Luận văn an initial evaluation of the activities teachers use for teaching listening skill for 10th form students at tran hung dao high school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDLES DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT AN INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES TEACHERS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDLES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT

AN INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES TEACHERS USE FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILL FOR 10™ TEN FORM

STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp I0

trường THIPT Trần Tưng Đạo

MA MINOR TITESIS

FIELD: ENGLISII METHODOLOGY CODE: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOT UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

HOANG THI NGAT

AN INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES TEACHERS USE FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILL FOR 10™ TEN FORM

STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng

trong giờ dạp kĩ năng nghe hiển cho học sinh lớp 10

trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60.14.10

SUPERVISOR: VU MAI TRANG, M.A

TIANOT — 2012

A Scope of the study

5 Methods of the study

6 Design of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Theory on listening comprehension

1.1.1, Definition of listening

1.1.2 Classification of listerng,

1.2 Listening teaching skills

1.2.1, Grammar translation method

11.2.1, Real life listening

1.1.2.2 Classroom listening,

1.2.2 Grammar method

1.2.3 Audio — lingual method

1.2.4, Task — based method

1.3 Stages of a listening lesson

2.3 Description of procedure for collectinys data 18

2.3.1 Survey questionmaires TH se TH se 18

3.1 Data analysis of teachers’ survey questionnaire and inlerview m1

3.2 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire and interview 23

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS Hee 35

4.1 Major ñndings TH se TH se TH se 35

4.1.1 The curent situation of teaching and leaming listening skill 35

4.1.2 The current situation of listening activities used by teachers

at Tran Hung Dao hinh school TH se TH se 35

4.1.3 The students’ evaluation of the activities available in the

text book and their suggestions tre tre 36

4.1.4 Evaluation of the listening activities used by teachers at TIID

4.1.5, The students’ preference for class listening activities and their

4.2.1, Improving the listening activities available in the text book 4.2.2, Improving the ways that the teachers use listening activities

4.2.3 Using authentic materials and situations,

4.2.4, Useful activities for three stages of a listening lesson

Table 1; The current situation of using listening activities

Table 2: The ways teachers use listening activitics

‘Table 3: Students’ attitude towards listening

‘Table 4: Students’ evaluation of the activities used by the teacher

Table 5: Students’ evaluation of the activities available in the textbook

Table 6: Students’ perception on the authentic listening

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It can be denied that nowadays English is one of the most popular languages

in all over the world, In the era of globalization and international exchange, Linglish has become the main means of communication in many fields of our life such as medicine, science, technology, sports, education, ete Therefore, (caching and learning English have been paid much attention in every country

In Viet Nam in recent years the number of people who want to know English

has become increasing and teaching and learning Fnglish have paid much more

attention In most schools, through out the country, English has become a compulsory subject Llowever, how to teach and learn Uinglish effectively is not simple Compared to other language skills, listening is considered as one of ihe

most difficult one for both teachers and students Many studies have been done to

seek the ways to make listening lessons less difficult, to give students more

confidence, and also some practical strategies to help them study listening skill

better Like many teachers at other high schools, the teachers of English at ‘!HD high school also wish and always try their best to make listening lessons more

imeresting and allracive to their stusterts Despite thew great effort, the teachers

still fail to get students involve in their lessons and a lot of the students fail to take

the listening, input so they can hardly understand the spoken messages That is the

reason why many of ther gel bored or become stressful and ignorart wher listening,

classes start even though all of them agree listening skill a very important language

skill Facing to this situation, as one of the English teachers at this school, T would

like to do something to improve our teaching and learmny English im general and

listening skall in particular

It is obvious that the activities teachers choose and the ways they organize the activities play an important role in the success of a listening lesson as suitable and attractive activities can make the listening lesson more interesting and arouse

the students’ interest in listening Necdless to say, it is necessary for the teachers to know what listening activities their students would like to take part in and what

achivilies are really effective to them For dose 1 mis Whe researcher would like 1o

conduct a study on “Vin initial evaluation of activities teachers use for teaching

listening comprehension skill for 10” form students at Tran lung Dao high school”

with the hope of helping the teachers of English at THD high school to apply the suitable and effective listening activities to teach listening, skill more efficiently

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

« Investigating the current English listening teaching and leaming situations at THD high school

«Identifying the activities teachers at ‘THD high school often use for teaching, English listening comprehension and giving an initial evaluation of these

activitics

® Giving some suggestions to the teachers at THID high school in applying

suitable listening activities 1a make their listening lessons more effective

thereby onhancing students’ interest in listening lessons

3 Research questions

‘Yo achieve the above aims, the study focuses on finding out the answers of the following questions

1 What kinds of activities and the ways do teachers at TIED high school use to

teach listening comprehension?

1 What are teachers’ and students’ attitude towards these activities in term of

authentieity, suitability and integration?

3 What activities can teachers usc in order to teach listening skill more

effectively?

4 Scope of the study

Though the study focuses on evaluation of activitics teachers use for teaching linglish listening comprehension skill, due to the limitation of time and page numbers of the minor thesis, the researcher can only conduct a survey on the students of 10 form and ten teachers of English at THD high school to identify some activities to help them better in teaching and learning listening skill their

evaluation of the listening activities used by teachers, after that suggest

5 Methods of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study was carried out with data collected from different sourves: two questionnaires were designed for collecting

data for analysis from students and teachers at ‘11D high school ‘The researcher

also inlervicwed some teachers and students lo double-check the information

obtained from the survey questionnaires, Beside survey questionnaires and interview, the researcher also makes some class observations to collect information needed for the study

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

- Part A: presenls an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research, the aims, the research questions, the scope of the study, the research method, as well

as Ihe design of the study were briefly presented

- Part RB includes 4 chaplers as follow

Chapter I presents the concepts relevant to the research topic such as theory on listening comprehension including definition, classification of listening as well as some ways of teaching listening skill and stages of listening lesson In this chapter

the researcher also mentioned theory related to activities as definition, classification

a3 well as criteria to evaluate activities and some ways adapting material.

Chapter 2 deals with description of the subjects, instrament of the study and description of the procedure

Chapter 3 is a focus on data collection and discussion

Chapter 4 points out major finfings of the study and some suggestions will be

given

-Part C: summarizes the main issues of the whole study, presents limitations of the

research and makes recommendation for further research im the same field.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the reexamination of concepts most relevant to the thesis’s topic It includes three sections The first section addressed major issues reflecting the theory on listening, including definition, classification of listening, some methods lo leach listening skill and the discussion of three stages of the listening lesson Come up next in this chapler are major issues in theory on aclivities including definition, classification of activitics and criteria for activitics evaluation, The last section included some theoretical discussions about materials adaptation Therefore, this chapter can be

scon as (he (theoretical foundation for the applications for the sludy in chapter 3

1.1 Theory on listening comprehension

1.1.1 Definition of listening

Listening is believed to be one of the most important skills in learning a language It is considered as the key language skill; hence, there have been varieties

of definitions of listening which hold different views towards the concept

According to Rost (1994), listening is referred to a complex process that

enables us to understand spoken language Tarmer (2001, p197) categorizes

fistening inlo receplive skill, the way in which people extract meaning form the

discourse they hear or see

Wolvin and Coakley (1985) hold the same idea They see listening as "the process of receiving, alionding to and assigning meaning lo aural slimul" This definition indicates that listening is a complex process which students have to deal

with The task of listening is not only perception of sound, but it also requires comprehension of meaning,

Scoll Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and

involved process, One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing backpround noise, and

also make a conscious effort to not ‘switch off or become distracted while listening, All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to

identify and understand the meaning in any given inessage

Anderson and Lynch (1988) pointed out that listening is really a receptive

skill along side with reading skills and the role of the listeners is no longer passive but active After a period of listening the learners are exposed ta be able to talk or

write about what they have heard, that is the objectives of listening comprehension

Basing on the different defimuions of listenimg mentioned above, 1L can be

concluded that listening comprehension is an active process during which the

listener constructs meaning from oral input and this is done by applying knowledge

to the incoming sounds,

1.1.2 Classification of listening

‘There are many different types of listening We can classify these according to

a number of variables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and the

types of text being listened to

L122 Reabtife listening

Many students feel a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and

avtual situation This is because most listening materials including dialogues in text books are very prammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakers often

speak wilh perfectly controlled speech, voice, lone, accent and correct grammar

Whereas, in real-life conversations learners encounter various people with ditferent

gender, age, accent, speed, voice, tone ‘here may be improper grammar usage,

incomplete sơntencos, redundangy, corttractions, overlap and so forth

There are two ways which people ofien lislen iti teal-lile, they are “casual” and “focus” Listening,

“Casual” listening

A lot of students have a habit of listoning to a radio while studying or the television is on while we are doing something else We listen with no particular purpose This kind of listening is called “casual” hstering, the typical [estire is thal

we do not listen closely and intentionally, thus we may not remember much of what

we hear or nothing is left in our mind

“Pocus” listening

“Foous” listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the

information we need to know or to study the language Tn this case we oflen hster

with much attention, but we do not listen to every thing with equal concentration There is an association between listener expectation and purpose and his

comprehension To the listener expects and needs are intentional, his listening is

likely accurately perceived and understood than that which is expected, irrelevant or helpful

£1.22 Classroom listening

Class-room listening may be divided into intensive listening and extensive listening,

Intensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for

detailed information or lull comprehension, for example, lisiening Lo a dialogue on the tape to study its swuctures, intonation patterns in an English class

Listening intensively is quite important to understand the language form of the text as we have to understand both the lexical and grammatical units that fead to

form meaning So, intensive listening requires attention to specific items of

language, sound or factual detail such as words, phrase, grammatical units, pragmatic units, sound changes (vowel reduction and consonant assimilation),

stress, intonation and pauses etc

Extensive listening

Extensive listoning is freer and more general listening to natural language for eneral ideas, not for a particular detail and not necessary under the teacher’s direct

guidance The listening passage for extensive listening can be long or short The

language that is used in the type of listening is often within the students’ current ability so that they find it pleasing and interesting when they are listening With this

type of listening, stadents are not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar

point linked Lo the resl of the course This type of listening has also a grealer case than other types as it is concemed to promote overall comprehension of a text and

never requires learners Lo follow every word and understand them Learners need lo

comprehend the text as a whole which is called global undorstanding, Activities in

this section must be chosen in terms with the proficiency level of the listeners

It is advisable that students to should do lots of intensive listening practice

before move on to exlensive English listening practice This helps Lo build a base of English that they have memorized, The new English that they hear during extensive listening can then fit into that base and help them grow it

1.2 Listening teaching skills

In the article about teaching listening, Underwood (1989, p90-109) pointed

oul that there are ai least four common methods of leaching second or foreign

language listcning: grammar-transiation, grammar-method, audio-lingual method and task-based method

Grammar- translation method By this method, students listen to a description

of the rules of the second language im the first language As a resull, when the second language is used, the focus of any listening is on translation of lexical items

or grammar structures

Grammar method: to follow this method, the teavher requires students to look

at a written text while they listen to a recording, ‘This forces them to do several things: identify words by their position in the sentence, work out the relationship

between words and phrases, usc forward and backward inferencing cucs, and make

intelligent guesses based on textual cues

Audio-lingual method Audio-lingual method of listening cruphasizes first listening to prommeiation and grammar forms and then imitating those forms by way of drills and exercises Dialogues and drill are the basis of classroom practice

with this method Students are encouraged to listen carefully either to the taped

recording, or a teacher reading out, a dialogue, or a drill They then record their own version or respond to cues from the teachers to repeat parts of the dialogue or drill

Pasically, the more the students repeal a correcl phrase or sentence, the slronger of

their memory of the structure wilt be

Task-based method: this method places stress on activities or tasks that

learners do in class im order to develop their cornmunicative compotenee A task- based syllabus should be constructed according to the difficulty of the tasks

required of the learners at different stages in a course

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

1.3 Stages of 4 listening fessan

A listering lesson can be divided in to 3 main stages: Pre-listening, white- listening, post-listening Each stage has its own aims and activities

13.1 Pre-listening

Tl is ebvious that, learners will find it extremely difficult lo do a listening

lesson when they have no idea of what they are going to hear liven if the sounds or the words which they hear are familiar, they may still be unable to understand because they lack certain kinds of knowledge of the topic, setting or the relationship between the speakers Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations

and sce the purpose before a listening lesson This kind of work is described as

“pre-listening activities”

According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening activities can consist of a

whole range of activities, including: the teacher giving background information, the

students reading something relevant, the students looking at pictures, discussion of the topic/situation, a question and answer session, written exercises, following the

instructions for the while listening activity and consideration of how the while- listening will be done As Tor her the ume available, the material is available or not, the interest of the class and the teacher, the place in which the work is being carried

oul, the nature and the content of the Hstening text ilself are some main factors that

the teacher should take into consideration when choosing an activity If one of these

is forgotten, the whole process of activity can be failed When the teacher pays

allention to (his faclor properly, the activity chosen for students will be more

specific and effective,

41.3.2 While-listening

‘The activities that students are asked to do during the time they are listening

to the text can be understood as while-listening stage The purpose of this stage is to help students develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language Rixon (1986) pointed out the purposes of while-listening stage is to challenge and guide students to handle the information and the message from the listening text Activities of this slage must be interesting and carefully chosen which should be suitable with students! ability This means that while-listening activities can be done

by most students, from the slow students to the best ones Because failure can quickly discourage students to listen, in the carly stage, activities which are tricky should be used sparingly, but sometimes it is necessary to give students some challenges

43.3 Postelistening

The activities done by students after the listening completed is known as

“post-listening” Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre- listening and while-listening stage and some relate only loosely to the

listening text itself According to Underwood (1989), the purposes of this stage are

to check whether the leamers have understood what they need to or not; to see why

some students have missed parts of the message or fail to understand the message,

lo give the students the opportunity io consider the attitude and manner of the speakers of the listening text; to expand on the topic or language of the message and

to transfer learned things to another context, to make introduction for the planned

work She also states that, when selecting post-listening activities: the teachers

should keep in mind the following factors: the amount of language work the teacher wish lo do in relation to the particular listening text, Ihe lime which is allowed to do

post-listening work, the speaking, reading or writing skills should be included in the post-listening work, the students should work in pair or in groups, and the chosen avtivily shoukd be made motivating

1.4, Theory on activities

1.4.1 Definitions of activities

There are many definitions of activities According to the webpage

mycurepe.cunorg, activity is defincd as “collection of people, work items, communications, and processes that represent a collaborative effort to achieve a goal” From this definition we can infer thal an activily is a way for us to organize

our-work and collaborate with others in a share working condition and coordination

in a small teams However, more narrow definition, such as that presented by

defin

iom.nel an activity can be understood as a slale or qualily of being active,

nimbleness; agility; vigorous action or operation energy; active force; as, an increasing variety of human activities

1.4.2, Classification of activities

Activities can be classified into many types Within the scope of a umit

Simonc-a toacher mentioned in the book “Designing Language Course A guide for teachers” (Graves, 2000) classifies activities into four types: warm-up activities,

presentation activities, practice activilies and consolidation activities This

classification will be familiar to teachers who have leamed about a three stage

lesson planning model such as presentation, practice and production Whereas,

according to features of activities, activities can he classified into three types, including tasks, exercises, and between task and exercise (Rod Ellis, 2003)

Tasks

« Richard (1983) and Nunan (1989) define task is an activity that involve

language Bygate (2011) have the same point of view about tasks ‘hey

stated a task is an activity requires learners to use language According to

Lee (2000) a task can be defined as a “classroom activity or exercise”

single language element, and has a lmguishc oulcome

Between task and exercise

Some language-learmng activities can nol easily classify as a task or ar exercise

They have the features of both There is no exact name to call this type of activity; Rod Ellis (2003) calls this with the term “ta

vocabulary they want This allows them to use all the language they know, rather than just the ‘target language’ of the lesson, which may further motivate them in their language learning: whe

as, oxcrcises arc beneficial especially when focusing

on accuracy, In order to become successful in language teaching, it is wise for

teachers to combine both tasks and exercises to fulfill the goal of each lesson

1.4.3 Criteria for Activities Evaluation

According to Dudley- Evans and St John (1998), in the evaluation process,

evaluators must take evaluation criteria mo account before any evaluation takes

place Graves, 2000 synthesized fiftcon criteria that should be paid attention to when designing listening activities However, in this paper, the author only

mentions some most frequent consideralion enteria The followimg is the list of these criteria:

- Authenticity: It means that the teaching activities should correspond to real-world

ones To achieve this criteria, activities should:

+ help students develop specific skills they need for authentic

communication

| focus on students’ outside class needs, if appropriate

| use authentic text or realia when possible

| build students’ confidence so that they can feel confident i transferring what they lean outside of the class

- Suitability Actuvitics should be suitable with students’ ability and nceds, draw on what students know (their experience, their current situation) and be relevant to them so that they can engage students’ interest

- Integration: Activities should integrate the four skills of speaking, listening, reachng and wriling because the four skills mutually reinforce each other

It is obvious that the work of developing and choosing cvaluative criteria is rather subjective and depends on what the evaluators consider to be important In this evaluation research, the three most frequent criteria including aulhenticily, suitability and integration suggested by Graves, 2000 were adopted to see how much activities used by teachers of English at TIID high school to teach a listening lesson match with the aims and the requirements of the listening comprehension lesson

1.5 Materials adaptation

Materials adaptation is a process of matching the teaching material with the

needs, interests of learners, and teachers’ own capabilitics Materials adaptation plays an important part in the process of language teaching and learning It makes

the teaching materials more relevant Lo the needs of students and to the objectives of

the course, and therefore, would stimulate the effectiveness of teaching and

learning Its purpose is to maximize the appropriateness of teaching materials in context, by changing some of the infernal characteristics of a course book to better

suit the particular circumstances Mcionough and Shaw (1993; 86) state that

reasons for adaptation rely on four main aspects namely “language use; skills: classroom organizalion; supplementary material.” and there are also six important ways of modifying materials hey are adding; deleting or omitting; modifying; simplifying: re-ordering: re-placing, (See Appendix 6)

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY This chapter vonsists of three parts The first part focuses on the situation of the study, in which the settings for the study, the subject of the study, as well as the description of the text book are discussed Instruments for the study are discussed in the second part The last part is the description of procedure for the study,

3.1 Situation analysis

2.11 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at THD high school, where the author is teaching

‘The school was set up 35 years ago with only two classes However, today it is widened with 30 classes The size of the class is rather large Hach class has from 43

to 50 students There is no lab for learning English listening skill Students have to learn listening with cassette players in their classrooms ‘fhis is inconvenient condition for teaching and learning listening as crowded class and leaming listening

in classrooms can be very noisy so thet students can not concentrate on the lesson Furthermore, it is difficult for teachers to control the class and hold activities with a

large size class

2.1.2 Subject of the study

for both the teachers and students The second difficulty is that the teachers do not

have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can give very precious help and advice Last but not least, the living condition of the people in An

Lao district where the school located in is sill very low; therefore, nol only students

and parents but also the teachers have many difficulties in their learning and teaching,

2.1.2.2 Tenth-form students

The subjects of the study were 140 students from class 10C1, 1003, 10C9 at

THD high school, They are ages from fifleen lo sixteen Most of them come

from comparatively poor familics so their loarning condition is not good cnowgh Their parents can hardly afford to pay even small amount of money for their

children’s schooling A dictionary, a cassclle player or even some English books

aie beyond their reach Their tools are the text book “Tieng Anh 10” only Although most of them already leamt linglish for at least four years at lower secondary school, their knowledge of English is still poor and limited Hardly can they say a correct sentence in the target language and hardly hear anything when first leaming

how to listen In addition to this, they have no chance to communicate with native

speakers so that they are not familiar with their accent, That is roason why listening

is the most difficult skill for them and most of them are not interested in this skill

Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to design interesting activities that suitable

with students’ interests, ability and meet their needs so that can arouse thei inerest

in leaming listening skill

2.1.2.3 The text book

‘The ‘Tieng, Anh 10 textbook consists of 16 units for two term organized broad and interesting topics: a day in the life oŸ , school talks, people background, special education, teebmology and you, an excursion, the mass media, the story in

my village, undersea world, conservation, national parks, music, films and cinema, the world cup, cities and historical places ach unit has one listening lesson The teacher has to cover it in onc period The topics of the listoning toxts arc various

Generally, many of thom arc of students’ interest, familiar and suitable with students’ ability or example, in unit 2 students are asked to listen to some small lalks al school or a toxt about a picnic al Botanical garden of students in unit 6, or interestmg topics about Van Cao, a well-known Vietnamese musician is provided in

unit 12

Tlowever, there are also some listening texts too difficult for students as these

listening texts containing many new and difficult words, such as listening text about

whales in unit 9 or about Vang Trang Kbuyel in unit 4 Many students find il difficult to comprehend the listening text about the statue of Liberty in unit 15 or

about the accent town of Hot An im uri, 16 because of their lack of background

knowledge

2.2, Instrument for collecting data

‘The researcher used survey questionnaire, interview and classroom observation as the sources for data collection According to Veronica.A Thurmond, (2001), triangular method involves gathering data from multiple sources so that the finding data could be more persuasive ‘The author of this research chose these three

methods for data collection because of the following reasons:

‘As for Survey questionnaire it is one of the most common methods of data collection TLis easily designed and can help the researcher collect a large amount of infomation only within a short time According to Wallace (2001), the questionnaire is a popular means of collecting data as it enables the researcher to collect data in field settings Furthermore, if is rather easy for the researcher Lo summarize, analyze and report the data because all the answers are given to the same questions Finally, the questionnaires can consist of both close and open questions so thal (he informants have chanees to express their opinion individually For the above reasons, doing the questionnaires, the researcher can investigate the

teachers’ and students’ attitude to the activities used in listening lessons.

Another tool of the study is classroom observation Wallace (2001) asserts that it is an important technique for the researcher to record what is happening at the lime Oat the leaching and leaming of the foreign lamgnages lake place Tu (acl, with classroom observation, the researcher can watch, follow and record all activities that the teacher and the students are performing in a particular place Therefore, it is a very useful tool for the researcher to check the reliability of the data collected from the survey questionnaires

By using interviews, the researcher could have more in-depth on certain aspect that could not be unveiled from questionnaires (Traenkel & Wallen, 1996) Resides following closely a list af questions, il creates the chance for the researcher

to flexibly extend the content to the best exploit the information from the interviewees Furthermore, respondents’ non-verbal expressions conveyed through their verbal lalks revealed major hints for gainiry, an insight inlo their porceplion and attitude towards the matter investigated As a result, data collection was not only quantitative but also qualitative

2.3 Description of procedure for collecting data

23.1 Questionnaires:

Two questionnaires were designed for both teachers and students ta gather

the data for the study:

2.3.1.1 Questionnaire for teachers

The questionaire including 6 questions designed for leachers with tree main purposes (See Appondix 1) Firstly, through the answers to the two first questions, the researcher will analyze the current situation of using listening aclivilies of the teachers al THD high school Secondly, questions 3, 4 are ainned al finding out teachers’ opinion about listening activities available in the text book and what they have done or changed to improve them Finally, the answers of questions 5,6 will help the researcher collect information to analyze the problem that the teachers come across when designing the listening activities and their evaluation of

the effectiveness of the listening activities after changing or redesigning From that the researcher will give suggestions for making these listening activities more

clTective

2.3.1.2 Questionnaire for students

The questionnaire consists of 12 questions (see Appendix 3) The

quesliormaire was Iranslaled inlo Viclramese before delivering to 140 studenls of

three classes 10C1, 10C3 and 10C9 The researcher used both multiple choice and

open- ended questions With each sultiple choice questions she also Dexibly

created onc more open option for most questions, in which the respondents can give their own opinion The questionnaire for students is divided into four main parts (Sce Appendix 3)

Firstly, the first two questions are designed to find the studerls’ altitudes towards listening skill ‘fhe next question is aimed at finding out students’ evaluation of the activities teachers used for teaching listening skill Question 4

focuses on the students’ evaluation of the activities available in the text book

Question 5, 6 are designed to find out the students’ perception on authentic listening Finally, question 7,8,9,10,11 and 12 are aimed at finding the students’

preferences for activities al three slages of a listening lesson From thal the

researcher will give some comments and suggestions to better situation of using

listening activities in order to improve teaching and learning listening skill

2.3.2 Interview

‘The face-to-face interviews randomly choose five out of ten teachers and

twelve sludemls to investigale their evaluation of the activilics the teachers use for

teaching listening skill Hach lasted for an average of fifteen or twenty minutes Language for interview was Vietnamese due to the preference of all respondents

This choice of language did not threaten the reliability of the data collected Tastead,

it helped consolidate the preciseness of the data as well as avoid any misunderstanding among both interviewers and interviewees

2.3.3 Classruom observatian:

The observation was carried out three times for three different classes The

researcher chose 3 different classes 10C1, 10C3, LOC9 and different units to

observe: Unit 2, Unit 4, and Unit 5 For each lesson, the researcher observed 45

minutes She set a checklist for her observation including teachers’ activities and students’ attitude towards the teachers’ activities, their involvement in the activities

as well as their references for these activities and their interaction with each other

while complete the tasks She also observed the ways thal the teachers orgamzed listening activities and how they deal with long and difficult listening text and what

activilies can be used in the lesson to motivate students in lislerimyg Lo the text

Hopefully, with three different teachers, three different cla and tree

units, the researcher can get a lot of choice for the listening activities and can get involve in various lesson settings

2.4, Procedures

The questionnaire was filled out by both teachers and students after each

class observation The participants were asked to complete the questionnaires

seriously within fifteen mimutes in their classroom ‘lhe researcher asked the teacher

for permission to have personal contact with the study population in order to explain

the purpose, relevance and the imporlant of the study, as well as to clarify any

questions that the studonts had,

After gathering back questionnaires, the researchers interviewed 4 students

in each class to clarify their answers to survey questionnaire and clarify what could

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

3.1, Data analysis of (eachers’ survey questionnaire and interview

(See Appendix 1,2)

3.1.1 The current situation of using listening activities of teachers at THD high

school (Survey question 1, 2 and interview question 1, 2)

you oftenuse | C Getween task and exercises 20

for teaching D All of the above 100

listening?

2 What doyou | A Very effective 0

of activities in their lesson However, exercises were mainly used by the teachers They explained that most of the activities available in the text book belong, to

exercises, These exercises were rather suilable with the students’ level so the

teachers didn’t have to spend much time designing them

Responding to the question “What do you think of the activities you use for

teaching listening”, the teachers self evaluate their activities as follow:

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A large number of the teachers (40%) assumed that the activities thoy use for teaching listening are not effective ‘he evidence to for this was that students perform nol well in the lesson They said that inany of the aclivilics they used were

not eagerly participated by the students ‘f'wo out of ten teachers (20%) considered

that some of the activities they used were effective and some were not 40% of the

teachers confessed that the activities they used were effective None of them

thought that the activities they use were very effective From the figure it indicated that although the teacher of TIED high school had tried their best to design various

kinds of aclivilies to make their lesson more interesting and raise the students’

interests, however, they were really satisfied with what they had done

3.1.2, The ways that teachers at THD high school use the listening activities (See table 2 at Appendix 6)

(Question 3, 4, 5, 6—Appendix 3 and interview question 3- Appendix 4)

Trom the answers to question 3, 4 and interview question 3, it revealed that most of

the teachers at THD high school flexibly used the listening activities available in the

text book Six out of ten teachers (60%) said that sometimes they changed the

activities available in the text book if they found these activities not suitable with

students’ ability and interests Four of them (66.7%) often replaced the activities in

the text book, 50 % of them changed the lead-in activities the text book to make

their lesson more interesting, by adding some beautiful pictures to motivate students

and rouse (heir altention to the lesson With loo difficult activities which could not

be done by the students were often omitted by 33.3 % of the teachers

Responding to question 5 (What do you think of your lesson after changing listening activities available in the text book?), 66.7 % of the teachers agreed that the lesson was inuch more interesting and effeelive aller changing the activities However, they confessed that they didn’t change or redesigned the activities in the text book very often in spite of the fact that they realized some activities were not of

students’ interest or not suitable with their ability The reason they showed was that

it is difficult and time-consuming to design them, The findings above revealed that the work of choosing suitable activities for the students seems not easy as each type

can be suilable m this situation but it is not in the others Thus, the teachers shoukd

take the students’ interest and ability into account before designing as well as applying the activities to their lessons

3.2 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire and interview

(ce Appendix 3, 4)

3.2.1 Students’ attitude towards listening skill (See table 3 at Appendix 6)

(Question 1, 2- See Appendix 3)

When being asked about the importance of listening skill and their opinion about listening skill, 61,4 % of the students responded that listening skill is very important, 25.7 % of them found listening skill is important, only 12.9% of the students thought that listening skill plays as important role as other skills None of them considered listening is not important When being asked “Why do you think that learning listening is important?” they explained thal they lear listening skill for not only listening to the teachers’ explanation, for communicating with teachers and classmates , but also for their long term purposes: studying abroad, preparing for the (ulure job or successfully communicating in English

As for the students’ altitude (owards listening skill, most of the informants (nearly 73%) found listening the most difficult skill in comparison with others, 22

% students considered listening as difficull as olher skills, and a small number of thom (5%) stated it is casicr than spoaking, writing and reading skill, none of them considered listenng is very easy

It can be concluded that the students at TIED high school are aware of the importance and necessity of learning listening skill They have good attitude toward listening skill and would like to get some listening provement, however, listening, skills are considered as the most difficult and challenging skill among the four

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language skills, therefore, their actual performance in listening activities gocs far beyond their control and their thought

3.2.2 Students’ evaluation of the listening activitics used by their teacher

(See table 4 at Appendix 6)

(Questions 3- see Appendix 3 and interview questions 1, 2, 3 see Appendix 4)

Survey questions 3 and interview questions 1, 2 were aimed at finding out

studonis’ evaluation of aciwvilies their loachers uscd and the ways ey used hem im class ‘The results of these questions showed that majority of the informants (64.3%)

were interested im the class listening activities that their teachers used 66,4% of

them thought that the listening activities used by their teacher wore suitable with their ability and interests A large number of them (70%) agreed that their teachers well integrated lisloning skill with other language skills Nevertheless, there were 19 informants (13.6%) admitted that they didn’t highly appreciate the activities their teachers used in listening lesson When being imerviewed “Why you don’t like the

activities your teacher used’, they gave the reason that the activities their teacher

used were boring and inflexible ‘hey claimed that their teacher used the same

activities for every lesson Some others complained that their teachers only used the

aclivilies available in the text book and they didn’t like sorne of them as hey too

difficult 48,6% most of the activities that their teacher used were suitable and

integrated with other language skills, and only some of them were not From this

result, it revealed thal mosi of the activilies that the teachers used were of sluderits’

interests and ability; however, there were still some activities teachers employed in

their lessons were not of students” interests or not suitable for their levels of

language proficiency Tt could be betier if the tcachors added more interesting

activities or changed some activities available in the text book to make it easier to

Taise studerts’ interest in listermg,

3.2.3 Students’ evaluation on the activities available in the text book

(See table 5 at Appendix 6)

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(Question 4- Sco Appendix 3 and interview question 4- Sce Appendix 4)

Tt is advisable for the teachers to know how their students’ cvaluation of the activities available in the text book in order to design activities suitable with their

ability and interests When being asked “What do you think of the activities

available in the text book?” in response to this question, the informants showed

different ideas $1.2 % of the informants thought that the activities available in the

text book are interesting and suitable for their ability and interests 22.9 % of the

infonnanls found these aclivilies a bit difficull and not appropriate to Lheir ability and interests It is clear that no text book is completely perfect and meet alll learners”

needs and interests, thal is the reason why there are still 7.9 % of students crilicized

those activities are boring, and they suggested that their teachers should add more

interesting activities or employ authentic listening text from other sources such as imlemel, TV or radio,

3.2.4 Students” perception on the authentic listening (See fable 6 af Appendix 6} (Question 5, 6- See Appendix 3)

Basing on the students’ answers to question 4 and 5 we can see the fact that

all of the teachers (100 %) of THD high school made full use of the listening text available in the text book The students reported that their teacher have never

exploited other sources of listening apart (rom the text book

To compare the difficulty between record-listening ancl authentic listening, most of

the informants (78.6 %) assumed that listening to the recording is much more difficult than authentic listening It can be calculated from table 3 about the reason for

this, a large number of the mlormants (46.4 %) explamed thal 11 is easier [or them Lo

listen if they see the face and the lip movement of the speaker's 20.9 % of them thought that listening to the tape recording is much more difficult than authentic listening because they can nol ask the speaker to repeal what they do not.catch 13.7

% ttied to understand all the words they hear and found listening to the tape

recording more challenging with unknown words or grammar structures, especially

25

when listening to the conversation And the rest of the informants (10%) admitted that they can not concentrate on a listening session over three minutes

From the result presented above, it is clear that the students wish to listen to

some authentic listening besides the listening in their text book to improve their

ability of listening in the real life It is hoped that teachers should employ authentic

listening beside the listening texts available in the text book in order to give

students opportunity to get familiar with spontaneous spoken English in real life

real so that the students can improve their listening skill and they are more

confident when they have chance to communicate with native speakers

3.2.5, Students’ preference for class- listening activities

3.2.5.1 Students’ preference for pre-listening activities

Question 7, 8 (See Appendix 3) and interview question 5 (See Appendix 4)

Activities used by teacher

Chart 1: Pre-listening activities used by teachers and students’ preference

As can be seen from the chart 1 that the teachers at English of THD high school used various kinds of pre-listening activities in the classroom, among them the most popular activities were: pre-teaching new words and pronunciation (80%), asking the students to answer relevant questions (67.1%) and requiring the students

to read through the questions (63.6%) or discussing the listening topic in pairs of in

group (50.7%) Some others less common activities are asking the students to make