Luận văn difficulties in teaching and learning english listening skills in english experienced by teachers and 10th grade students at duong tu minh high school in thai nguyen and some suggested solutions

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES DUONG THI LAN DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH LI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

DUONG THI LAN

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILLS EXPERIENCED BY TEACHERS AND 10"

GRADE STUDENTS AT DUONG TU MINH HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI

NGUYEN, AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

'NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG

NGHE TIENG ANH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VẢ HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT

DƯƠNG TỰ MINH THÁI NGUYÊN, VẢ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHIÁP GỢI Ý

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English teaching methodology

Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Pham Thi Thanh Thay, MA

Ha Noi - 2012

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the SLUMY cs cesesisossescustsieeeeseestestistenesissiaenies 2

2.1 The definition of listening and the nature of listening comprehension 4 2.1.1 Definition of listening and listening comprehension 4

2.2 Process of teaching listening cvsetsnttisistietieineiaeieistestmatnneenaeinT

2.2.2 Stages of leaching listening skills

2.3 The importance of listening in tcaching and lcarning a foreign languag: Ở 2.4 Listening difficulties for foreign language learafs ccceeereeeree TỪ

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1.1 Teachers and students’ attitudes to teaching and learning listering L6 4.1.2 Listening difficulties experienced by students 18 4.1.3 Listening difficullias experioneed by teachers 23

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

5.3 Suggestions for fiuther research sàn nen ereiriiaereereeeeue, đŨ

REFERENCES

vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

DTM HS Duong Ty Minh High School

ESL English as Second Language

Table 1: Teachers’ opinion about the importance of listening 16 Table 2: Teachers’ opinions about students’ interest (and motivation) in learning

Table § Factors affecting students’ participation and interests in listening lessons 19

Table 11; Expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skilL 33

‘rable 12: I'he mumber of the teachers who participated in the listening course 24 Table 13: Factors have influones in students’ participation and interests in the

"Table 14: ‘Teachers’ employment of teaching aids

Table 15: Activities in listering lessons

Table 16: Activities in Pre-listening stage .cescssasessensesuseiesissietanineeecana T7

Table 19: Adaptation of the new textboOk cesses ssestestmseiesissieieniaeeencanas BO

‘Table 20: Teachers’ effort to have effective listening lassons các 30 Table 21: Teachers? need in having effective listening lesson 3

taught not only as a major at many big universities in Vietnam such as Vietnam National

University, Ho Chi Minh University, Vinh University, but also as a compulsory subject at various schools,

It is widsly assumed thal listening plays a very important role in everyday conversation as well as learning a foreign language First, in real life, people wish to join in communication to exchange their information, experience, feelings and so forth, However,

communication is not considered to be suec what is said or referred to is comprehended by another person And there will be “communication treakdown” if the listener cannot understand the information given by the speaker It means that communication not only requires our abilitics to produce the language but also a thorough understanding of what is directed to us, Second, in learning a foreign language, listening is in close relationship wath other skills Therefore, having a good command of listemmng skill helps to achieve good performance of the others

Al my high school, (caching and learning listening is a really new challenging job In addition to the lack of well- equipped facilities, teaching listening methods are quite new and unfamiliar to teachers Since the new English textbook was in use, they have been incspericnced in teaching listening methods and approaches Another problem is students’ low levels of proficiency in term of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so forth It

is the reason why students find it difficult and tough te listen to and they are not confident enough to do listening tasks successtiily

In literature so fir, there have heen nol many stutlies on the difficulties in teaching and leaming a foreign language in general, listening in particular, at a high school in Vietnam, Moreover, not many researchers study listening chificulties experienced by high school teachers

scarch

and students in using Ihe new “Tieng Anh 10 "textbook Therefore, the author of this

found an urgent need of taking a sorious took al such issue

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

The main purpose of the sudy was lo probe difficullies in leaching and tsarning listening among the teaching staff and the 10% form students at Duong Tu Minh upper secondary school, in Thai Nguyen Province With this purpose the three following central

questions wars invesligaled

1, What are the difficulties experienced by the teachers and the 10 form students when teaching and learning listening skill in the new textbook “ ‘Tieng Anh 10°?

2 Whal are some factors affecting the sui

by DTM HS teachers and students DTM HS?

3 What are some effective ways to improve DIM HS students’ learning and

of the listening process as perceived

teachers’ teaching methods of listening skills?

1.3 Scope of the study

‘This study points out difficulties in listening that teachers and 10 form students at

Duong Tu Minh [igh School face, The sludy focuses ơn describing Ihe problems the leachers and students meet, and the factors causing such challenges, for instance, facilities, students’ English listening proficiency, and teachers’ methods, Due to the Limited time, the investigator contd nol imploment the +

arch for a longer time and study on # larger population The sample population is only 6 leachers ont of 15 and 120 fteshmen from three obisses of the

same English proficiency level

1.4, Design of the study

The study is divided into five chapters which arc summarized as follows:

The first chapter is the introduction of the rationale for the study, the aims, and the methods, scope of the study as well as the design of the study The second chapter is the litcrature review discussing the thcorctical background, which is relevant to the purposes of the study ‘Ihe third chapter shows the procedure of carrying out the research such as the participants, data collection instruments and methods of data analysis The fourth chapler roporls and discus

provided to help students overcome thew difficulties in learning listening skill The fifth chapter summaries the whole study, followed by references and appendices

1.5 Methods of the study

the finding oblained from the data Some suggested solutions arc also

‘The research is done by both quantitative and qualitative methods; it is carried out on the basis of situation analysis, material collection, survey questiommaires, class observations

In the first place, situation analysis has a look at the background to the study including

thoroughly with ths duc consideration for Icucher’s Leaching and sludonls” learning siluations

Eventually, for the practical basis, questionnaires, class observations were carmied out with the teachers and students to gather the most reliable data for analysis to find answers to the research questions mentioned above

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the researcher would like to provide a theoretical background to the study to know more and deeply about Listening, Comprehension Teaching It consists of four sections The first scelion examines different views on the definition af Tistering The second section presents the stages of leaching Fistering The third section is about the importance of listening comprehension, ‘I'he finally section is designed to look at the listening difficulties for foreign language learners

Listening, as Underwood (1989:1) defines: “is the activity of paying, attention to and

trying lo gel meaning fram something we haar.” The author also cmphasizes: “To lislen successfully to spoken langnage, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, not simple to understand the words themselves” (Underwood, 1989:1)

‘As Celee-Murcia (1991-88) puts it, “Listening can be defined broadly as everything that impinges on ths human proce:

ing which meditates between sound and the construction

of meaning”

b Definition of listening comprehension

There have been a large number of definitions for listening comprehension made by methodologists

Gary Buck (2001:31) points out thal * Lis

cning comprehension is an aetivs process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying, knowledge to the incoming sound” in which “number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non - linguistic knowledge” ‘lo put it in another way, Gary Buck

(2001:31) concludes “comprehension is affected by a wide range of variables, and thal

in that text; (3) The student should be able to resolve anaphoric reference and to determine which was referred to, and (4) The student should be able to work out not only what is dircotly asseried in the text, but also what is implicd

On the other hand, Wolvin and Coakley (1985) state listening “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli”, his definition suggests that

listening is « complex, problem solving skill The lask of listsuing is more than perception of sound; although perception is the foundation, it alse requires comprehension of meaning This view of listening is in accordance with second-language theory which considers listening to spoken Janguage as an active and complex process in which Tisteners focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley & Chamot, 1989; Byrnes, 1984; Richards, 1985, Howard, 1983)

they hear to process it, to comprehend, to interpret, to evaluate and to respond to the

incoming data, In order to do all these things, they have to get involved in the process and become active listeners

2.1.2 The nature of listening comprehension

Traditionally, listening uscd to be considered as a passive language skill alongside with reading skill, Studemts, were expected to listen word by word, trying to draw the meaning fram the individual syntactic and semantic components of the utlerances or

discourse Therefore, alhor important factors,

uch as the context, the speaker's intention,

intonation, stress, etc were totally ignored, This point of view also resulted in the teacher’s methods ‘Ihe teacher often conducted the lesson as a listening comprehension “test” rather than Izaching il Students were asked to remember the fotat utterance they had just heard Recently, listening process has been thought of as an “active process” The modern view points out that to become a suiccessfill listener, the listener must employ a combination 4

scvcral complicated processes at the same time.

Gillian Brown (1997:150) describes the two kinds of processes involving in listening comprehension as “boilorn up” and “Lop down” processing

ge This pro

2.1.2.2 Top-down processing

“Top-down” processing, on the ofher hand, refers to Ihe use of background knowledge in understanding the meanmg of the message More simply, at this process, even if the listener can not hear whatever the other person says, he still has a good ideal of the sort of

likely to be said by the speaker This ability allows them to reduce the input in their mind, thus leaving time for decoding difficult chunks or information and remembering main ideals

can put what they hear in context to guess what is

of the listening lex!

In fact, fluc listening depends on the combination of both “bottom-up” and “top down’, processing, The lack of either process will certainly lead to failure in comprehending the text, Hoth processes have important role in decoding the meaning of the discourse Therefore, the listener shonld know how to combine the two proc

contributing knowledge from both Enguistic factors and non-linguistic factors to understand

effectively hy aclivaty the course comprehensively

«

In conclusion, listening requires active participation from the listener In ordar to become @ good listener, he musi use knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources That is active nature of listening comprehension,

2.2, Process of teaching listening

2.2.1 Process of listening

Listening is a complex provess- an integral part of the total communication process (lohn A Kling, 1996) This neglect results largely from two fictars The sending parts of the communication process: speaking and writing which are highly visible, and then receiving parts: listening and speaking, The process of listening is the process of receiving, attending and understanding auditory message ‘The steps of listening are diagrammed as shown in

Stepl: Receiving

In this slop, the sender wanls to send an o-mail to somebody She/hz has used effective ways to organize and support his message which must be well composed and clear In shot, the sender has done a good job However, this message will not get to the receiver if he/she

does not tum on the computer Similarly, in Listening process when the listener misses the chance te listen lo the message, he will fail to catch it, In both cases, receivers simply are nol comnected or “turned in” to the senders

Step 2: Attending

Let’s continue with the email analogy Suppose the receiver tums on the computer, which shows the message that the sender sent, but he is too busy to read the email As the rosull, then receiver can niol receive the message Similarly, human listening is often

ineffective - or does nol occur - for the same reason

ohn A.Kling, 1996)

Stop 3: Understanding

ing occurs, bul allending dees nol

Communication is believed lo begin with understanding (Wolvin anid Coakly, 1985),

In communication, a message may have been sent, and received and the receiver may have attended to the message, yet the communication is not efictive because there is no understanding between the sender and the receiver of the message Actually, effective communication depends on understanding,

Let's telurn lo the entail analogy Suppose the receiver got the ermail message, opened

it and read it ‘The receiver may not have understood what the sender meant even though the receiver read every word of the message There are several possible reasons tor the misunderstanding, Perhaps the information from the massage was not explicit, Or maybe, the real poind of the message was obscured by other lidbits information and the receiver missed the point, In listening, the key point is sometines missed

Step 4: Responding

The listening process may ends with understanding but a response may be needed or at least helpful There

+ differenl types of response

© Direct verbal response

© Response that seeks clarification

© Response that paraphrases

© Nonverbal response (John A Kline, 1996, p23)

Responding Tots the sondor know [hái the message w ded to and unddxslood Step 5: Remembering

Memory is often a necessary and integral part of the listening process, If you can not remember, you were not listening, To help students learn to listen effectively, teachers need understand both the process of teaching and three stages of teaching will be presented in the

nex, section

2.2.2, Stages of teaching listening skills

Underwood (1989) describes listening activities in terms of three phrases: pre, while and post listening activities ‘This three-stage listening lesson model is usually used by many teachers as it is very usefill in teaching listening Procedure of a listening lesson consists of

three stages: Prelistening, While listening and Post- listening Hach part is really a

constituent part on a continuum Pre-listening is a preparatory stage While- listening stage is to

complete the main listening task, Post-listening stage serves as the further development part

Pre- listening stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation before they listen to the texts In other words, it gives students a purpose to listen It also gets students to relate to what they already know about the topic and arouse their interests

in Tiskening as well

The importance of prc - listening is shown in Penny’s idea (Penny Ur, 1993, p3): “Tt would scem a good idea when proselling a listening passage in class to give [hơ sindenls some information about the conierl, situation, and speakers before they aclually start Rslening”

While- listening stage gives students a guide or framework to practice listening, In otter words, it helps students to listen beller, more accurately, thoroughly through carefully designed comprehension tasks When we listen to something in our everyday life, we do so for a reason, Students, too, need a reason to listen that will focus their attention Ideally, the listening tasks that are designed should guide them through the text It is a must that teachers provide usefll techniques to tacilstate students’ comprehension

Post- listening stage is like the follow- up stage After students have practiced the target

skill in the whilelistening stage, they do an extension ‘This helps them take the information or whatever they have produced in the previous stage, and do other meaningful activities

2.3, The importance of listening im teaching and Icarning a forcign language

One of the most difficult aspects of teaching and leaming English as a foreign language is the teaching and Jeazning listening The importance of listening comprehension must be taken into considaration for anyone who wanls to lươn English with great success A tack of lislming

comprchersion skill causes alot of trouble in discussion and cormumeation.

The importance role of listening comprehension in second and foreign language learning

is summarived in a recent publication by Ros! (1994:141) as follows: “Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understandable input at the right level, any leaming simply cannot begin.” So listening comprehension is very necessary

when you study any language If studcnts do nol learn lo listen effectively, they will not be able

to take part in oral communication because according to Mary Underwood (1989-4), “Merely to hear what a speaker says is insuflicient for communication to occur” In fact, when nobody listens 19 a speaker or when a ñslener fails to understand the message, iL means that communication has broken down By listening, we do not mean that students only learn to hear

it, but as Mary Underwood (1989:4) says, “We mean our students to attend to what they hear, to

process il, to inlerprel il, lo evaluale it and to respond Lo i” Therefore, to succeed im communication, participants need to be active in listening Listening is an important way of

acquiring the language, a good way of picking up vocabulary and structures ‘Teaching listening

to spoken limguage is thersfore of primary importance

ion, Underwood (1989)

,1996,p.331) Considering various aspects of listening comprch

organizes the major listening problems as follows: (1) lack of control over the speed at which

speakers speak: (2) not being able to get things repeat (3) the listener's limited vocabulary; (2)

JSailure to recognize the “signals”; (5; problems of interpretation; (6) imability to concentrate, (7) and established learning habits

Underwood (1989) sees these problems as being related to learners’ different

backgrounds, such as their culture and cducation She points out that students whose culture

and education inclutes a strong storytelling and oral commumication tradition are generally

“beller? at listening comprehension than those from a reading and book-based cultural and educational background Moreover, learners whose native language possesses the stress and intonation features similar to those of English are likely to have less trouble than the learners

whose T.1 is based on different rhythms and tones Under the

Goh (2000) investigated listening comprehension problems in students in college EFL

studies, First, in the perception stage, leamers reported most difficulties as: “do not recognize

words they know,” “neglect the next part when thinking about tearing,” “cammot chumk streams of speech,” “miss the beginning of texts,” and “concentrate too hard or unable to

concentrate.” (Goh, 2000) Second, in the parsing stage, Goh (2000) finds that listeners

complained of problems such as “quickly forget what is heard,” “unable to form a mental representation tiom words heard,” and “do not understand subsequent parts of input because

of earlier problems.” ‘I'hird, in the utilization stage, “understand the words but not the

infonded message” and “confused about the key ideas in the message” are olien mentioned Thess reported difficulties partially reflect Underwood's (1989) views on 12/FL tistering

problems, However, as leamers attempt to incorporate certain strategies into the listenmg

process, they are likely to face different challenges or problems Investigation of Iasan (1993), Yagang (1994) attribute the difficulties of listening comprehension to four sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Higgin (1995) studied Omani stndents’ problems in listening comprehension and found that the factors which facilitate or hinder listoning, arc specch rate, vocabulary, and pronunciation Flowerdew and Miller (1996) investigated learners’ strategies and difficulties in listening to academic lectures,

2.4.2, Language Problems

Mastering a forcign languay y task, and 1.2 listening aoquisilion is much

more challenging to L2 learners compared with other language skills, especially fieshmen

Anne Anderson and ‘Tony Lynch (1988p.37) argue that the L2 learners will still face

problemns in listening comprehension ereated by primarily linguistic knowledge though language system may not always be the principal cause of comprehension difficulty They explain that one seemingly obvious way in which input can be more or less complex is in

terms of its syntactic structure for ESL learners, It is understandable as Icamers adopt a target

language that possesses certain characteristics far different from their native one in terms of grammalical structures, lexicon, vocabulary and ils mechanism meanwhile listening is mos! closely related to mechanics which refer to basic sounds of letters and syllables, pronunciation

of words, intonation and stress ‘Iims, if a beginner student cannot understand how words are

segmented inlo various sounds, and how santonces are slzcssed in particular ways to convey meaning, then he will find it hard to understand the meaning of the message According to Scarcella and Oxford (1992) listeners comprehend spoken messages either through isolated

on the fourth, understanding discourse

Summary Chaplor two has, in general, provided an overviw of the relevanl literaLure ini he ficld

of the study This chapier has discussed different views of listening and Tistoning comprehension, on which the author based to work out the definition of listening The chapter has again made it clear that listening is vital, and more importantly, it has listed different linguistic and non- linguistic factors that make listening a challenge

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

‘This chapter aims to define the methodology of the study including research setting, research participants, research instruments, data eellection and data analysis procedure

3.1 Research selling,

This study attempts to investigate the difficulties encountered by the 10° form

students and the teachers as well as their needs in leaming and teaching listening It first starts wilh an understanding about the schol, then some information about the sludents and their learning requirments are addressed To achieve the aims mentioned above, wa survey questionnaires are conducted to collect data for the study The first one is survey questionnaire for students at DTM HS which was designed to collect information on students’ needs and difficulties in Learning listening The sccond one is designed for the teachers at DTM IIS in which they nsed, the difficulties of the teachers are presented Then, some suggestions to make listening lessons in the textbook less difficult are discussed

3.2.2 Sirdenis

Haviryy taught English at DTM HS for 9 yours, the writer of this study recognizes thal

the majority of 10" form students are aged fifteen to sixteen from ‘Thai Nguyen Most of them

have learned English at junior high schools for four years But this is usually the general knowledge of grammar and an active vocabulary which the students can use mostly in written form But they have to deal with a lot of difficulties in learning how to listen to English Because of these difficulties the majority of the students feel bored with listening lessons Moreover they are not aware of the importance of learning how to listen in a foreign language

in general and English in particular as they simply know that they do not have to do the

listening tests

There were 120 male and femals students in different classes: 10A3, 10A4, 10A7They

were randomly selected to participate in both observations and questionnaires

3.3 Data collection instrument

Thi

dy cmployed both the quantitative and qualilalive methods which helped to provide qualified background data for discovering non-English majors’ motivation to learn English In order to obtain in-depth and rich data, the study used a variety of research instruments and sources of dala: questionnaires observation

To again data for the study, two survey questionnaires wers administered to the subjects, One was designed for students and the other for the teachers Some open-ended questions wore provided so that the respondents had opportunilies to share their opinions aboul ilems raised in the questionnaires

‘The first questionnaire, consisting of 12 questions (see Appendix 2), was delivered to

120 selected students It aimed to clicit the students’ opinion about difficultics in lcarning listning skills with the foous of their background knowledge, experience, altitudes, interests, and expectations in learning Linglish and teachers’ teaching methods Questions 1, 2, and 3 aim at exploring the students’ attitudes to listening learning, The next 8 questions (fiom question 4 to question 11) were designed to find out the students’ listening difficulties experienced by students The final question (question 12) is designed for the students’ need in learning listening,

The second questionnaire of 17 questions (see Appendix 1) was delivered to the

on unsolved prablomns in toaching listening skills,

in the new textbook Question 3, 4, 5 are about the main problems in listening lesson By answering the question 6, 7, 11, 12, and 13, teachers can express their methods and strategies

of listening teaching in the classroom Question 14 is about the adaptation of the new textbook Question 15, 16, 17 were designed for the suggestions in tsaching listening

In addition to survey questionnaires and class observation was also applied to clarify and test the validity of information about actual teaching and learning listening context; the challenges in presenting and acquiring English knowledge and skifls and communicative activities in listening lessons ‘he observations were carried out in four listening lessons in different classes: 10A3, 10.4, 107 at Duong Tu Minh High School

3.4 Data collection procedures

I conducted my study within 8 weeks at the end of the second term in the class 10.43, 10A4, and 10A7 at Duong ‘Tu Minh High School, ‘Thai Nguyen province where | have been

teaching for more than nine years Firstly, I designed the survey questionnaires and collected

all ideas from 128 selected students and 6 teachers in my teaching staff In fact, only 120 students and 6 teachers supported their feedback when I collected the data, Finally, class observations were cmployed to reflex the current conlexl al Duong Tu Minh High School

‘The dala were tapo- Tecorded and transcribed,

3.5, Data analysis procedures

The data of questionnaires which ware used to assess students’ behaviors or reactions towards sach method and ihe notss fiom the observation sheet

The result of the questionnaire was transcribed into charts and tables, and thsn there were a detailed explanation of the data,

The dala from observation, then logelher wilh the resulis fram the questionnaire and the interview helped to delect the effectiveness CTT in leaching and learning listening skills

at “Tieng Anh 10” at Duong ‘tu Minh High School

Summary

In short, this chapter has identificd the charactoristies of the rescarch scltings, the participants as well as the research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis

procedure,

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter discusses the difficulties in listenmg learning, the attitudes of DTM HS teachers and students in teaching and learning listening skill It also analyses the causes of difficulties in learning this skill and shows the results of the researcher’s class observation At

last, the chapler gives implication in order to enhance the quatity and ffectivens

listening skill tor students

4.1, Questionnaires

s in learning

441 Teachers and students’ attitudes to teaching and learning listening

‘The very beginning part of the questionnaire focused on finding all the information about DTM HS teachers and students’ viewpoints in listening skill and its importance compared to other skills

Question 1: How important is listening skill in the new Tieng Anh 10 textbook in

comparison with other skills?

Table 1: Teachers’ opinion about the importance of listening

76% of the respondents thought that listening and other communicative language skills were cqually important, whercas the other 24% agreed that listening is less important in

schoot curriculum They explained in their interview thal there is ua official evaluation ar examination on listening, so most af them did not take so much effort to facilitate their listening lessons as reading, writing or grammar ones

Question 2: How do your students like listening lessons and learning listening skills?

1, Strongly agree 2, Agree 3.Disagree 4, Strongly disagree 5, 1 don’t know

‘They like listening and doing the tasks in textbook 78% 11% 1194

They like listening 10 songs, play games or free ‹

oe Oe Bs Phy & 33% 56% 11%

aclivities withoul doing tasks

“They are aitaid of listening because they don't know

how and what to do with listening tasks

They hate listening because itis too difficult 22% 22% 56%

‘They are anferested in listening lessons’ skills because

they want ie listen to news, songs, etc on their own

67% 22% 1194

Table 2: Teachers’ opinions about students’ interest (and motivation) in learning listening

skill and lesson

As seen ftom the table, the teachers had good understanding about their students,

‘Throughout all the listed items, from 67% to 78% teachers agreed that the students were

interested in doing tasks in the textbook and listemng for entertainment 89 % of the teachers also claimed that students were afraid of listening because they didn’t know how and what to

do with listening tasks, However, fewer teachers (44 %) agreed that their students hated listening because it is too difficult compared to 56% of them who had the opposite idea that the students like listening, due to its easy tasks

Some researches were conducted fiom educational system to show that the students were found to posscss the kinds of motivation which arc instrumental and integrative

Motivation strengthens the ambition, increases initiative and gives direction, courage, energy

and the persistence lo follow one's gouls, A motivated person lakes action and docs whalever

it needs Io achieve hisfher goals In theory, integrative motivation is considered a key component in assisting laguage students to develop profieicney in a sccand language when they become residents in a community where the target language is used in social interactions

In contrast, with justrumsntal molivalion, the reasons tnotivated study a language because il opens up educational and economic opportunities for them

Table 3: Students’ motivation of learning listening Obviously, the table above shows that the highest percentage reférs to the most important reason which is to get good job in the future (100%) However, the number of the students who possess instrumental motivation was smaller than the number of those who have integrative one in total In details, the number of students who had purpose of getting good marks in examination accounts for 49%, a compulsory subject 30% and job opportunities in the future 100% From the Table 2 improving listening alalily to understand and communicate

in real situations and listening, for entertainment account for 62%, 76%, and 65% respectively

ch

This part gives us some information about the altitudes of both s and students wilh the listening task, In the next parl, readers can gel much more insight into the difficulties

of listening perceivad by teachers and students at DTM ITS

4.1.2, Listening difficulties experienced by students

a Difficulties in general and affecting factors

Question 4: What are the difficult items that you often get when studying listening sldll in your class?

Cannot understand the histering text and tasks

knowledge and ability

Gel tho main ideas but cannot do the tasks or

cannot get the required information

Cannot Listen to the text because the sound is

too soft or noisy

Have no habits and/or techniques to practice 4 i ¡

and improve listening skills

Lack of listening materials(tapes or CDs) 38% 29% 13%

Table 4: Students’ difficulties in general

As seeing ftom Table 4, most of the subjects coped up with such above difficulties The most important problem involving 92% of the respondents was the difficulty in listening

to the text dus to the low sound or noisy sound in the tapes This fact resulted ftom too big class size of 45 to 50 students and poor-equipped condition According to the interviewed

students, their teachers’ voice was not loud and attractive enough to listen to fiom a distance

‘They did not hear anything clearly; Therefore they understood nothing

The next is 39% of the subjects who could not understand the listening text and tasks due to the lack of English background knowledge and ability, Another 78% are aware of imporlanee of listening habits and techniques which help te learn nore effectively This figura is optimistic to improve Sluderts’ motivation Morcover, 58% of the students found challenging to work with listening tasks and available materials, In addition, only 42% could pet the main ideas after listening but have no idea about listening focuses and requirements

Apart fiom that, it is surprising that 40% of the students did not know if the listening tasks are boring or interesting to them

Question 6: What arc your opinions about several factors that influence the students’ partictpation and interests in the listening lessons?

Classroom condition and facilities 100% 0% 0%

"Teacher's teaching methods: inferesting,

" e TB uy 0% 3%

attractive, casy to understand

Listening topic and level of dificulties of

listening tasks

Students’ awareness, inicrosis 18% 449 38%

Basic background knowledge of English 30% 10% 0

Self-study at home 789% 22%

"The design of the listening lessons, tasks and

ae vee 14% 30% 56%

the clatity of tasks instructions

‘Activities for entertainment 27% 33% 30%

Requirements of examinations 779% 15% 8%

Table 5: Factors affecting students’ purticipation and interests in listening leatars

Table 5 reveals a facl lteal there ave many factors thal can alTecl studenis’ participation and interests, In their opuuon, listening was very difficult, therefore making progress in this skill demands many aspocis of caching and learning pro

The sas! important faclor was

classroom condition and facilities (100%) The second was teachers” methods which provide them instructions or guidance to listen, Tt is the fact that students masily relisd on teachers” performance in classroom, Moreover, students were not good enough in knowledge of English which directly affected their confidence and activeness in listening lesson Another high percentage of students gave the reason of requirement of examinations It is universal and true lo any subjecis They find less inlerested in the design of the textbook because they have no experience in evaluating it

5, Facilities and classroom candifions

Question 7: Do you have cnough facilibilities for listening lessons?

Trems Agree Disagree The class is well-equipped with modern technolo

Visual aids pictures, chalk, chart, board 0% 0% | 56% | 44%

‘Textbooks and supplementary materials constitute 100% It means that teachers completely relied on this source of materials To some extenl, lack of financial support from

the school and the government in Lerms of facility could be the excuse, Sometimes, visual aids (pictures, board, diagram) (56%), handouts (55%), computers and speakers (56%), tapes, recorders (58%), CDAVCD (55%) and projectors (60%) were employed,

&, Teacher's role and activities in listening lessons

Question 8: What is result of student's opinions about teacher’s roles in listening

Guiding and giving instructions of the purposes and how and what to 00%

listento

Designing tasks and organizing activities in classroom 100%

Correcting listening tasks and discussing with the students 100%

Managing and controlling all students tasks and activities mn classroom 100%

Table 8: Teacher's rotes The data shown in the table reveal an amazing fact of current teaching methods in which teachers play an essential roles 100% respondents agreed that teachers had to be in charge of guiding giving instruction, designing tasks, and correcting mistakes (or giving

feedback) Moreover, they dealt with organizing and managing activities (100%) and observing (96%) all together According to students, everything should be under the teachers*

control In other words, they seemed not to be aware of the new communicative teaching

approaches in which, teacher and student roles were redefined: The leacher heeomes a

facilitator of learning instead of a dispenser of knowledge, and the students take more responsibility for their own learning Instcad of the teacher being the solc, infallible source of information, then, the teacher, shares control of the classroom and students are allowed to explore, experiment, and discover on their own

Inaddition, 71% of students agreed reading the text was one of very important roles of the teachers in listening lesson ‘This seems inappropriate but it might result from the lack of

equipment at Duong ‘lu Minh lligh School Thus, instead of using authentic material and ying (he tapes or CD, leachers’ voice is the best solution, Abaul 58% sludents claimed that

ph

th teachers sometimes translated the Lext to help student, understand the text better when

correcting the answers

Question 10: What are the listeniny activities in your classroom? Put a tick in the

tolumn of your choice

1 Always 2Ofen 3 Sometimes 4.Rarely 5.Never

Teacher reads, students listen and do the tasks 6% | 0% | 71% | 29% | 0%

Students listen fo a classmale’s voice and do the tasks

complete without listening

Teacher pre-teaches naw words before listening 97% | 3%

Students do different tasks apart form the textbooks 28% | 18% | 54%

Students discuss the questions given in the textbook

Table 9: Listening activities in the classroom

‘The data in table 9 reveal the variety of activities in listening classroom Apparently,

the ficquency and convenicnec of using such activitics were different among classes and

Question 11: What are your opinions about the textbook?

Opition about the new testbook Agree | Disagree | Don’t know

The sound quality of the tapes is clear and authentic 38% 22%

The speakers” voice is not original (Students listen -

‘Various tasks which arc suitable lo students levels 39% 11% 50%

Boring tasks, few entertainment activities 41% 47% 12%

The listening contents are long with a lesson 41% 24% 25%

Table 10: Students’ opinion about the textbook

‘The issue of awareness and interests in listening skill in the textbook were also mentioned to draw more incentive contribution and attention of students The table showed thal the mrajority of students enjoy the textbook appearmec and contents (69%), and it also got another 98% of the students engaged Linexpectedly, assessment of diversified, effective, and attractive characteristics of tasks, 50% had no idea, 39% showed their interests and 11% did not agree

A very interesting finding was concerned with quality of the sounds of tape recorder and materials Only 18% gave out their own evaluation that the accents and sounds were original 82% did not show their distinction or might be indifferent to this issue

The students! expectations towards teachers of listening skill The students in this press

sludy are assumed lo have cerlain difficulties in listening,

so they were asked, “What do you expect from teachers teaching listening skills to help you

overcome difficullics in learning listening” which is the 6° question in the survey

questionnaires for students ‘Chey response 2s follows:

Supply listening tasks more suitable to students’ interests and lovels 12%

Introduce supplementary listening material besides class activities 43%

Explain new words needed for cach listening tasks 34%

Explain more about the nature of spoken English 24%

Table 1}: Expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill

As can be scen from the table, the students wished to gct a grcat deal of support

from their teachers of listening skill to overcome difficulties in learning listening More

than half of all respondents (58%) expected Lo gel essential lislening strategies, which revealed thal the students of ihe grads 10 lacks of sufficient listening strategies, thus they

needed to he provided with more listening strategies to become effective listeners 42%

wished to do listening tasks more suitable to students’ interests and levels and 43% like to

be introduced supplementary listening materials for their self-study, 34% desire to acquire

new words needed for listening tasks so that they feel easier to get the spoken input It is hoped that teachers are supposed to be instructors that need to be flexible in teaching

techniques so thal they could help students overcome difficulties in language learning, specifically in learning listening

After discussing aboul the difficulties of listening task through stndznls experience,

we continue to represent this case by teachers

413 Difficuities in teaching listening experienced by teachers

a Main problems in listening lesson

In the survey questionnaires for teachers, there are several questions of question 1, question 2, and question three

Question ?: Ia your opinion, how important is listening skill in the new Tieng Anh 10

texthook in comparison with other skills?

The new textbook was put into operation since the beginning of the school year Also

it was the first time teachers at Duong Tu Minh High School work with it It was reasonable

for them 10 enjoy state or provincial training programs or professional workshops on bath

language skills and methodology However, the information found was talher surprisingly Oily 33% of teachers joined such courses The other 67% tad to do class observation al school to exchange knowledge and methods themselves Tharefore, there existed a big gap

betwean the texthonk approaches and teachars” experiences and ability in terms of language skills and teaching methods

Teachers participated in listening, course 30% 50%

‘Teachers did not participate listening course 33% 67%

Table 12: The number of teacher participated in listening course

Question 4: Whut are the current problems facing the teachers when teaching

listening skill?

As can be seen from Table, the most burning challongs was lack of experienae in teaching the new text books (100%) This figure was higher than teacher's qualities and abilities in teaching listening (83.3%)

‘The respondents supported that they are well-educated in terms of methods and language skills; and that application such theory into practice is the matter of time, Thus it just accounts for 30% of responses, Only 33% had trouble with time management To be honest, this success results trom teachers’ experience in managing and organizing class activitics in gencral

In terms of the impact of classroom conditions, the teachers ranked the least level of difficulty (17%) However, the importance of modem technology constituted a very gh rate

of consideration (67%) It was undeniable that the teachers have tried best to conduct their listening lessons without technology supports

Question 5: What are some factors that influence the students’ participation and

interests in the listening lessons?

1, Swongly agree 2.Agrcc 3.Disagrec 4 Strongly disagree 5 I don't know

Boring Listening activities’ learning environment 33% | 87%

Tack of well- equippad facilities somd quality, cassette player-tapes, television, video, projector

Teachar’s ability in teaching listening is not good enough 67% | 33%

Students’ background and motivation ars not good 17% | 83%

Table 14 Factors have influence in students’ participation

and interests in the Estening lesson Lack of necessary facilities, sound quality, cassette player, tapes, television for example, and students’ factors are blamed for such difficulties in teaching listening by 100%

kề

of teachers Whereas, 67% did not deny their limitation of using appropriate methods and

experience in teaching listening

Finally, the number of subjects supported the perfect of the new text book and its

appearance and activities make up a big gap in comparison with those who employ the view

of dislike the task

b Teachers’ methods and strutegies of listening leaching in the classroom

In order to collect and analyze the dala aboul such matter, questions 6, 7, 11, 12, 13

were designed and categorized

Question 6: How often do teachers use the teaching aids in listening lessons to motivate your students?

‘Authentic listening items

(day conversations! native Speakers’ voice) 029% 41%

Toacher's voice (Loachers read or record) 339 | 67%

Table 15: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids

This is truc the current toaching situation with limited support, then Leachers themselves employ things that are available and economical, lor example, 100% Gncluding 83% always and 17% often) used tasks and textbook as the key instruments and sometimes, handout (50%), pictures (33%), authentic listening (50%) All the subjects sometimes or rarely recorded leachers? voice 3

a kind of listerring resources

Concerning with projectors, 33% never experience in using it before As a matter of fact, they might have inadequate knowledge or skills in using, technology as well

Question 7: How often are the ucti