An investigation into efl teachers perceptions and practices of pre listening activities in english classes at quoc hoc high school hue city

OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT QUOC HOC HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirem

OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES

AT QUOC HOC HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY

MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts,

Hue University of Foreign Languages

HUE, 2018

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

-

LY THI MINH DUC

AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES

OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES

AT QUOC HOC HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY

MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

CODE: 60.14.01.11

SUPERVISOR: TRAN QUANG NGOC THUY, Ph.D

HUE, 2018

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

-

LÝ THỊ MINH ĐỨC

KHẢO SÁT VỀ NHẬN THỨC VÀ THỰC TẾ ỨNG DỤNG

CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRƯỚC KHI NGHE CỦA

CÁC GIÁO VIÊN DẠY TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG QUỐC HỌC HUẾ

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP

DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH

MÃ SỐ: 60.14.01.11

NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC:

TS TRẦN QUANG NGỌC THÚY

HUẾ, 2018

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made

in the thesis itself

Date: 22/ 10 / 2018 Signature

LY THI MINH DUC

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate how Quoc Hoc Hue high school EFL teachers perceive the effects of pre-listening activities on their students’ listening comprehension skill and explore the practices of teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school

The research involved 10 teachers of English department of Quoc Hoc high school and used a mixed methods approach collecting data from an online survey and semi-structured interview The study found that most of the EFL teachers at Quoc Hoc Hue high school fully perceived the concept of “pre-listening activities”, the importance and the goals of these activities Regarding the reality of teachers’ conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school, the results of the present study revealed that pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school were conducted with a high frequency level and with a period of three to five minutes Among some popular pre-listening activities such as pre-questioning, brainstorming, vocabulary pre-teaching and pair or group discussing, brainstorming is considered the most effective pre-listening activity while vocabulary pre-teaching is least preferred Furthermore, the study showed that English language skills were often integrated in pre-listening stage and speaking was the most favorite skill of both the teachers and students What’s more, it is justified that there was a disparity in the teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities between classes of English-majored and non-English majored students Finally, some suggestions based on teachers’ perceptions and realities of pre-listening activities were made to help teachers improve the quality of these activities in English lessons at Quoc Hoc high school

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,

Dr Tran Quang Ngoc Thuy who spent lots of time giving enlightened comments and constructive suggestions to every piece of my work I most heartily appreciate her professional guidance and affectionate encouragement during the writing of this study Without her support, I might never have fulfilled my work

My special thanks go to English teachers and students at Quoc Hoc high school for their fruitful collaborations and endless kindness throughout the entire data collection period

Last but not least, I am immensely grateful to my beloved family, colleagues and friends who gave me lots of best wishes, sound comments, enormous motivation as well as inspiration to keep me on the right track and to complete my MA thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix

LIST OF TABLES x

LIST OF FIGURES xi

CHAPTER 1 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Objectives of the study 3

1.3 Research significance 3

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Scope of the study 4

1.6 Organisation of the study……….…………5

CHAPTER 2 6

LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Definition of “perception” 6

2.2 Listening comprehension skill 7

2.2.1 Definition of “Listening comprehension” 7

2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension skill 8

2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension 10

2.2.4 The relationship between listening and other language skills 14

2.3 Pre-listening stage 15

2.3.1 Definition of pre-listening 15

2.3.2 The purposes of pre-listening stage 16

2.3.3 Pre-listening activities 16

2.3.4 Factors affecting teachers' choice of pre-listening activities 19

2.4 Previous studies 21

CHAPTER 3 27

METHODOLOGY 27

3.1 Research method 27

3.2 Context of the study 29

3.3 Research participants 31

3.4 Data collection procedure and data analysis 33

3.4.1 Data collection procedure 33

3.4.2 Data analysis 35

CHAPTER 4 36

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 36

4.1 EFL teachers’ perceptions of effects of pre-listening activities on students’ listening comprehension skill 36

4.1.1 EFL teachers’ understanding of a definition “pre-listening activities” in English teaching context 36

4.1.2 Importance of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 38

4.1.3 EFL teachers’ perceptions of objectives of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 40

4.2 Practices of pre-listening activities employed in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school 42

4.2.1 Frequency of teachers’ conducting pre-listening stage in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 42

4.2.2 Amount of time for pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 45

4.2.3 Frequency of pre-listening activities used in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school 47

4.2.4 Effectiveness of different pre-listening activities in English classes in Quoc Hoc Hue high school 49

4.2.5 Teachers’ combination of different English language skills in pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 54

4.2.6 Differences in pre-listening activities between English majored classes and non-English majored classes 58

4.2.7 Factors affecting success in conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 61

4.3 Suggestions for improving effectiveness of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 64

CHAPTER 5 66

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 66

5.1 Summary of the key findings 66

5.2 Pedagogical implications of the study 67

5.2.1 For the development of teachers’ perception 67

5.2.2 For the quality improvement of teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 69

5.3 Limitations of the study 71

5.4 Further studies 72

REFERENCES 73

APPENDICES 81

TOEFL : Test of English as a Foreign Language

TOEIC : Test of English for International Communication

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Background information of the surveyed teacher group 32Table 3.2 Background information of the surveyed student group 32

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 EFL teachers’ understanding of a definition of “pre-listening activities”

in English teaching context 37Figure 4.2 Importance of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 38Figure 4.3 EFL teachers’ perceptions of objectives of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school 40Figure 4.4 Frequency of teachers’ conducting pre-listening stage in English classes

at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 43Figure 4.5 Amount of time for pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 45Figure 4.6 Frequency of pre-listening activities used in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school 47Figure 4.7 Effectiveness of different pre-listening activities in English classes in Quoc Hoc Hue high school 50Figure 4.8 Teachers’ combination of different English language skills in pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 54Figure 4.9 Differences in pre-listening activities between English majored classes and non-English majored classes at Quoc Hoc high school 58Figure 4.10 Factors affecting success in conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school 61

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Languages play an important role in every field of social life as they help people

to communicate and connect each other Among languages in the world, the most popular one is, perhaps, English which so far has been considered a means of international communication for those who want to access the modern world That is the reason why the number of learners of English is increasing rapidly in recent years

In Vietnam, nowadays, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum of all high schools, secondary schools and even in many primary ones

For successful communication, it is essential for learners of English to grasp the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Among them, listening contributes greatly to the process of language acquisition since it gives learners opportunities to get familiar with the real language used in real life Indeed, no one can ignore the remarkable role of listening in our perception of the world around us

As Le Huynh Thanh Huy (2015) states in his research, when people communicate with others, they spend the largest proportion of time, about 45% of listening, but only 30% of speaking, 16% of reading, and 9% of writing Additionally, a significant role of listening skill is emphasized in Underwood’s words (1990) It is that if students do not learn to listen effectively, they will be unable to take part in oral communication However, as Nunan (1997) said, although listening skill accounts for more than half of the time that EFL learners spend functioning in a foreign language,

it seems to be usually either neglected or underestimated Listening was considered a less valuable skill to focus on in the classroom as it was believed to be easily picked

up by the learners (Miller, 2003) On the other hand, in the Vietnamese context, for example, although listening is one of the key components in the English textbooks for Vietnamese high school students, this skill is neglected by some EFL teachers because they assume that listening is not assessed in national exams Actually, listening is more than just perceiving the sound It is a complex problem-solving skill

in which the meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and the discourse must be comprehended It is virtually a difficult skill to acquire even in one’s own language (Oxford, 1993) Listening is difficult because it requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination (Austin, 1970) A study by Swanson (1984) found out that teachers tend not to emphasize the teaching of listening as they assumed that listening is a passive skill and develops naturally It is generally hard to improve EFL learner's listening ability, and no student feels quite confident when taking part in a listening exam though they are good at other skills Normally, in some EFL classrooms, teaching listening skill mainly focuses on while-listening stage in which teachers play the recording and students listen to the listening tasks by themselves In reality, in listening the role of teachers is also very important in improving students' listening skill In particular, the language teachers can supply students with a variety

of pre-listening activities in order to help students gain essential knowledge or related information before they begin listening As claimed by Underwood (1990), in listening the content schema must be activated in order for students to access their prior knowledge Thus, before listening to a recording, some pre-listening activities are expected to give to students to help them activate existing knowledge, build prior knowledge and define a purpose for the listening "The pre-listening activities are probably the most important aspect of any listening sequence because the success of all the other activities depends on the extent to which the teachers manage to give to the students” (Chastain, 1988, p.64)

All in all, since the pre-listening stage plays an important role in increasing students' interest, triggering students’ prior knowledge and preparing the students for the while-listening stage The traditional way of teaching listening in which listeners are simply given a series of pre-recorded listening texts on a tape, and then are tested how much they have understood by answering a lot of comprehension exercises is not quite responding They need to be taught how to listen, how to react to the unknown or difficulties in listening (Brown, 1990; Anderson & Lynch, 1988; Field, 1998) They also need to be engaged in the new pedagogical methodology of teaching listening in which pre-listening activities are paid much attention to By this way, the

students can complete listening tasks in while-listening stage successfully and have a chance to improve their listening skill to meet the requirement of B1 level of the MOET after high school graduation Therefore, the study aims to investigate EFL teachers' perception of the effects of pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension skill, and to find out whether teachers facilitate students in the pre-listening stage through appropriate activities employed in order to help activate students' schema and have a good preparation for while-listening stage Thus, that is

my reason to choose the topic “AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT QUOC HOC HUE HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY” as

my research paper

1.2 Objectives of the study

The research focuses on two main purposes:

 To explore EFL teachers' awareness of the impacts of pre-listening activities on students' listening comprehension skill

 To discover the practices of teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities to stimulate students’ background knowledge in English classes

at Quoc Hoc high school

1.3 Research significance

When this research paper is conducted, it is expected to contribute significantly

to the community of EFL high school teachers in Hue city in general and at Quoc Hoc Hue high school in particular, as well as high school students who are directly benefited from their teachers’ use of pre-listening activities

For EFL teachers, the result of the study will improve teachers’ awareness of the importance of conducting pre-listening activities in English classes and spontaneously share with the teachers some related experience in designing and selecting pre-listening activities appropriate for different groups of students at Quoc Hoc high school More importantly, through students’ responses in the interview, the study hopes to help the teachers better understand about their students in terms of their viewpoints, their feelings and their expectations when encountering pre-listening activities in class so that they can

create more interesting and useful pre-listening activities that meet students’ needs and abilities and improve the quality of English listening lessons at school

For Quoc Hoc Hue high school students, this research is expected to improve students’ perception of the necessity of pre-listening stage in English lessons, provide them with more knowledge about varying types of pre-listening activities used in English lessons and help them understand better about the effectiveness of different activities for their development’s listening comprehension skill

1.5 Scope of the study

In this study, the main focus is on English listening comprehension skill at a high school in Hue city, Thua Thien Hue province Specifically, the study digs deep into teachers’ perceptions of the impacts of pre-listening stage and practices of the implementation of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc High school Additionally, for the limited time, the high school for the gifted – Quoc Hoc Hue where the researcher works as an English teacher is chosen as a research site to collect the data for the study Quoc Hoc Hue high school has a large number of experienced and brilliant teachers who have an excellent GPA (Grade Point Average) score after graduation from their universities and also have to pass two entrance examinations given by Thua Thien Hue Department of Education and Training and Quoc Hoc Hue high school to become official teachers at the school Ten teachers from the English Department of Quoc Hoc Hue high school and a group of six students from both English-majored and non-English majored classes were selected

as participants of the study

1.6 Organisation of the study

On the whole, the thesis includes five chapters It begins with Chapter 1 – Introduction, which introduces the issue in question and the rationale for it The purposes of the research are also indicated and followed by the research questions and consequently by its significance and aims respectively Chapter 2 – Literature review, serves as a theoretical background for the study In this chapter, the key concepts are defined and the review of previous research on the same topic is presented The next part is Chapter 3 – Methodology, in which the methods employed, the participants, the data collection and the data analysis of the research are in turn analysed Chapter 4 – Findings and Discussion, follows with the findings

of the research, which are illustrated by means of figures and then are discussed so as

to clarify the answers to the research questions Finally, Chapter 5 – Conclusion, briefly summarizes the whole study as well as presents implications drawn out from the studying findings It is also in this part that research limitations are pointed out and recommendations for future research are made

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter first briefly presents the definitions of perception Then, the concept

of listening comprehension skill is defined clearly in the next part In the same vein, some issues such as its importance, its modes of information processing, its relationship with other language skills and factors affecting this skill are discussed in specific details Next, the chapter clarifies the definition of pre-listening and some related points including its main purposes, some popular pre-listening activities and elements influencing the choice of pre-listening activities It finally ends up reviewing the previous research and simultaneously indicating the limitations of those studies which provide the gap for the current research to fill

2.1 Definition of “perception”

According to some popular dictionaries such as Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, Cambridge Dictionary, or Longman Dictionary, the literal meaning of “perception”

is defined in various ways However, in general, this term has three main meanings

As given by Oxford Learners’ Dictionaries, “perception” means (1) the way you notice things, especially with the senses; (2) the ability to understand the true nature

of something; and (3) an idea, a belief or an image you have as a result of how you see or understand something Consistent with Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, Cambridge Dictionary describes “perception” as (1) someone’s ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people; (2) a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem Other definitions by Longman Dictionaries of are (1) the way you think about something and your idea

of what it is like; (2) the way that you notice things with your senses of sight, hearing etc; (3) the natural ability to understand or notice things quickly By and large, for the literal meaning of the term “perception”, all the dictionary sources point out almost the same definition

In the field of psychology, “perception” can be illustrated as “our recognition and interpretation of sensory information Perception also includes how we respond to the information We can think of perception as a process where we take in sensory information from our environment, and make that information into something meaningful” (Williams, 2013) As assumed by Gibson (2002, pp.77-89), there is a very close correlation between perception and action He states that action would be unguided without perception and on contrary perception would serve no purpose without action Consequently, perception has had a great impact on one’s action, specifically, it allows him to take sensory information and use it to interact with the environment or make it into something meaningful (Williams, 2013)

Much related to the field of education, the Iris Center characterizes “teacher perceptions” as the thoughts or mental images that teachers have about something are shaped by their background knowledge and life experiences (IrisCenter, 2012) Ultimately, “perception” refers to one’s belief, or understanding of something or one’s manner of understanding and noticing things through senses However, in the sense of the present study, “perception” is understood as one’s belief, opinion, and thought which are shaped by one’s background knowledge and life experiences Furthermore, “perception” is also a process where one’s belief, opinion and thought are made into meaningful ways

2.2 Listening comprehension skill

2.2.1 Definition of “Listening comprehension”

It is said that listening contributes greatly to the process of language acquisition for it gives learners opportunities to get familiar with the real language used in real life Indeed, no one can ignore the remarkable role of listening in our perception of the world around us To be detailed, a significant role of listening skill is emphasized

in Underwood’s words (1990), it is that if students do not learn to listen effectively, they will be unable to take part in oral communication In reality, it is not easy to define “listening comprehension” skill, but Underwood (1990) simplified the definition of listening to "the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning

from something we hear" (p 1) Agreed with Underwood’s opinion, Howatt and Dakin (1974) states in his works that listening comprehension is “the ability to identify and understand what others are saying including understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning” (p 98) O‘Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) offer a useful and more extensive definition about listening comprehension Accordingly, listening comprehension skill

is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement‖(p.19) This is in accordance with the Purdy’s view (1997) that listening comprehension is “the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings" (p.8) Therefore, to listen well, listeners must have the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what is said in a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication All in all, in the relation of this research, it is widely admitted by Brown (1990) and Rost (2002) that listening comprehension is not merely “the process of a unidirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process including 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” (as cited in Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011, p.2) As a result, bottom up and top down processes are applied to achieve comprehension

2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension skill

It is said by many people that listening plays an enormous role in daily communication Indeed, no one can ignore the remarkable role of listening in our perception of the world around us From the practical perspective, Andersons (1996) confirms the truth that children have months of listening to their native language before they ever utter their first words Indeed, when people

45% in listening, but only 30% in speaking, 16% in reading, and 9% in writing (as cited in Le Huynh Thanh Huy, 2015) Additionally, a significant role of listening skill is also emphasized in Underwood’s words (1990), it is that if students do not learn to listen effectively, they will be unable to take part in oral communication

In reality, people often pay attention to their speaking ability since they belie ve that good speaking equals good communication However, in order to communicate effectively we need to be able to hear and listen actively and critically to what the other person is saying As Morley (1991, p.82) suggested,

“we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write” The saying of Morley puts a strong focus on the significant role, contributes to prove that listening is truly necessary in all forms of communication Without listening skill, learners would hardly learn to communicate effectively because “over 50% of the time the students spend functioning in a language will be devoted to listening” (Nunan, 1997, p.1)

Relating to language learning and teaching, it is commonly acknowledged that listening is a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideas, sense of values, and their appreciation (Harmer, 1991) More importantly, listening is a key skill which provides learners with input And if input is not understood at the right level, learning process will not occur effectively (Rost, 1994, pp.141-142) Therefore, listening comprehension skill should be highly appreciated in language teaching and learning in general and in foreign language classrooms in particular Both teachers and students should bear in mind that because listening is at the core of second language acquisition, teachers and students need to spend a great deal of time listening or studying listening skill before they develop other abilities

2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension

a Schema theory

Schema theory is one of the important theories of learning that is applied to language learning and teaching Many studies were conducted to examine impacts of schema or background knowledge on L2 listening comprehension In particular, Markham and Latham (1987) investigate the impact of religious-specific background knowledge on listening comprehension of adult ESL students and the finding shows that background knowledge does significantly influence ESL students’ listening comprehension (Markham & Latham, as cited in Luu Hoang Mai, Luu Thi Bich Ngoc, & Vo Thanh Thao, 2014) There is a consensus in Long’s work (1990) that background knowledge could help L2 listening comprehension (Long, as cited in Luu

et al., 2014) What’s more, a study by Sadighi and Zare (2002) also provides clues to corroborate the remarkable role of prior knowledge on listening comprehension Thus, that is to say, schemata are considered as the guiding structures in the comprehension process

A definition of schema is clarified by many well-known researchers and experts One of the most influential scholars of linguistics claims that “a schema is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exist in memory” (Yule, 2016, p.132) Schema are also defined as “building blocks of cognition”, “a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory” (Rumelhart, 1980, p.34) and

“skeleton around which the situation is interpreted” (Remelhart, 1980, p.37) Likewise, Myhill, Jones and Hopper (2006, p.21) also view schema as the mental map or set of mental connections we had in our head about a particular idea of thing

In the tent of the cognitive comprehension theory, schema described as an abstract cognitive construct where knowledge is processed, stored, and activated (Hui, 2005, p.18) Moreover, schema also mean textual structure that the listener uses to make sense of the given text (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) Thus, when a schema has been evoked, it will become a guiding structure in comprehension And if the incoming information is matched with the schema, then the listeners have succeeded in

meaning by itself but rather hints to allow readers and listeners to construct meaning from prior knowledge; the text triggers and builds on existing schemata” (Pearson-Casanave, as cited in Almutairi, 2012, p 72) In an agreement with Pearson-Casanave’s (1984) standpoint, Xuping (2005) deems that “… meaning exists neither

in oral nor in written language itself, but in the reader’s mind, depending in the activation of his or her schemata…” (p 68) In other words, listening comprehension

is influenced by the information that an individual has in the mind or from stores of memory; therefore, schematic knowledge is overtly beneficial to listening comprehension and “relevant schemata must be activated” (Carrell, 1988, p.105) In the relation of listening instruction, Rea and Mercuri (2006) highlighted “teachers could encourage schema building…by helping students build background knowledge,….access the background knowledge,… and use it as a bridge to new learning” (Rea & Mercuri, as cited in Wessels, 2012, p.47) That is why an appropriate schema also needs to be activated during text processing so as to facilitate efficient comprehension (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983)

b Modes of information processing

There are different viewpoints related to a division of listening process First and foremost, according to opinion of Wolvin and Coakley (1979), listening process consists of four steps: “receiving, understanding, judging, and responding.” (p.15) Among them, receiving means catching what speaker is saying; understanding and interpreting information will happen after receiving messages; and the next step is judging a reliability of the information or message; finally, the listening process will finish with the last step – “responding” However, different from Wolvin and Coakley’s viewpoint, Buck (2001) divides listening comprehension into two processes, which is based on the theory about different types of knowledge As Buck (2001) said, there are two main types of knowledge in the system of language comprehension They are linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge While linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis, semantics, syntax and discourse structure, non-linguistic knowledge involves in the background knowledge that learners have already known and they use it to understand what they hear Partly

agreeing with Buck’s idea, Carrell (1984) who bases on a theory of schema to divide listening process assumes that listening process should be put into two fundamental modes of information processing: bottom-up processing and top-down processing Especially, the interaction between these two processes also contributes to develop the third modes for listening process Hence, according to Carrell (1984) modes for listening process must fall into three types: the bottom-up processing, the top-down processing, the interactive processing

Bottom-up processing focuses only on the identification of isolated language items as a way to understand the whole text (Nunan, 1991) The new incoming data are responsible for activating bottom-up processing, so “schemata are hierarchically formed, from the most specific at the bottom to the most general at the top” (Gilakjani

& Ahmadi, 2011, p.2) There is a consensus that “bottom-up processing is applied to gather information on phonology, lexis, syntax, and grammar to build up an understanding of what is perceived (Nunan, 2007, p.32) It means when the listening process starts decoding the sounds, phonetic units are analyzed firstly and connected together to construct words, then words are connected together to construct phrases, phrases are connected together to construct utterances, and ultimately utterances are connected together to construct complete, meaningful text (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) Consistent with Gilakjani & Ahmadi’s opinion, Jack gives further explain that

“comprehension begins with the received data that is analyzed as successive levels of organization – sounds, words, clauses, sentences, texts – until meaning is derived In other words, it is generally accepted that meaning is arrived at as the last step in the bottom-up process However, as highlighted by Gilakjani & Ahmadi (2011), bottom-

up processing has its own disadvantages Since understanding a text need an interaction between the listener’s prior knowledge and the text, depending on one’s linguistic knowledge is not enough for listeners to comprehend the textual material effectively Thus, Top-down processing is the second mode that plays a significant role in decoding the meaning of a listening message

Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to “the use of background

While the bottom-up processing goes from the language to meaning, the top-down processing goes from meaning to language In the same vein, Ehsanjou & Khodareza (2014) also affirm that top-down processing is going from whole to part, and focuses

on interpretation of meaning rather than recognition of sounds, words, and sentences and listeners use the bank of knowledge of the context and situation to think about,

to interpret the text or to predict what the rest of the sentence might be Context and situation involve in the topic understanding, the speaker or speakers, and their relationship with the situation, as well as with each other and previous events In sum, Nunan (2007) hold a balanced view that “bottom-up processing is applied to gather information on phonology, lexis, syntax, and grammar to build up an understanding

of what is perceived Top-down processing, however, makes use of previous knowledge and experience (schema) to predict, filter, analyze and interpret the information received” and “top-down processing emphasizes the importance of listener’s background knowledge” (Nunan, p.32)

Apart from good points of both top-down and bottom-up processing, they still have some limitations Provided that the incoming information the listener hears is not familiar with him, it can’t activate his schemata and he, in that situation, can only depend on his linguistic knowledge in listening comprehension Thus, only relying

on top-down or bottom-up processing may result in the failure of comprehension (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983) That is why we, as listening learners, need to utilize the third modes of listening process, the interactive processing, as a powerful tool to understanding the text while listening

In the real world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing generally occur together In the early 1980s, it was the tendency that only top-down processing was acknowledged to improve L2 listening comprehension However, it is now more generally accepted that these two listening processes should be combined to make listening comprehension and interpretation become easy (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) “The extent to which one or the other dominates depends on the listeners’ familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the density of information in a text, the text type, and the listener’s purpose in listening” (Richards, 2008) It means when

the content of the material is familiar to the listener, he will trigger his background knowledge at the same time to make predictions which will be supported by the new input On the contrary, if the listener is unfamiliar with the content of listening text and deficient in language proficiency, he can only depend on his linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of the information Consequently, that is to say, bottom-up and top-down strategies operate simultaneously as listeners create a mental representation of what is heard

2.2.4 The relationship between listening and other language skills

It is commonly acknowledged that listening, speaking, reading, and writing are four vital components of English language arts curriculum Each of them provides bases for the growth of the others and of the development of language Even though these four skills are totally separate from each other, there is still a strong relationship among them and also a sticky connection between listening and other language abilities (Gass & Seely, 1988) On the basis of a strong link between listening and other language skills, methodologists recognize that one of the most important principles of teaching listening is to combine listening with speaking or writing Traditionally, the integration of these four skills was not taken a serious view for the reason that it might diminish the role of each separate language skill However, “in the light of communicative approach, the four-skill in corporation appears to be a preferable choice in most lesson plans of linguistic teachers in order to make language lessons more diverse and involve more students in the lessons and classroom activities” (Gass & Seely, 1988, p.36)

There is no doubt that improving listening serves as the base on which the development of speaking, reading and writing skills is formed It is generally agreed that listening is the first and foremost language art Because it is true that babies start identifying sounds and speech patterns before they are born Sharing the same idea, Anderson and Lynch (2003) releases the truth that children have months of listening to their native language before they ever utter their first words According to Peterson (2001), listening is a receptive skill meanwhile speaking

of a coin and cannot be split For instance, “speaking is closely related with listening because one cannot speak until he knows the sound of the language and has some understanding that these sounds represent things in the real world” (Peterson, 2001, p 75) Additionally, among writing, listening, and speaking, ideas in written forms can diversify depend on the greater amount of language that learners speak and listen How the two receptive skills of listening and reading are correlated is worth answering Both of them are phases of language information acquisition and require higher mental process Peterson (2001) also assumes that

if the child listened to a simple story in his first reading book, he would have no difficulty in understanding it

2.3 Pre-listening stage

2.3.1 Definition of pre-listening

It would not be fair to students to draw them straight into the listening without introducing the topic or the type of activity they are going to work on, because in reality there are not many situations when people are supposed to listen with having

no idea about what they are going to hear Consequently, that is why students should

be given a pre-listening support to make their listening comprehension process easier and more effectively

As Rajaei (2015) states, “pre-listening is the preparation stage for listening” (p.36) Agreement on this viewpoint, pre-listening is also considered as stage to prepare students to listen, establish the purpose of the listening activity and activate their schemata The pre-listening activities are probably the most important aspect of any listening sequence because the success of all the other activities depends

while-on the extent to which the teacher manages to give the students the necessary background, guidance, and direction to achieve (Chastain, 1988)

2.3.2 The purposes of pre-listening stage

As Gilakjani & Ahmadi (2011) declares, there are usually two dominant goals of pre-listening activities “(a) to help to activate students’ prior knowledge, build up their expectations for the coming information; and (b) to provide the necessary context for the specific listening task” (p 982) In the relation of the goal of pre-listening activities, there is a consensus that a variety of pre-listening activities can help the teacher to focus the students’ minds on the topic by narrowing down the things that the learners anticipate to hear and stimulating relevant previous knowledge and already known language, also help students identify the purpose of listening beforehand and successfully make meaning of the spoken text (Rixon, 1986; Underwood, 1990; Schwartz, 1998) What’s more, White (1995) further explains that the pre-listening phase is to contextualize the text, providing any information needed

to help learners appreciate the text, providing any information needed to help learners appreciate the setting and the role relationship between participants The pre-listening support is also believed to give students more confidence that is necessary for successful listening (White, as cited in Rajaei, 2015)

2.3.3 Pre-listening activities

Rost (1990, p.232) states that pre-listening is a preparatory stage whose purposes are to set the context, generate interests from students, supply students with context, motivation, the purposes, activate students’ current knowledge, help students acquiring knowledge, activate their vocabulary, predict the content, check their understanding about the listening tasks Thus, to satisfy the goals above, Almutairi (2012) claims that pre-listening activities could consist of three types: (a) brainstorming, (b) the use of advance organizers and (c) graphic organizers These activities might be applied separately or included a combination of them “depending

on the nature of the listening task, learners’ linguistic proficiency level and the time available for the pre-listening phase” (Almutairi, 2012, p.6)

a Brainstorming

It is proved in Vandergrift’s study (2003) that brainstorming activity has effective impacts on boosting students’ second language listening comprehension through triggering their schema and allowing them to make use of their prior knowledge or experiences as a stepping block to new knowledge (Zaid, 1995 as cited in Almutairi, 2012) while listening the second language In consistent with Zaid’s idea, Wolff (1996) also assumes that activity contributes to help learners generate whatever ideas and information they know on the listening topic without commenting on these ideas and information at first, then discussing and finally evaluating them (Wolff, as cited in Almutairi, 2012) In terms of class management, brainstorm activity could be done individually, in small groups or with the whole class Apart from benefits that students gain through brainstorm activity, the activity also “gives the teachers insights into their students’ schemata, thus revealing interests, gaps and misconceptions and fostering English language learning comprehension skills among students” (Oxford, 1993 & Olafe, 1994, as cited

in Almutairi, 2012, p.6) More importantly, in brainstorming activity one student could be inspired by the other students’ opinion or in other words,

ideas from one students will stimulate ideas from the others “in a chain

reaction thought process” (Heimlich, 1986, p.34)

b The use of advance organizer:

Advance organizers are firstly described by Ausubel (1968), a pioneer schema theorist, as “appropriately relevant and inclusive introductory materials… introduced in advance of learning….and presented at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness” (p.148) A goal of advance organizers is to “direct student’s attention to the meaningful elements of the text and provide background knowledge that some students may lack to successfully interpret it” (Stepp-Greany, 2003, cited in Almutairi, 2012, p.4) Some prestigious experts in the field of linguistics such as Schwartz (1998), Espeseth (1999), and Chung (2002) suggest some examples of advance

organizers including vocabulary pre-teaching and listening comprehension questions previewing Related to pre-teaching vocabulary, it should be noted (a) that the words to be taught must be key words in the target passages (b) that words be taught in semantically and topically related sets so that word meaning and background knowledge improve concurrently and (c) that only a few words be taught per lesson and per week (Beck, 1982)

c Graphic organizer:

These are visual representations of concepts, knowledge, or information that can in corporate both text and picture (Kingen, 2000) Similar to brainstorming activity and advance organizers, graphic organizers also allow learners boost their prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage and link it to new information acquired during listening (Crandall, 1992 & Dye, 2000) It is referred to the fact that students become more engaged in learning when they participate in the completion of graphic organizers When used in classrooms, graphic organizers “provide students with tools to make thought and organizational processes visible, and they serve as organizational frameworks to promote thinking and language development” (Tarnquin & Walker, 1997, p.8) Hawk (1986) is in agreement on the viewpoint of Tarnquin and Walker (1997) about

an effectiveness of graphic organizers He favours using graphic organizers since they provide “(a) an overview of the material to be learned, (b) a reference point for putting new vocabulary and main ideas into orderly patterns, (c) a cue for important information, (d) a visual stimulus for written and verbal information, and (e) a concise review tool” (cited in Almutairi,

2012, p.8) The effectiveness of graphic organizers in enhancing second language listening comprehension is also emphasized by some prestigious researchers as Katayama (1997), Schwartz (1998) and Espeseth (1999) Some good examples of the graphic organizers are Venn diagram, flow charts, T charts used to compare negative and positive qualities of a given character or

an idea, semantic/story maps, KWL charts, frameworks for webbing, main

classification frameworks, sunburst outlines, matrices, tree structures, and fact/opinion frameworks (Tarnquin & Walker, 1997; Kingen, 2000) Among these techniques, KWL chart – developed by Ogle (1986) - is one of the effective pre-listening activities which is effectively used as a schema-activation technique

d Other pre-listening activity:

Underwood (1989, p 141) and Almutairi (2012, pp.10-11) and McDonough and Shaw (1993, p.141) suggested the following pre-listening activities that might build and activate listeners’ existing schemata:

- Whole classroom or group discussion of the listening topic

- Predicting the content of a spoken text from its title or from accompanying pictures or photographs

- Reading a passage on a similar topic before listening to the spoken text to build necessary background knowledge for making meaning of the spoken texts

- Previewing some features of spoken language that would facilitate the comprehension certain spoken texts such as specific minimal pairs, intonation

or stress patterns that will be heard later on in the spoken text

In this sense, Le Nhut Long and Tran Thien Thanh (2016) also recommend some helpful pre-listening techniques embracing true or false statement prediction; open prediction; ordering; and pre-questions They both reveal that the completion of the pre-listening task happens after the first listening and is used for fluency listening – getting the main ideas

2.3.4 Factors affecting teachers’ choice of pre-listening activities

In our first language, we rarely have troubles in listening and understanding what people say But, in a second language, listening comprehension skill is considered as

a nightmare of many learners Consequently, teaching and learning listening comprehension skill becomes a big challenge to many teachers and students Therefore, according to Martinez (2015) in order to minimize difficulties in teaching listening comprehension skill, it is necessary for teachers to bear in mind some

following factors to be able to choose pre-listening activities appropriate and helpful for completing listening tasks

Firstly, teachers should consider the time-consuming of pre-listening activities Normally, pre-listening stage is a very short phase so it is inexpedient for teacher to invest too much time in this stage It is explained by Martinez (2015) that spending too much time on pre-listening activities also means decreasing the amount of time

of while and post-listening periods, which are more important to both teachers and students than pre-listening stage On the contrary, if pre-listening activities are confined too much, it might decrease students’ motivation and concentration on the listening tasks Hence, teachers have to know how to control time-consuming in pre-listening stage

Secondly, the ability of the class is also an important point that teachers should take into consideration When designing pre-listening activities for multilevel class, teachers need to pay more attention to different proficiency level of students in the same class and to be cognizant of each student’s strength and weaknesses so that all

of students have equal opportunities to take part in these activities Furthermore, as stated by Rees (2003), if the teachers have a class who are generally struggling with listening work, then the more extensive that the pre-listening work is the better If, however, the teachers wish to make the work very demanding, you could simply do work on the context of the listening Thus, the same listening text can provide work for different abilities

Materials are the third criteria that the teachers should bear in mind when selecting pre-listening activities Indeed, there is a great deal of authentic listening materials related to various topics and each listening material includes a vast of listening activities Thus, to involve better students into the lessons and make them more excited in listening tasks, teachers need to take time to choose and adapt these materials

More importantly, students’ interest is one of the main factors affecting an effectiveness of pre-listening stage If teachers choose listening tasks which best

match with students’ interests, an effectiveness of listening process will be improved considerably

Last but not least, the nature and content of listening text affect directly the choice

of pre-listening activities For instance, the listening about an ecological campaigner lends itself well to extended knowledge and vocabulary activation However, a listening involving airport announcements may only need a shorter lead-in, as the topic is somewhat narrower (Rees, 2003)

In conclusion, the process of listening comprehension skill will become ineffective if the learners do not know what and why they are going to listen Depending on different practical situations, teachers should be cleaver and creative

to design suitable activities at pre-listening stage to better stimulate students’ schemata

2.4 Previous studies

Listening comprehension is a difficult skill for foreign language learners to develop and for their teachers to assess In order to boost the result of learners’ listening comprehension in classroom, teachers have to design and provide various forms of support beforehand to reduce the demands of the task for the learners In the relation of this study, with an aim at seeking the answer to question “What are the activities teachers employed in facilitating students’ activation of prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school?”, some previous related studies about different types of popular pre-listening activities utilized in English listening classes were searched for and used as theoretical frameworks for the researcher to analyze, compare the findings of this study to previous related ones to find out the similarities and differences among researches which share the same issue Then, conclusions of this paper could be drawn to answer the research question addressed above

So far in the world there have been several studies which were done to

investigate the impacts of different types of pre-listening activities such as question preview, vocabulary preview, repetition of the input, content related support, top-down and bottom-up pre-listening activities, and types of written advance organizers

on the learners’ listening comprehension skill Specifically, Linang (2005) conducted

a study about teachers’ report on the use of pre-listening activities in activating

students’ prior knowledge in a Malaysian ESL classroom in Kuching The study is based on the qualitative research design and the research instrument employed was the semi-structured interview Fifteen lower secondary school English language teachers have five years and above experiences from five secondary schools in and around Kuching Division were selected as samples for the purpose of this study The findings revealed that 60% of the English Language teachers employed the bottom-

up model The main pre-listening activities employed by the English language teachers were oral questioning, introducing the related vocabulary and distributing pre-text questions The findings also showed that most of the English Language teachers took into consideration the students’ level, suitability and practicality, the related topic, and the context when selecting and designinig their pre-listening activities With a same theme about pre-listening activities, Berne (1995) published

a journal article named “How does varying pre-listening activities affect second language listening comprehension?” to compare the effect of different pre-listening activities on the listening comprehension of learners of Spanish as a second language

As Berne (1995) put it, the subjects of her study were 62 university students, all native speakers of English They were divided into three groups, and each group was given

a different pre-listening activity Two activities served as experimental treatments: one was a question preview activity, and the other was a vocabulary preview activity The third group, serving as a control group, completed a filler activity unrelated to the listening passage After completing their assigned pre-listening activity, the participants watched a videotaped lecture, after which their listening comprehension was measured with 10 multiple choice questions in English Ultimately, the results showed that question preview was more effective than vocabulary preview in terms

of improving listening comprehension, although the difference was not statistically significant Berne (1995) once again affirm that “despite the apparent importance of lexical knowledge to listening comprehension, studying a vocabulary list prior to listening may not be a particularly effective means of improving listening comprehension performance” (p 324)

In the same vein, Chang (2007) conducted a research to examine the impacts of vocabulary preparation prior to a listening comprehension test on L2 learners’ vocabulary performance, listening comprehension, confidence levels and strategy use The participants, including 117 Taiwanese college students, aging from 18 to 24 were given three different lengths of preparation time to study new vocabulary that could be heard in a listening text The instruments involved a vocabulary test, a listening comprehension test, and a questionnaire to elicit their confidence levels and strategy use A semi-structured interview was conducted immediately after the test From the results of this study, although providing students with the vocabulary of an aural text did not greatly enhance second language learners’ comprehension, vocabulary preparation can be quite useful in a classroom test because it enhances learners’ confidence and increase their willingness to complete the task

Similarly, a study of Chang and Read (2006) on the effects of listening support

on the listening performance of EFL learners investigated the effects of four types of listening support: previewing the test questions, repeating the input, providing background knowledge about the topic, and vocabulary instruction The research involved a classroom-based experiment with 160 students enrolled in a required English listening course at a college in Taiwan In their study, both Chang and Read (2006) pointed out two shortcomings of vocabulary instruction in pre-listening stage One was that the students “did not have enough time to fully memorize the words they had studied” and the other was that they paid “too much attention to the meaning

of the target lexical items at the expense of a more general understanding of the input text” (pp.392-393) The results showed that the most effective type of support overall was providing information about the topic, followed by repetition of the input The learners' level of listening proficiency had a significant interaction effect, particularly

in the case of question preview Vocabulary instruction was the least useful form of support, regardless of proficiency level

Consistent with the viewpoints of Berne (1995) and Chang and Read (2006), Ehsanjou (2014) together with his research on “The impact of using different forms

of pre-listening activities on Iranian EFL Learners’ Listening comprehension”

endorsed the idea that preview of questions as a pre-listening activity can be effective

in teaching listening comprehension while studying unfamiliar vocabularies has no significant effect on improving learners’ listening comprehension To be able to collect such reliable data as mentioned above, the research was carried out on sixty Iranian EFL learners, in Aryanmehr Educational Association, who studied English course for 3 years More importantly, such students were exposed to listening training designed by researcher for one month

Having considered previous studies of the impact of pre-task activities on improvements of learners’ listening comprehension, Farrokhi (2012) also implemented a study which attempted to find out the extent to which two pre-task activities of “glossary of unknown vocabulary items” and “content related support” assisted EFL language learners with their performance on listening comprehension questions across low proficiency and high proficiency levels Each level consisted of three groups, two experimental groups and one control group (twenty participants in each group) One experimental group received “glossary of unknown vocabulary items” with the pronunciations while the other group receive content related support (in written form) with the aim of activating prior knowledge before administering post-lecture listening comprehension questions The statistical analysis of the data revealed that in low proficiency level, vocabulary group outperformed both content and control groups while in high proficiency level, content group outperformed the other groups In other words, high proficient learners could benefit from the provided content to infer meaning and guess what was in the forthcoming data From the findings of the study, it was concluded that content support enhanced the learners’ listening comprehension more than vocabulary items

Briefly, it can be inferred from above-mentioned studies that prestigious linguistic scholars such as Berne (1995), Chang (2007), Chang and Read (2006), Ehsanjou (2014) and Farrokhi (2012) were in agreement that vocabulary pre-teaching was less effective than other forms of listening support

While previously mentioned finding demonstrated different viewpoints about

Allen (2011) with his work proved the effectiveness of two other types pre-listening activities, including top-down and bottom-up, for students’ listening comprehension skill of Chinese Mandarin There were volunteers from intermediate level courses at Brigham Young University participating in two treatment groups and a control group The treatment groups followed a mixed models design by each going through a top-down and bottom-up pre-listening activity, followed by listening to a passage in Mandarin Chinese and taking a multiple-choice test The bottom-up activity chosen for this research was a vocabulary preview activity, with an advance organizer being chosen for the top-down activity Results showed both treatment groups significantly outperformed the control group for both the top-down and bottom-up activities No significant difference existed in scores between top-down and bottom-up activities

It was determined that both the vocabulary activity and the advance organizer helped

to increase the listening comprehension of intermediate level students of Mandarin Chinese

Another popular form of listening supports that also receive lots of concerns from linguistic researchers is an advance organizer as a pre-listening techiniques In a research paper about “The effects of using advance organizers on improving EFL learners’ listening comprehension”, two authors including Jafari and Hashim (2012) investigated the impacts of using two types of written advance organizers, key sentence and key vocabulary, on the improvement of EFL learners’ listening comprehension 108 second year university students at the higher and lower listening proficiency levels were randomly assigned to one control group and two experimental groups Prior to the treatment, all the group were measured on a listening pretest The pretest score was used as a covariate to adjust for the initial difference in listening proficiency Prior to the listening, the first experimental group received a list of key sentences (Previewing sentences) and the second experimental group received a list

of vocabulary items (Vocabulary pre-teaching) The control group did not receive any kind of advance organizer After treatment classes, all groups were again measured

on a posttest to compare their improvement in listening The results of the statistical analysis showed that the students who received advance organizers demonstrated

significant improvement on the listening comprehension posttest while the control group did not Although participants’ listening proficiency had a significant effect on listening comprehension performance, there was no interaction effects between the use of advance organizers and the listening proficiency level

Finally, sharing the same interest in an effect of pre-listening supports on students’ listening comprehension, Nguyen Thi Tam (2012) conducted a study named “An investigation into the reality of using pre-listening activities in English third-year classes

at Phu Xuan University” to examine the truth of carrying out pre-listening activities at Phu Xuan University in Hue, Vietnam The participants consist of 4 teachers and 60 third-year students at Phu Xuan University To collect reliable data, classroom observation, questionnaires, and interviews were delivered to the teachers and students The findings of the study show that most of teachers and students were aware of the significance of pre-listening activities in teaching and learning listening comprehension skill Hence, they often made a great effort to organize different kinds of pre-listening activities to boost an effectiveness of the listening lessons

All in all, there have been a number of studies conducted to emphasize the effects

of varying pre-listening activities on learners’ listening comprehension skill Most studies done by researchers of the English language teachers, however, were conducted mainly on tertiary level and lower secondary English language teachers with students and curriculum greatly different in many ways from those of high school levels The even more important point is that no single study has been found

to investigate teachers’ perception of the same matter at high school level with regard

to the listening tasks included in the text book of the new version Therefore, the current study is expected to fill in a brand new gap in the research field

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter focuses on the methodology used in this study It starts with research methodology, a description of the research context and participants It then provides

a detailed account of the instruments and procedures for data collection Next, it explains the methods for organizing, managing, coding and analyzing the data Finally, the summary of the employment of mixed methods research is discussed

3.1 Research method

This research is a survey research which basically uses a method involving asking questions and collecting data from people (Janes, 2001) More importantly, as explained by Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen and Razavieh (2010), a researcher can use a survey research to investigate people’s beliefs, perceptions, opinions, characteristics and behaviors (cited in Srimeitika, 2017, p.33) As a result, the survey method was applied for the present study because it suited the intent of the researcher which aims to discover the teachers’ responses about their perception and the reality of their implementation of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school

In relation to the survey method, Ary et al (2010) states that survey can be classified based on the time of data collection which are longitudinal surveys and cross-sectional surveys “The longitudinal surveys obtain the information at different points in time Whereas the cross-sectional surveys focus on a single point in time to study a sample of a population” (Srimeitika, 2017, p.33) Hence, in this research, the researcher used a cross-sectional survey because of three main reasons as following First, the time in conducting the study is limited Second, data collected from a sample

in a cross-sectional survey has been often drawn from a predetermined and specific population Ultimately, this type of survey permits the researcher to collect the data

in one point in time although the time in collecting all the data may take from one day to a few weeks or more (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2008)

Regarding the methods of data collection in surveys, they are divided into two main techniques which is structured and semi-structured one (Janes, 2001) Concerning structured technique, as its name suggests, the technique arranges for data

to be collected in a highly structured way It means all the variables will have been identified, and the way the data will be coded will be predefined The advantage of this sort of data is that it is very easy to code and analyse, because the type of answers which the respondent can give is set out in advance A great example of the structured survey instrument is questionnaire which is often considered as a highly effective method of data collection since it might include both cloze-ended and open-ended questions As a result, it could permit data collection from a larger sample On the contrary, the semi-structured technique relates to the collection of data which does not necessarily correspond to a pattern The best point of this technique is that because data does not need to correspond to preset variables, it is easier to explore dynamic and changing situations Compared to the structured technique in which all variables are known in advance, the semi-structured technique enables to start with an incomplete knowledge of variables that might be a good way of obtaining more in-depth data and further exploring a particular situation Therefore, it can be believed that semi-structured interview is one of the most popular instruments of this techniques All in all, having considered two sides of each survey technique and research instrument, the researcher found out that structured survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview were two effective and appropriate instruments for the data collection of the current study That is why the researcher decided to use survey questionnaire and interview as representatives for quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect reliable results of the current study about EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school in Hue city

General speaking, the researcher chose both quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct this study to seek the answers to two following research questions: