaching listening Chapter 3 describes the methodology of the study and how the data were collected Chapter 4 presents and discusses the results of the questionnaire

Chapter 1: Introduction and classroom observations Finally, Chapter 5 offers suggestions or implications for classroom teaching of ESP listening

Chapter 2: Literature Review

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The importance of listening

2.1.1 The nature of listening

It is generally said that context facilitates listening Listening seems to

be developed easily in native environment because people hear it all the time, and “they have many different opportunities to communicate with their mother tongue” [8; 198] Underwood [41] also says that people can listen in their mother tongue with little or no effort On the other hand, in listening in the target language, it can be very difficult for learners to understand However, as pointed out by Doff [8], “listening is also a receptive skill or input source Thus, the ability to understand spoken English may become very important to English learners” [8; 198] Learning listening enables learners to identify and understand what others are saying Although listening is referred to as a passive or receptive skill, listeners are active participants during the communicative act Lee and Vanpatten state that

“listening is a dynamic process drawing on a variety of mental processes and knowledge sources” [22; 60] This viewpoint of Lee and Vanpatten [21] is shared by Willis [45], who clarifies that listening is receptive rather than productive, and students need to learn how to listen, and how to have access

to different types of listening In the process of language teaching, listening involves students’ hearing and understanding what teachers say ([14]; [39];

Chapter 2: Literature Review [30]) If students practice listening frequently enough, they will be able to understand spoken English outside the classroom when they have a chance The nature of listening can be summarized as follows:

Through reception, we internalize linguistic information without which we

could not produce language In classroom, students always do more listening

than speaking Listening competence is universally ”larger” than speaking

competence [6; 233]

2.1.2 Listening competence

Widdowson [44] states that listening competence is based on the knowledge of syntactic and phonological aspects, which he calls language usage If students are able to listen successfully, they can understand what speakers imply; at the same time they can obtain the context to which it relates In contrast, communication will break down when listeners cannot master the message By learning to listen, students can possess the listening techniques According to Richard [31], listening competence is based on four components: grammatical structure, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence Scarcella and Oxford assume that grammatical competence is

“an umbrella concept” [36; 141] which relates to increasing expertise in morphology and syntax, lexicon or vocabulary and mechanics (i.e., the sounds of letters and syllables, pronunciation of word, intonation and stress) Students need to master these elements in order to interpret the meaning of what they hear

The second component that facilitates listening competence is sociolinguistic competence Scarcella and Oxford claim that “sociolinguistic

Chapter 2: Literature Review competence involves knowing what is expected socially and culturally by users of the target language” [36; 141] The listener who is adept in this aspect can catch the idea or opinion of speakers via a series of speech or actions such as the speaker’s feelings, gestures and he/she might decide what the speaker’s purpose is and which information is necessary or important

The listener’s discourse competence is also useful for understanding listening texts Discourse competence must be developed because it deals with sentence level in communication The recognition of the rules of cohesion and coherence prove whether the listener is active or passive

The listener’s strategic competence also facilitates listening This competence in listening involves “using guessing strategies to compensate for missing knowledge while trying to take in what is heard” [36; 142] Guessing is essential for listening since listeners must decode the meaning of the content in conversation from context clues It implies that listeners need

to predict what is coming next so that they can keep up with the communication

For example, to illustrate the four components of listening competence

in a listening task, architecture students are provided with a plan of a house and a list of names of the areas in the house [48] While listening to a description of the plan, they have to match the names with appropriate areas: (a) dining area / (b) living room / (c) kitchen / (d) hall / (e) toilet

(f) bedroom / (g) bathroom / (h) bedroom

Chapter 2: Literature Review

PLAN OF THE HOUSE (The key can be seen in Appendix C)

To do the task well, students of architecture have to possess their listening proficiency, which relates to the four components of listening competence mentioned above Knowledge of the rules of morphology and syntax, and knowledge of the use of natural pause and stress can help the learners to understand the description in the text In addition, architecture students’ background knowledge of speciality can be employed to fulfill the task

2.1.3 Purposes of listening

The importance of listening is related to the purposes of listening Most listening activities occur in the course of conversation Within the context of a classroom, the teacher is supposed to design situations, which arouse the purpose of listening among his students Underwood [41] offers the following list of necessary situations for choosing tasks of listening:

- listening to live conversations in which one takes no part

Chapter 2: Literature Review

- listening to news, weather forecast, etc on the radio or the television

- listening to announcements

- listening to the radio for entertainment

- watching television for entertainment

- watching a live performance of a play

- watching a film in the cinema

the listener focuses on words such as temperature, rainy, sunny The listener

must remember the information in the weather forecast and take notes

Although listening is a receptive skill, it requires the listener to activate his or her own knowledge of language and society to comprehend a listening text In other words, the listener has to play an active role in a listening task The importance of listening is supported by Harmer:

Chapter 2: Literature Review

there can be no doubt of the value of comprehension input ( ) language that

they more or less understand must help them to acquire that language If they

are exposed to language enough they will almost certainly be able to use

some (or all) of it themselves [14; 37]

In addition, the classification of listening situations is necessary for the listener to determine the purpose of listening since the listener can base on the context of a listening text to predict its content

2.2 Listening stages

In order to teach listening effectively in language classes three stages

of listening process have been drawn out by Doff [8], Underwood [41], Nunan [28]; and Lee and Vanpatteen [21]: Pre-listening, While-listening, and Post-listening stages

2.2.1 Pre-listening stage

Pre-listening is a form of teaching activity that has been pursued as long as methodologists and language researchers have sought to improve teaching of listening effectively for learners′ benefit This stage is important and necessary in language classrooms because it helps to maximize learners’ comprehension According to Lee and Vanpatten [21],

in pre-listening stage “teachers focus on aural stimuli and make decisions about what to attend to and what to ignore, consciously orienting learners before listening task has been shown to increase comprehension” [21; 74]

To discuss this stage, Doff [8] also emphasizes the listener’s prediction of what the conversation is about The teacher can ask students to guess what they are going to listen next For example, the teacher shows a

Chapter 2: Literature Review photograph describing two men in building suits at the site Students themselves must predict the topic of the listening text (e.g “construction”) Harmer [14] calls this stage “lead-in” stage [14; 183]

The teacher has to involve learners in “lead-in” stage, having them activate their schemata to prepare the while-listening stage According to Harmer [14], Richards [30] and Sheerin [38], it is necessary for the teacher

to raise learners’ awareness of their background knowledge before involving them in listening task The teacher should provide learners with the main information of the message, the relationship between speaker and hearer, time, place and key words in the listening text This preparation will enable learners to build up their understanding of culture-specific factors of the target language Sheerin [38] emphasizes that "the ability to predict and to interpret by analogy are important comprehension skills and ones which the foreign learner needs to be able to employ" [38; 127]

In pre-listening stage, learners’ background knowledge must be activated to help them have more ideas about the content of listening text Therefore, learners can predict what the text is about and they can be well prepared for the while-listening stage

2.2.2 While-listening stage

The purpose of while-listening activities, according to Underwood [41], is to help learners “develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language” [41; 6] While-listening activities should be interesting so that students feel that they need to listen and carry out the activities When

Chapter 2: Literature Review describing this stage, Underwood [41] introduces some problems facing learners, one of which is that learners tend to be not interested in texts unfamiliar to them

As for a long piece of listening text, Doff [8] and Richard [30] suggest “while-listening should be divided into small steps” [8; 203] It is useful for students to have time to comprehend each short piece of listening text That is a reason why the teacher should divide a long dialogue into sections and check learners’ comprehension after each section since each section conveys its own idea

Another point of while-listening worth mentioning is the way of using facilities in a listening class such as cassette players, or television sets Sheerin [38] says that visual and aural facilities support each other in a listening activity For example, at first the teacher turns on a dumb show of

a building site in which there are many workers and one contractor Students study the show to guess the main ideas The teacher then turns on the show with audible sounds so that students can maximize their comprehension of the listening text

Many exercises for improving the teaching of while-listening stage are designed by such authors as Anderson and Lynch [1], Maley and Moulding [24] and Dunkel and Lim [10] Typically, Underwood [41] suggests many exercises of this kind such as “storyline picture sets”,

“putting pictures in order”, “completing picture”, “following a route”,

Chapter 2: Literature Review

“form/chart completion”, “true/false” [41; 52-63] The particular examples illustrating this stage can be seen in Appendix D

2.2.3 Post-listening stage

Activities at post-listening stage, on one hand, are related to the listening text itself, and, on the other hand, are extensive exercises The teacher involves learners in some more tasks to check their listening comprehension Many textbooks now focus teachers and learners on post-listening rather than pre-listening tasks as pointed out by Underwood [41] and Field [12]:

Under the present’s “comprehension” approach, success in listening is measured by correct response to questions or tasks Teachers focus upon the

outcomes of listening rather than upon listening itself [12; 111]

The purpose of post-listening is to check to what extent learners can understand the text It is expected that the activity should help the listener to focus on what they have heard, and to evaluate success in doing listening tasks and integrate listening with other language skills such as speaking and reading [41] Harmer also states that “the teacher can help learners to discover mistakes in their post-listening performance on the basis of the text” [14; 189] by designing follow-up tasks associated to the listening text, such as speaking, reading or writing about what they have listened to

Whereas Harmer [14] says that the post-listening stage needs to be very brief, e.g a minute’s pair practices and two-minutes’ classroom discussion, Willis [45] asserts that there should be an extension in post listening in which “learners’ listening skills could be examined and

Chapter 2: Literature Review redressed through short micro-listening exercises” [45; 141] For example,

students have to listen to the text “Pompeii, destroyed, forgotten and found”

[10; 14], then they have to do a post-listening task which consists of two

parts: comprehension check and listening expansion (see Appendix E)

To emphasize the importance of the three stages in listening practice,

Underwood [41] expresses that because the “pre-listening stage has built up

expectations in the listener, and the while-listening stage has satisfied these

expectations, it is hard to sustain interest at the post-listening stage unless

the post-listening activity is intrinsically motivating” [41; 79]

The next section will review the typical problems of learners in

learning listening

2.3 Learners’ potential problems in learning listening

English learners usually find listening the most difficult skill for them

to deal with The problems of English listening can be related to three broad

categories: “psychological, cultural and linguistic” [29; 198] The

psychological and cultural categories such as education level, nationality

and gender obviously influence learners’ listening practice since they are

factors that affect the way of expressing ideas In addition, linguistics plays

a direct role in decoding the meaning of a listening text Psychological,

cultural and linguistic categories must be employed simultaneously in a

listening task However, the present study will mainly focus on the

linguistic category which is the basic factor in learning a foreign language

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.3.1 Learners’ lack of experience in listening

One factor that makes ESP learners have difficulty with learning of English listening is the listener himself Learners habitually listen to a text word-by-word [25] Therefore, while listening, if they miss a word, they feel worried and try to focus on listening to this “difficult” word repeatedly until they hear it However, they often fail to succeed in gaining its meaning Brown [4] assumes that difficulties arise from the very listener in listening practice

Moreover, students have difficulty in listening because of their lack

of practice in listening to English speakers every day Most learners do not

do extensive listening tasks at home, thus they find it difficult to do the listening tasks in class

Learners’ motivation can also influence their learning of English listening considerably This factor directly determines whether learners want to practice listening as well as consider sound aspects in learning of listening

2.3.2 The factors of a listening text

2.3.2.1 Sounds and pronunciation as obstacles to learners’ listening acquisition

Ur [42] points out that “sounds” can be the first problem that causes English learners to have difficulty in understanding spoken English Generally, most learners are not aware of inaccurate sound perception at the beginning stage of learning since learners believe that “sound” is one aspect isolated from learning of listening They are only concerned about

Chapter 2: Literature Review what the content of the listening text is In reality, learning of sounds is usually conducted before learning of listening in English major classes at some private and public universities in Vietnam At this stage, learners are involved in some tasks of distinguishing between similar sounds such as /s/

vs /∫/ or /i:/ vs /Ι/ When learners do not understand the importance of learning of sounds at the beginning level, they have trouble catching the correct sounds of a foreign language

English speakers often speak with “a variety of accents” [14; 88] and speak very fast Therefore, learners find it difficult to understand fast or

“natural native-sounding speech” [42; 111] The accent of the speaker is an obstacle to effective listening There are link-ups that are not produced clearly, which may confuse learners Anderson and Lynch [1] and Boyle [3] show that one of the four clusters of aspects that can cause the difficulty of listening tasks is “factors related to the speaker such as the number of people participating in a listening text, how quickly they speak and what types of accent they have” [1; 47]

Learners do not seem to activate their knowledge of the “sound” aspect to decode the meaning of a listening text [14; 88] They probably learn about sounds, but still do not know how to associate them with listening tasks Some “similar sounds” in a listening text must be studied and distinguished by learners For example, they have to distinguish between “she” and “see” or “eat” and “it” In addition, speakers’ feelings can be addressed rhythmically (rise-fall or fall-rise) in their utterances since

Chapter 2: Literature Review the same utterance can express different attitudes of the speakers, for example,

She is absent today (rise-fall): announcement, assertment

She is absent today (fall-rise): worry, questioning

Therefore, if foreign learners do not practice listening everyday, they will not succeed in listening to already learnt words or grammatical structures in different contexts [39]

2.3.2.2 Vocabulary

Vocabulary can be a big obstacle to learners of ESP when they learn listening Staley [39] supposes that “lack of comprehension of everyday speech by foreign learners arises from meeting new vocabulary” [39; 285] English learners tend to focus on new vocabulary before listening to a text since key words help much to predict the content Therefore, lack of comprehension of the meaning of new words may cause learners to be unable to understand the whole text

2.3.2.3 Grammatical structures

Grammatical structures play a considerable role for learners to understand a listening text Learners generally do not take grammar seriously since they believe that lack of competence in grammar does not prevent them from predicting the content of the text The following example may illustrate this view point:

Learners listen: He would not have made such a mistake if he had learnt it sooner Learners choose: a If he learn it as soon as possible

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b Had he learnt it sooner

c Were he told about it sooner

d Should he learn it sooner

Here the correct answer is “b”, which indicates an unreal condition in the past Learners have to master the “reversion of subject-verb” in this conditional sentence in order to choose a response appropriate to the sentence they have heard

2.3.2.4 Information structures

The information structure in a listening text can also cause difficulties with learning of English listening to learners who are learning ESP A series of experiments by Anderson and Lynch [1] show that the difficulty of listening tasks is particularly due to the followings:

-The organization of information (the order in which information is arranged)

-The familiarity of topic

-The explicitness and sufficiency of the information

-The type of referring expressions used (for example, use of pronouns instead of complete noun phrases)

[1; 47]

If a listening text excludes one of these factors, learners certainly have difficulty with listening tasks In addition, Brown [6] remarks that there are some factors that make listening tasks less effective such as

“clustering”, “redundancy”, “reduce formed”, “performance variables”,

“colloquial language”, “rate of delivery”, “interaction” [6; 240]

Chapter 2: Literature Review

In spoken language, due to memory limitations and predisposition for

“chunking”, or clustering, listeners tend to break speeches down into smaller groups of words Clauses are common constituents, but phrases within clauses are even more easily retained for comprehension Sometimes second language learners will try to retain overly long constituents (a whole sentence or even several sentences) or they will err in the other direction in trying to attend to every word in an utterance

2.3.2.5 Reduction

Learners always meet many reduced forms when they listen Reduction consists of phonological form (“Djeetyet” for “Did you eat yet?”), morphological form (contractions like “I’ll”) … or pragmatic (phone rings in a house, child answers, cups the telephone and yells to another room in the house, “Mom! Phone!”) All these are referred to as

“gibberish” [6; 239] Learners have difficulties listening for meaning in the midst of all those distracting performance variables

2.3.2.6 Colloquial language

Colloquial language is another problem for learners in learning English listening It consists of idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge which are all manifested at some point in conversation Brown says: “Colloquialisms appear in both monologues and dialogues” [6; 240]

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.3.2.7 Background knowledge

Background knowledge is assumed to be shared by the speaker and the hearer The listener may not understand the content of a message if he does not conventionally have knowledge of what the speaker is implying; for example, after listening to a conversation between a man and a woman, learners have to decide what they are talking about:

Woman: What are you doing?

Man: I am digging a hole, putting the seed in and then watering it

Listeners’ conventional knowledge helps them to imagine that it is a process of planting a tree If not, they may not understand the whole task even though they could catch every word in the conversation ([5]; [9]; [18])

Another outside factor that causes difficulty in learning of English listening of learners is visual aid ([8]; [9]; and [40]) Teaching aids certainly

Chapter 2: Literature Review facilitate learning of English listening If learners listen to an instruction of how to get to the National Zoo with the aid of a map, they will find easier to comprehend the instruction

In addition to factors related to learners’ potential problems, language

researchers also paid attention to listening materials

2.4 Materials

Choosing listening materials is an important step in teaching and learning of listening Many factors related to the choice of listening materials are given by language researchers Hutchinson [16] states that in ESP courses chosen materials determine their content The appropriateness of materials consists of students’ comfort and familiarity with the material, language level, interest and relevance According to Underwood [41], learning listening is a conscious process of studying and understanding bits of language step by step, while acquisition is a subconscious process which occurs naturally under certain conditions He states that:

using listening texts of the right level (combined with appropriate activities)

will not only develop listening skills but also contribute to students’ overall

language learning [41; 102]

Underwood [41] suggests some factors for selecting listening materials; for example, a selected recorded material needs to be related to language, length, content, the use of visual support material, the style of delivery, the speed of delivery, spontaneity, and the quality of production Snow and Perkins [37] share the viewpoint of Underwood They claim that listening materials “must be neither too easy or too difficult, but set an

Chapter 2: Literature Review appropriate level in order to challenge the student to actively understand, form hypotheses, and try to clear up ambiguities” [37; 52] Underwood [41] says, “all students need materials which involve them and make them want

to listen” [41; 104] He believes that the content of a listening text can be decoded through intonation signifies, pauses, even speakers’ attitudes (angry

or pleased, questioning or asserting)

Illustrations appropriate to listening materials may help to understand the content of a listening text According to Field [12], with the aid of picture

or other illustrative materials, listening practice can be integrated with reading, writing and speaking skills [12; 198] Richards [30] assumes that learning experience of authentic materials should provide an opportunity for acquisition; that is, they should provide comprehensible input which requires negotiation of meaning and which contains linguistic features a little beyond current competent level of the learners

In short, the choice of listening materials is important to increase learners’ motivation towards learning listening In addition to discussing existing and potential problems of learners and authentic materials for listening, language-teaching specialists suggest approaches to teaching English listening

2 5 Methods for teaching listening

Language researchers and methodologists have tried to find out about good methods that help teachers and learners in their teaching and learning listening However, there is no method that seems to be the best and helps

Chapter 2: Literature Review them to teach and learn English listening effectively A certain teaching method can only be appropriate to a particular class In this section, three available methods among various methods will be reviewed: Grammar-Translation, Audiolingual, and Communicative methods The use of the Grammar-Translation method helps Vietnamese learners to become more familiar with grammatical structures in the target language The researcher’s personal experience shows that grammatical structures can help listeners to understand the listening text more clearly In addition, the Audioligual method improves learners’ natural speed through imitation With the

application of the Communicative method various interesting activities can

be created in classrooms

2.5.1 Grammar-Translation Method

The Grammar-Translation method appeared in the nineteenth century [32; 4] This method was called “classical method” [20; 4] since it was first used in the teaching of classical languages such as Latin and Greek The rules of grammar, not the language itself, are important The method is popular because it requires little experience from the teacher Larsen-Freeman [20] and Richards and Rodger [32] describe the principles of this method as follows:

(a) Grammar rules and vocabulary of the target language are taught in mother tongue

(b) Students are taught to translate from one language to another

Chapter 2: Literature Review (c) Native language equivalents for foreign language vocabulary are required to memorize

(d) The teacher is the authority in the classroom

2.5.2 Audiolingual Method

The development of the Audiolingual method resulted from the attention given to foreign language teaching in the United States towards the end of the 1950s This method is based on structural linguistics and places heavy emphasis on spoken rather than written language, and on the grammar

of particular languages, stressing habit formation as a mode of learning [32; 44] Memorization of phrases and repetitive drills were the primary teaching techniques The Audiolingual method does not depend so much on the instructor’s creative ability and does not require excellent proficiency in the language Larsen-Freeman [20] states that the Audiolingual method advocates ‘mimicry’ memorization in pattern drills in which the role of understanding is minimized as much as possible She also adds that the mechanical production of the utterance as “a language form and the development of automatic responses of the desired nature are performed in the listening process” [20; 42]

Audiolingualism went out of fashion because language learning was presented as a tedious process However, it is interesting to note that this method is still popular at the pre listening stage of the teaching process in some places [20; 31]

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.5.3 Communicative Language Teaching Method

Communicative Language Teaching Method (CLT) is one of the major language teaching movements worldwide It has been applied for a few decades and its scope has expanded since the mid-1970s The goal is to have students become communicatively competent According to Larsen-Freeman [20], “communicative competence involves being able to use the language appropriate to given social context” [20; 131]

CLT, which departs from the PPP type lesson (Presentation, Practice, Production), has two main strands: one is that language is a system for the expression of meaning It refers to production of correct sentences The other

is the ability to use the knowledge of the rules for effective communication This method reflects learners’ needs The activity engages learners in

“communication involving processes such as information sharing, negotiation

of meaning and interaction” because the learner is centered [32; 69] PPP is based on the belief that learners are self-directed, responsible decision-makers Learners are seen to learn in different ways and have different needs or interests

Larsen-Freeman [20] and Richards and Rodgers [32] suggest the major principles of CLT:

- Meaning is paramount

- Language learning is learning to communicate

- Drilling may occur, but peripherally

Chapter 2: Literature Review

- Attempts to communicate may be encouraged from the very beginning

- Translation may be used where students need or benefit from it

- Language is created by the individual often through trial and error

- Fluency is primary goal; accuracy is judged in contexts

- Students interact in pairs or groups

[32; 67]

2.6 Summary of literature review

Language teaching researchers discuss the importance of listening and describe the three listening stages Furthermore, they introduce some difficulties facing learners learning ESP when they learn English listening They particularly suppose some approaches to teaching English listening However, real needs and problems of Vietnamese learners when dealing with teaching and learning of ESP listening have not been discussed so far This study, therefore, aims to investigate the teaching of ESP listening, in particular, the teaching of ESP listening at HCMC University of Architecture Two research questions are formed in order to investigate this issue:

1 What are architecture students’ current and potential problems

in ESP listening? What are appropriate solutions to the teaching

of ESP listening?

2 Are present techniques for teaching of ESP listening appropriate to architecture students?

Chapter 2: Literature Review Chapter 3 will describe the methodology of the study in answering these two research questions

Chapter 3: Methodology

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Aims of the study

Learning listening in English is very difficult for students who are not English majors Finding the factors affecting the process of listening is one

of the purposes of this study In particular, existing problems of the second- year architecture students of HCMC University of Architecture and their practical needs in learning ESP listening will be surveyed The results of the questionnaire and classroom observation will help to find out current problems of architecture students in learning English listening and then solutions for those problems will be suggested

The aims of the study are (a) to find out the current and potential problems affecting the process of teaching ESP listening at HCMC University of Architecture via a questionnaire (see Appendix A) and (b) to study and experiment with three methods being used in teaching ESP listening at HCMC University of Architecture through classroom observations Then a lesson plan is designed to teach ESP listening to architecture students with the hope that the results of this experimental teaching can confirm whether the techniques applied in those classes are appropriate to teaching ESP listening at the University of Architecture in HCM City

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.2 Hypotheses

In the light of the literature review and personal experience, two major hypotheses for teaching and learning of ESP listening at the University of Architecture are formed:

1 There are current problems that cause difficulties in learning

of ESP listening will be presented in the next section

3.3 Methods for the study

3.3.1 Questionnaire

3.3.1.1 Purpose:

Questionnaire is a method used in applied linguistics as language surveys A questionnaire is a way of an interactive style, which means respondents feel as if someone is talking to them The questionnaire is likely to be a good way of “collecting information about learners’ problems

in learning listening skills” [2; 85] It will be employed in this study to find out results which ought to be considered for the ultimate goal of improving teaching of listening, especially teaching ESP listening The questionnaire

is designed from the examination of existing theories discussed in the

Chapter 3: Methodology literature review and the writer’s own experience ([24]; [38])

3.3.1.2 The subjects of the study:

A total of 250 second-year students from three departments: Urban

planning, Architecture, and Construction of HCMC University of

Architecture, participated in the study All the subjects had studied English

as a foreign language for three semesters, which is equivalent to 180

forty-five-minute periods at the University of Architecture In the last semester

of their second year, they took an ESP course of 90 forty-five-minute

periods Their ages range from 19 to 22 Table 3.1 shows the number of

students of the three departments mentioned above as participants in

answering the questionnaire

1 Department of Urban planning 82

2 Department of Architecture 92

3 Department of Construction 76

Table 3.1: Number of students participating in the questionnaire

The questionnaire was administered in April 2002 and was written in

Vietnamese It consists of 16 open-ended and yes-no questions

All 250 questionnaire sheets were distributed to the second-year

students of HCM City University of Architecture, and collected two days

later But there were only 240 sheets returned Thus, the next chapter will

analyze the results based on the 240 students’ answers from the survey