Luận văn action research on applying the interactive approach to develop listening skills for second year non english major students at hanoi university of industry

STUDIES, FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI THU HA ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS FOR SECOND- YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, LLANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAT STUDIES,

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN THI THU HA

ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH

TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS FOR SECOND- YEAR NON-ENGLISH

MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY (NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG VẺ VIỆC ÁP DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TƯƠNG TÁC ĐỀ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHF: CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIỂNG ANH NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGTHIẸT HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, LLANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAT STUDIES,

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN THI THU HA

ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH

TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS FOR SECOND- YEAR NON-ENGLISH

MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

(NGHIÊN CỨU HANH ĐỘNG VỀ VIỆC ÁP DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TƯƠNG

TAC BE NANG CAO KY NANG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYỂN

TIÊNG ANH NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Kicld: English l'caching Mcthodology

Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof, KIEU THI THU HUONG

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled: “Action research on applying the inteructive approach to develop listening shills for second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry”, which is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Language ‘Teaching Methodology at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, is the result of my own work Thave provided fully documented references to the work

of others The materia) in this thesis has not been submitted for any other university

or institution wholly and partially

Lanoi, 2017

Nguyén Thj Thu Ha

ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deopest gratitude to Assoc Prof Dr, Kieu ‘Thi ‘Thu Luong, my supervisor, for her assistance, encouragement as

well as the guidance she gave me while I was doing this research

Second, I would like to express my special thanks to all the lecturers of the Post Graduate Faculty of University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their scholarly knowledge and amazing lectures thal have helped lo increase my inlerest for English Methodology and my teaching job

T also wish to show my appreciation to my second-year students of the class 1i6.1_K9 for their whole-heated participation im the study

Last but not least, | owe my sincere thanks to my parents, my younger sister and my friends who have always inspired and cncouraged me to complete this

study.

ABSTRACT This study aimus al invesligating the impact of intoraclive processing on second-year

students’ listening skills at Hanoi University of Industry More specifically, the sesearcher strives ta (1) investigate problems that the students may encounter while leaming listening, and (2) examine the effects of applying the interactive process in teaching listening to the second-year students ‘lo achieve the above mentioned objectives, an action research is conducted with the participation of 42 second-year students of class H6.1_K9 within twelve weeks A pretest, a post-test and two questionnaires are used as instruments to collect data for analysis The findings show that there are six problems that cause difficulties to students in listening They are (i) lacking

of vocabulary, (ii) structures of spoken language, Gil) speoch rate, (iv) various and unfamiliar accents, (v) stress and intonation, (vi) lacking of background Imowledge

about the topic After interachive processing has been applied, ihe students’ scores

in the post-test are higher than in the pre-test Overall, the instruction of interactive processing improves their listening skills

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION TH H111 11 1 1.0.0

1 Statement of the problem

2 Aims af the study

3 Research questions

4 Scope of the study

5 Methodology of the study

6 Significance of the study

LIL, Definitions of listening

112 Types of listening 0.0 H102 121m g1 0e tre

1.14, Kactors affecting listening processes soususj.oeesssesmesvenes sins

1.2 Teaching listening skills

1.3.1 Stages of a listening lessom

1.2.1.1 Pre-listening, sáo tàn Hee 12

1.3.1.2 While-lHstening, oi ¬—

1.2.2, Interactive processing in teaching listening SKIUS 0.00 15 1.2.2.1 Teaching boltom-up processing 15

1.3 ÑeVÏEW Gƒ DPEVÍONS WOFĂS à 0.0 Hee wT

2.1 Rationale of the using action TESEATCH 0 cece ees 20

1 Preliminary investigation

31.1 Analysis of students’ preliminary questionnaire eo — -

3.1.1.2 Students’ self- assessment of their ]istening, conpetenee 26 3.1.1.3 Students’ use of strategies in lstening, ¬—

3.1.1.5 Stadents' expeotation towards teaches 28

3.2.1 Comparison of results from siudents' pre-kest and poa-Íest co 30 32.2.2 Analysis of the students’ post questionnaire 31 3.2.2.1 Aclivilios motivatiry sludents in pro-listening stage - 31

3.2.2.2 Activitics atracting studonts in while-listcning stage sao 32

Useful and effective activities for students after listening 33 Students’ opinions about the listening Lasks 34

Students’ opinions on the teaching methods

Students’ opinions aboul their listening skills after the course 36

LL Difficuities students encounter hen studying lstening shills 38

12 The effects of applying the interactive approach to teach listening skills 38

31 The neccessiiy oƒ applying the interacfive approack ¬—-

2.2 The neccessity of arousing students' motivation and interest 40

23 Changes in conducting three stages of a listening lesson 40

2.3.1 Pre-lisieHing TH HH 1011.0111111 0.1101 ¬—

2.3.3, Post-listening

5 Limitations of the study on ieennneerree wd

LISTS OF FIGURES, CHARTS & TABLES

Figures

Figure 1; Action research model csssesiestssussineeseeneeistenatinte " Charts

Chart 1: Students’ allilude on the importance of listening skills - 25

Chart 2: Students’ interest in leaming listening skills

Chart 3: Students’ self-assessment of their listening competence - 26

Chart 5: Comparison of the results from pre-test and post-test

Table 1 Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners esersrrrre TẾT

‘Table 2:Sorne kinds of top-down exereises for beginners ¬—

Table 3: Students’ difficulties in learning listening 27

Table 5: The overall results of students’ pre-test - 29

Table 6: The overall results of students’ post-test - - 30

Table 7: Activilics motivating students in pro-lisicning stage 3L Table 8: Activities attracting students in while-listening stage - 32

Table 9: Useful activities for students after istening 33

Tabic 10: Students’ opinions on the Hstcning tasks ¬-

‘Table 11: Students’ opinions on the teaching methods ¬

vũ

PART L: LNIRODUCTLON

1 Statement of the problem

Recently, listening has gained more and more alleriion in foreign language

lcaming In leaming English as a forcign language, it is suggested that the most important step should begin with an effort to listen Rubin & ‘!hompson state:

Listening, quite possibly, is the most impontant of the language skills,

since people spend approximately 60% of their time listening In addition, listening will give you an opportumity to get a “feel” for the

language and will have you improve your overall ability in it If you

don’t leam to listen effectively, you will not be able to participate in

conservations in the foreign language

Rubin & Thompson (1994, p 85)

Rost (1994, p 141) emphasives thal listening can be regarded as a necessary skill in the preparation of forcign language students and can cvon be considered as a good predictor of language achievement Consequently, listening plays a vital role in

foreign language learning

At present, listening is meorporaled im all Friglish syliubusos used at all levels of Vietnamese education However, there was a long time when most English textbooks in Vietnam paid attention to grammar, translation and reading materials,

it was almost impossible to find anything related to leaching listening skills, As a result, listening is considered to be the most challenging, skill in teaching and

learning compared to the other skills

Being a teacher of English at Hanoi University of Industry for more than two years,

the wriler has found that the non-English major students are ummteresled in

listening lessons ‘They are unwilling to do any listening tasks and perform poorly in the listening tests The question arises here is to find out the suitable approach to help the studonis develop their listerring skills

The above reasons have encouraged the writer to carry out the study entitled:

"Action research on applying the interactive approach to develop listening skills for second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry"

2 Aims of the study

‘This study is designed with the aim to investigate whether applying the interactive approach helps students improve their listening skills in Iénglish

In order to achieve this aim, the following, objectives arc sct out for the study:

- To gain the understandiry of the difficulties encountered by second-year non English major students at Hanoi University of Industry in listening lessons

- To experiment and investigate the effects of vsing the interactive approach to

leaching fisloning lo second-year non-Fnglish major students

3 Rescarch questions

In order to achieve the objectives above, two research questions are raised

1 What difficulties do the second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry encounter in listening lessons?

2 What are the effects of applying the interactive approach to teaching listening (for seconil-year non-Fnglish major students at Hanoi University of Industry?

4 Scope of the study

There are many methods of teaching listening skills, however, in this study the researcher intends lo use the interactive approach to help second-year non-Rnghsh major students at Hanoi University of Industry overcome their difficulties in leaming listening skills This approach is conducted aver a 12-week period and is applicd in the sree stages of a listening lesson: pre-listening; whilc-listening and post-listening ‘the sample populations are 42 second-year non-English major

students [toi class called Bế.1_ K9 at Hanoi University of Industry,

tỳ

5 Methodology of the study

Condusting the study, the researcher follows the general steps in Numan's action research model (1992) She makes use of the quantitative method with the wish to explore the matter thoroughly The data are collected from the two following sources:

- Pre-test and post-test

- Two survey questionnaires

Pretest ad post-test are uscd Lo assess the quality of the parlicipants' listening

performance belore and aller the research The two questionnaires are carried oul aflor the pre-test and post-lest, and their aim is to confina aud supplement the resulls

of the tests

6 Significance of the study

By bringing oul the results of the influence of using the inleraclive approach 4a develop students! listoning skills, and providing pedagogical implications in dealing

with the this approach, the study will somehow make the following contributions First, the findings of the study may be served as references for the teachers of

English to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach Moreover, the

popularization of the findings can possibly help the researcher herself and her

colleagues improve their teaching skills

7 Structure vf the study

There are three main parts in this study:

Part A: Introduction, presents the statement of the problem, aims, research questions, scope, methodology, significance and structure of the study

Part B: Development, which is divided into 3 chapters

Chapter I: “Literature review”, sets up theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study.

Chapter I: “Mothodology”, indicates the rationale of using action rescareh, the setting, the selection of participants, the data collection instruments and data analysis

procedures

Chapter IE: “Findings and discussion”, discusses the findings of application of the inleractive approach on teaching and learning listening skills for second-year none English major student at Hanoi University of Industry,

Part C: Conchasion, summarizes the key issues in the study, gives the implications, points cut the limitations and provides some suggestions for further study.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER E: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the writer provides a theoretical background for the study by presenting the concepts most relevant to the topic, Lirstly, a number of theories on listening are introduced Secondly, the aching of lisiening skills is discussed Finally, the Tistoning

difficulties for foreign Janguage leamers are referred to

1.1 Theory on listening

1.1.1 Definitions of listening

Tn terms of Hstenng definitions, Anderson and Lynch (1988) have two

influential views: traditional view and alternative view

According to the traditional view, listening is regarded as one of receptive skills

Learners just listen Lo Lhe messages or recording and bry lo understand the meaning

of the speakers’ utterances without taking any notice of such factors as attitude and shades of meaning ‘his leads to a problem that teachers merely test students”

capacity of hearing, wot studerts’ understanding of the conversation or talk Tn this

traditional way, it is thought that teaching listening is for sounds, but not for

meaning Llence, this view is criticized as inappropriate and inadequate by

Anderson and Lynch (1988)

However, learners are seen as active model builders in the aliemative view New

information and listeners’ own background knowledge are combined to reach full

comprehension of what have been heard Anderson and Lynch (1988) agree with

ds view, which emphasizes the active inlerpretalion and integration of listeners on

incoming information Littlewood (1981) supports this view as well The author

remarks that listening requires active involvement from listeners The nature of

islening comprehension is (hat the listoriers should be encouraged lo be engaged in

an active process of listening for meaning, using not only the linguistic cues but

non-linguistic knowledge as well

Listening is viewed as an active process in which individuals focus on selected

aspects of aural mput, construct meaning from passages, and then relale what they

have heard io existing knowledge (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) In other words, listening is an active provess of constructing meaning and this is done by applying listeners’ knowledge to the incoming sounds in which numerous types of imowledge are involved including linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic imowledge (Buck, 2001) because “comprehension takes place when input and knowledge are matched against cach other” (Facrch & Kasper, 1986, p 264)

In short, in order to be successful in listening, it is advisable that "listening comprehension is nol a skill which can be mastered once and for all then ignored while other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult materials" (Wilga, 1986, p 157)

122 Types of listening

There are many 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

L221 Real-life listening

Many students sec a big gap between listening activities in classroom and actual situations ‘his is because most listening materials including dialogues in textbooks are very grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakers often speak

with perfectly controlled speech, voice, tone, accent and correct grammar Whereas,

in real-life conversations, leamers encounter various people with different genders, ages, accents, speeds, voices, tones ‘There may be improper usage, incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap and so forth

‘There are two ways which people often listen in real-life, they are caswal and focus listening

@) Casual listening

A lot of students have a habit of listening to a radio while studying or the television

is on while (hey are doing something else They listen with no particular purpose This kind of listening is called casual listening,

b) Focus listening

Hocus listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the information we need lo know or to study the language Tn this ease, listeners olen listen with much attention, but they do not listen to everything with equal concentration There is an association between listener's expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener's expectations and needs are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understood than which is not relevant or helpful

Extensive listening is freer and more general listening to natural language or general

ideas, not for particular detail or not necessary under the teacher's guidance The listening passage for extensive listening can be long or short The language that is

used in the type of listening ts oflen within the students! abihty se thal they find i

pleasing and unteresting whon they arc listening With this type of listening, students are not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar point linked to the rest of the

course,

1.1.3, Listening processes

So far, many linguists have carried out studies on listening, skills such as Anderson

and Lynch (1998), Underwood (1989) or Brown (1990) All of them are of the view

thal listening process is nol a simple process of a single activity bul a complex one consisting of various avtivities After hearing a process with various stages involving physical processing of the auditory system with the outer ear, the middle ear, the timer ear, the nerve impulses and so on, the listening process accurs inside

the brain with a lot of sub-processes

In terms of the nature of those sub-processes, Van Duzer (1997) suggests nine successive activities in listening process.(1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and deposits a image of it in shovl-lerm memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by identify the type of speech event ( a conversation, a lecture , a radio advertisement) and the function of the message (to persuade! inform/ request), (4) predicting information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information (schemata) to help interpret the massage; (6) assigning a moanmg lo the message; (7) checking thal the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has been received into short-

term memory

Looking at the issue from other perspectives, other scicntists assign listening process to a parallel processing model with bottom-up processing and top-down processing

1.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing

Numan (1992) regards the bollom-up processing model as a listening process of decoding the sounds that one hears ina linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts In this view, phonemic units are decoded and linked together to form words, words are linked together to form phrases, phrases

are linked together to form ulterances, and utlcrances are linked together to form

complete, meaningful texts Therefore, students need to know the cade in order to decode sounds The code consists of how the sounds work, how they string together and how the cade can change in different ways when it is strung together This process is a linear one in which meaning itself is derived as the last step It is called listeners as tape recorder view of listening because listeners take in and store messages conscoulively, in much the same way as a tape recorder: one sound, onc word, one phrase, and one utterance at a time (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

Moreover, the ways showing how the linguistic competence of a listener works to

‘build’ the comprehension of a message are described by bottom-up processes

According to Peterson (2001), these are the lower level processes that work to

construct the meaning from the recognition of sounds and words, which, when identified, are fit into larger phrasal units and then match with related ideas stored in

long-term memory Iherefore, at lower levels of language proficiency, the

activation of bollom-up processing is (hought (o impose a great stra on conscious

attention and working memory

1.1.3.2 Top-down processing

Top-down processing ts another alternative lo Lleachmg listening instead of botlom-

up processing Accarding to Nunan (1992), this process allows listeners to actively construct (or more accurately, reconstruct) the original meaning of the speaker using incomming sounds as clues Tn the reconstruction process, listeners use (heir

prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the hstening process

takes place to make sense of what he or she hears

Numan (1992) explains thal such things as knowledge of the lopie, the speaker or

speakers, their relationslup to the silualion, anc prior events are all related to the

context and situation Similarly, Richards (1990) points out that the background imowledge required for top-down processing may be previous knowledge about the topic of the discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, or knowledge in the form of schemata or soripts - plans about the overall structure of the events and relationships between them

In other words, top-down processing refers to how listencrs use their world knowledge 10 allribute meaning (o language input; how their knowledge of social convention helps them understand meaning Listeners apply top-down processing whan using their conlext and prior knowledge like topic, genre, cullure, and other

schema knowledge in long-lenm memory to build a conceptual framework for comprehension

1.1.3.3 Interactive processing: the inclusion of bottom-up and top-down

processing

Tuteraclive processing is the inclusion of botlom-up and top-down processing The

combination is necessary as pomled oul by Mendelsohn (2001), botlom-up is nol

fulfill, in real-life listening we listen in different ways, depending on our purpose for listening ‘Therefore, leamers need to balance top-down with bottom-up

strategies during the listening comprehension process While a top-down approach

helps learners develop real-life listening skills, bottom-up helps them develop word recognition skills

Osada (2001) atiributes the lack of success in listetung to an overemphasis on

boltom-up skills Basing on his analysis of answers to question on idea unil analysis, he find that low-proficiency Japanese students of Linglish tend to adopt a anental translation approach to listening He argues for more emphasis on a top- down approach because beginner level listeners cannot construct meaning when they process connected speech on a word-by-word basis only, so they use previous Amowledge in order to contextualize a situation

On the ofher hand, Hulstijin (2001), suggests that the development of top-down

stralegies is inadequate for linguistic inpul to become an intake for second language

learning He also argues that bottom-up skills need to be developed at the beginners’ level, so that all the components of the acoustic signal become ameantingful units for the lisLeuer Moreover, he states thal bottom-up and lap-down

stalegies do not act independently, while the relationship between both is not fully

understood, it is clear that there is some sort of compensatory relationship between

them, just in case ouc process docs not work offectively, the other will assist the

listeners in order to have 4 ineanmyg ful Hviernng compreltension

Nunan (2002) clarifies that listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottem-up processing It is an interactive process where listeners employ both prior imowledge and linguistic knowledge to make sense of the incoming message, it is necessary that learners get an awareness of how to use those learning strategies in

efficient and effective ways

From the resulis of the above studies, if cari be concluded thal bottom-up processing

and top-down processing are lwo well-integrated parts of Lhe comprehension Tr

other words, interactive processing, an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down

processing is a good method for teaching and learning listening

1.14, Factors affecting listening processes

Underwood offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening

comprehension (1989, p 16)

Tirst, listeners cannot control the speed of what they hear Listeners often feel that the

uuttcrances disappear before they can sort them out or they can get the message, When they (ail in sorting out the meaning of one part, the (ollowing will be missed This can

lead to the ignorance of the whole chunk of discourse

Sceond, listeners carmot always have words repealed, which is a serious problem in

learning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not to replay a

recording, is not in the hands of the students ‘Teachers decide what and when to

xepcat listenmg passages However, it 1s hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the stulen's have understood any parlicular sections of whal they have heard

Third, listeners have limited vocabulary The speaker may choose words listeners

does not know Listeners somelimes encounter art unknown word, which may cause

them to stop and think about the meaning of that word, so they miss the next part of the speech

Tourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point

Discourse markers used in formal situations or lectures such as “secondly” or

“(hen are comparatively evident Lo listeners In informal siluations or spontancous conversations, signals are vaguer such as pauses gestures increased loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can he easily missed, especially by less proficient listeners

Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing mutual knowledge and common context makes communication casier Even if listeners can understand the surface mearing o[ the text, they may have considerable diffivullies in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context, Nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, gestures, or tone of voice, can also be casily misinterpreted by listeners trom different cultures

Sixth, it may be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language In listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension Concentration is easier when students find the lopie of the listening passage interesting; however, learners sometimes feel that listening is very tiring even if they are interested as it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning,

Seventh, learners may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word In some cases teachers want lamers to understand every word they hear by repeating or speaking slowly Consequently, learners tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and then get discouraged by their failue It is thus sometimes necessary for leamers to tolerate incompleteness of understanding

1.2 Teaching listening skills

1.2.1 Stages of a listening lesson

With the aim is setting-up certain knowledge before listening to help the students get the most of what they are going to hear ‘The main purposes of this stage,

therefore, are:

- ‘To motivate students to pay more attention to the listening text

- To activate or build students' prior topical and linguistic knowledge It is

important for stndents to be able to relate what they already know to the

speaker's content

- To help the students match what they hear with their stored knowledge by

aclivating their prior knowledge about the coming topics

- To set purposes for listening: When students set purposes for listening, they become active listeners who listen for something, not to it

Those purposes can be achicved hy one of the following nebivities: the leacher introduces the listening topic, gives background information, gives clear instructions for the while-listening activity; or the students are given guidance on

the structure of what they are going to hear, discuss the topic silnation, look al

pictures, read through the questions if asked Hach of the above activities will help the students focus on the main points of listening passage by narrowing down the

things thal the students expect (o hear and activating their previous knowledge

12.1.2 While-listening

The while-stening stage involves activities that students are asked to do during the time they are listening lo the loxt The purpose of while listening activities is to help students develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language Rixon (1986)

points out the purposes of while-listening stage are to challenge and guide students to

handle the information and the message from the stering text Therefore, activities of

this stage must be interesting and carefully chosen

To be effective activities, these wtrle-listening om s the twa

while-listening activitics which are a challenge for the mare advanced students, but do not

discourage those who only gain little success

Like choosing pre-lisLoning activities, as suggested by Underwood (1989), the teachers must consider a mumber of factors when choosing while-listening activities

as follows: the possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if needed, the conveniance of carrying out activities which nced individuals to give oral responses

in the classroom, the possibility for the work to be done with the teacher present or

as self-study and either in a listening center or at home, materials or ideas which

rnight be used for post-listening work, immediate feedback ơn the extent to which

the students have succeeded in the task

check how well the students understood and whether they have completed the

listening task The sccond pwrpose of the post-listening work is to reflect on why

some students have failed to understand or miss parts of the passage Another purpose of posh liskoning activitics is to expand the topic or the language of the listening text The fourth purpose is to give students the opportunity to consider the manner and aflitude of the speaker in the listening text

To achieve these above-mentioned purposes, the followings are possible activities:

- Teachers give the answers orally, or show the answers om the black hoard,

- Teachers draw the students’ attention to specific parts of the listening text and

focus on the forms and function, lexis, stress and mlonafion which have

caused problems to the students

Students work in pairs to check each other's answer or in groups to discuss any problems related to the listening text

1.2.2 Interactive process in teaching listening skills

Listening is an active and complex process, therefore, it requires listeners’ camscions usc of siralegics and should involve the parallel inleraction between bottom-up and top-down processing This interactive process is known as parallel processing which requires leamers to use background knowledge (top-down) to interpret meaning and linguistic knowledge (bottom-up) 10 discriminate betweer familiar sounds ‘The goal is for the language listeners to use parallel processing, in order to perceive, interpret, and respond to the information being heard (Lynch &

Mendelsohn, 2009, p 185)

‘The degree to which listeners use the one process or the other depends on their imowledge of the language, the familiarity with the topics or the purpose of listening For example, listening for gist invelves primarily top-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, involves

primarily bottom-up processing to comprehend all the desired details More

specifically, the teaching of botlam-up processing and top-down processing will ba presented in the following sections

1.2.2.1 Teaching bottom-up processing

Brown (2007, p 312) notes that bottom-up processing "focuses on sounds, words,

intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language" Thorefore, leaiers need a large vocabulary and good working knowledge of sentence

structures to process the bottom-up texts

Tixercises that require bottom-up processing develop the leamer’s ability to do the

following:

- Retain input while it is beg processed

- Recognize word and clause divisions

= Recognize key words

- Recognize key transitions ina discourse

- Recognize grammatical relationships between key elements in sentences

- Use stress and intonation to identily word and senflence fimetions.

Peterson (1991, p 114-121) suggests several techniques for teaching listening comprehension Below are some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

between phonemes

Listen to pairs of words Some pairs differ in the final consonenl, and some pairs are the same Circle the word "same" or "different", depend on what you hear

from the text (Word

recognition)

Match a word lhl you hear with its picture

Listen to a weather report Look at a list of words and circle the words that you hear

Listen to @ sentences thal contains clock time Cirele the

clock time that you hear, among three choices

Listen to an advertisement, select the price of an item,

and write the amount or a price tag,

Listen to a series of messages from an answering

machine Fill ima chart with the following information

from cach caller: name, umber, time and message

Listening for nomnal

sentence word order

Listen to a short dialogue and fill in the missing words that have been deleted im partial transeript

Table I: Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

1.2.2.2 Teaching top-down processing

‘The top-down processing deals with how listeners use their context and prior Imowledge (topic genre, culture, and other schema knowledge in long-term

memory) lo build a conceptual framework for comprehension,

Exercises that require top-down processing develop the leamer’s ability to do the following:

= Use key words to construct the schema of a discourse

- infer the setting for a text

- Infer the role of the participants and their goals

- Infer causes or effects

- Tnfer unsialed details of 4 situation

- Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation

Peterson (1991, p 114-121) also suggesis some kinds of top-down exercises for

- Listen to a number of short biographies and for each,

write the Gitle that expresses the main idea

Recognize the topic

- From a hist of possible Lopics predict the topics thal people

will discuss when they don’t know cach other well Listen

to conversations and note which are being discussed

- Listen lo @ scries of process descriptions and mark the

picture that it tells about

‘Table 2 Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners

1.3 Review of previous works

Al-Qaraghooly & Al-Bermani (2010) conduct a research on the effect of bottom-up

anid lop-down processing on developing FFT sludents’ listerring comprchension

The researchers chooses 128 sccond-ycar students at the Department of English, College of Liducation, University of Babylon as samples of the study ‘I'he students

is divided mio two sections Seclion A, with filly-lhree studenis, is randomly

chosen to be in the bottom-up processing group, and section B, with fifty-three students, is randomly chosen to be in the top-down processing group Twenty-four students arc randomly chosen into a pilot sample The results of the research indicates that although the two groups achieve success 1m listening, the similar standing of both bottom-up and top-down processing in developing the leamers’

istening comprehension gives support la the view that lhe lwo types of processing,

should be utilized at the same time Incorporating both bottom-up and top-down processing interactively yields better results than handling, each of them separately

TL is concluded thal listening comprehension is a complex, active and interactive process in which both bottom-up and top-down processing operate and contribute to the ultimate aim of understanding auditory stimuli

Villegas (2013) carries out a study on the use of the inclusion of bottom-up and top- down processing in listening comprehension tasks for second-scmesicr students from an English license program Six participants are requested to do listening tasks designed by the researcher for one month The finding shows that the learning of bottom-up and top-down strategics through the guided implementation of different strategies as inferring, contextualization, and prediction allow the leamers to connect previaus kmowledge with new information which facilitates the sunderstanding of the audio In relation to the students’ perceptions of bottom-up and top-down, a positive perspective in the listening comprehension task is perceived as

most of the participants argue that bottom-up and top-down strategies raise their

listening comprehension and help them get aware of the importance of taking Ihe

advantage of available information to identify specific details

Dao Thi Hong Yen (2014) write an MA thesis on the application of top-down

techniques in teaching Hislening skills to English non major 10" grade students al

Tam Duong high school This study is carried out with the participation of 35 English

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non major 10" grade students for two months The rescarch is conducted as a

quantitative study, using a pre-test, a post-test and a questionnaire to collect data ‘The

findings of the research show that Lop-down techniques enhance the studenis’ listening

comprehension

Apart from these studies, there are a plenty of works conducted related to using the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing Several conclusions can he

reached from these studies First, although bottom-up and top-down processing

positively have different influences on students’ listening, they should be combined

to get better results in teaching and leaming Second, realizing the benefits of using

doth bottom-up and top-down processing afler Ihe instruction, most learners have

started to learn how to usc it to improve their listening, comprehension Finally, there are studies on applying discourse processing to teaching listening in Viemam

However, these studies just focus or either botlom-up processing or top-down

processing, Consequently, using interactive process is strongly recommended

1.4 Concluding remarks

‘The chapter has presented the relevant literature, which helps to form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study Firstly, a number of concepts about listening compreliension are given according to some leading scholars and then the types of listening, listening process, factors affecting listening process are presented Secondly, the teaching of listening, is discussed which includes three

stages of a listening lesson and infcractive process Tn the listening stage, cach stage

plays a different role and carries certain activities to complete the listening task in

an effective way However, the activities in three stages should nct be isolated in an

listerting lesson They always have close relationship with one another Laslly, the review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis is presented to

provide a general view or the readers

CHAPTER Ti: METHODOLOGY

This chapter will presents a detailed deseription of how the research is carried out including the rationale of the use of the research, research setting, selection of participants, data collection instruments and data analysis procedures

2.1 Rationale of the use of action research

Action research is conducted to investigate a specific teaching situation or practice

when the leacher is in charge lo find a solution to that situalion or practice This

study is cared out in an alfempt Lo [ind out, solutions Lo improve sludants' listening

skills Tt is cared oul by the (cacher-researcher wilh her own sludenis m an mach

class For these reasons, the researcher believes an action rescarch design would fit

her purpose

Although there exist models which include different steps to carry out the action research, they all share the following basic elements: the process begins with

identifying a problem: then a plan of action is worked out and implemented:

afterwards the researcher evaluates the effectiveness of the plan; finally he or she

proposes (he next actions Lo further address the problem

Tn this study, the teacher-researcher (follows the model proposed by Nunan (1992) because it reflects correclly what steps are taken during the study According to

Nunan (1992, p 19), the model has seven steps as illustrated in Figure 1:

Step 7: Follow-up

(Revise for the next circle) Step 1: Problem identification

Step 6 Disscminalion Step 2: Prehminary investigation

Step 4 Intervention

Figure 1: Action research model

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This study strictly follows the gencral stops of an action rescarch cycle suggested by

Nhan

‘More specifically, after realizing that most second-year non-English major students are not interested in learning listening, the teacher-researcher have collected and analyzed information about the target population, which aims to find out their shared problems, Afterward, a study has been conducted with an attempt to improve the situation Ifinally, the researcher has evaluated the results to propose possible

next steps

2.2 Research setting

Hanoi University of Industry, where the researcher has been working as a teacher of English, is located in the suburbs of Hanoi capital, a city in the north-east of Vietnam, ‘There are about 200 English teachers and about 30.000 non-English major

students of different [acullies

The students come from different provinces, and 70% of them are from farming families They have learnt English for four years at secondary school, three years at high school with poor equipment in isolated environments Moreaver, in their paint

of view, English is only regarded as a compulsory subject at school Consequently, their ability to speak and listen to Knglish cannot be improved and motivated One-year experience with modern equipment at this university does not help them much From the writer’s classroom observation, many students have taken listening lessons with boredom ‘They have claimed that they benefit very little from them Apparently, applying suilable leaching approaches should be taken inlo consideration in order to

develop students’ Kstening skills

The non-English major students have used KIT as the course book for this second- year This book is compiled following theme-based and task-based approaches It contains 20 short units, 10 exam folders and 5 writing folders within 180 periods in two terms Tach week has 6 periods of English

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2.4, Data collection instruments

In order to collect sufficient data for the study, a number of instruments are

employed: questionnaires, pre-test and post-test

2.4.1 Pre-test and post-test

To measure the quality of the participants’ listening performance before and after

the research, the researcher has designed a pre-test (see Appendix 1) and a post-test

(see Appendix 2) on English listoning The test types sclected for this study arc popular kinds of listening test similar to those which students are instructed

Therefore, the students are supposed 10 be [amnliar with the test format

Actually, the pre-test and the post-test on English listening are similar but not the

same They are similar in format, instruction, length, level af difficulty, and allotted

time Fach lesl includes four tasks with 20 questions, § picture questions in task 1, 5 matching questions in task 2, 5 multiple-choice questions in task 3 and 5 gap filling

questions in task 4 After marking two lesis, Lhe researcher compares the results so

as to reveal any improvement that students have made during the experimental teaching

242 Questionnaires

Two questionnaires are used to get student's opinions before and after the application of the interactive approach to teaching listening

‘The former questionnaire (see Appendix 3) is conducted after the pre-test It consists

of six questions These questions aim Lo investigale sludents’ alliludes towards

listcning skills (itoms 1, 2), their sclf assessment of their listening performance (item 3), their use of listening swategies (item -1), their difficulties they face (item 5) and their expectation Lo their teacher (ilom 6) The resulis [rom the questionnaire, in cooperation -with pre-test results could help the researcher identify possible problems for students" listening skills

‘The latter questionnaire (see Appendix 4) is conducted after the post-test It consists

of eight questions They are designed on the theory of a listening lesson with the interactive approach and the demand of a listening lesson with 3 stages This questionnaire aims to check the accuracy of the improved listening skills of students,

and studenls are interested or nol, in the lessons thal apply the interactive approach

Before being delivered to 42 students, the questionnaires were translated into

Viemamese so that students could understand the questions deeply

2.5 Data analysis procedures

The action process was conducted over a period of 12 weeks of the school year 201 5-

2016 in applying Nunan’s action research cycle (1992, p 19) with four steps as follows:

Step 1: Problem Identification

After two weeks of teaching the class K6.1_K9, along with two-year experience of

teaching at this university, the researcher discovered that her students seemed to be

weak al listoning skills

Step 2: Preliminary Investigation

To ilustrale the problem thal students had in learmng listening skills, the

researcher-teacher conducted pre-test and a survey questionnaire at week 3 ‘The

collected data was then analyzed to find out how students were not interested in

leaming listening and to assess students’ listening skills before the new approach to

be adopted

Step 3: Intervention

Krom week 4 to week 11, the interactive aprroach was introduced and applied to teach

listening to the students The procedures of teacling lessons were as follows (see

Appendix 5):