Luận văn applying note taking strategies to develop high school students’ listening skill a quasi experimental research at van xuan hoai duc high school

This quasi-experimental study conducted upon forty students of class 12D] at Van Xuan high school aimed at finding out the note- taking strategies used by high-school students, the dif

APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL — A

QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AT VAN XUAN —

HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL

AP DUNG CAC CITIEN LUGC GIT CHEP DE, PHAT TRIEN

KI NANG NGHE CHO HOC SINH TRUNG HOC PHO

THONG NGIUEN CUU BAN THỰC NGIIIỆM TẠI

TRUONG THPT VAN XUAN - HOAI ĐỨC

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Methodology

Codc: 60.140.111

HANOI — 2013

APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL — A

QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCTI AT VAN XUAN—

HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL

AP DUNG CAC CHIEN LUGC GHI CHEP DE PHAT TRIEN

KI NANG NGHE CHO HOC SINH TRUNG HOC PHO THONG

—NGHIEN CUU BAN THUC NGHIEM TAI TRUONG THPT

VẬN XUÂN - HOÀI ĐỨC

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Methodalugy

Code: 60.140.111

Supervisor: Trần Xuân Điệp, Assoc Prof Dr

HANOT - 2013

DECLARATION

T, Phi Thi Bich, declare that the thesis entitled “Applying note-laking slalegies Lo

develop high school students’ listening skill: A quasi-experimental research at Van Xuan — Lloai Duc high school” reports the result of the study conducted by myself

The minor thesis is submitted to Department of Post-graduate studies, ULIS, Hanoi

for Degree of Master in ‘[HSOL It has not been published anywhere

Phi Thi Bich

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere thanks to my supervisor Assoc Prof Dr Trần Xuan Bigp, for his valuable guidance, helpful advice, recommendation, and encouragement during the time I tried to complete this minor thesis Without his supervision, this work would never have been possible

My deepest thanks also go to Ms Trinh Thi Nhung — an English teacher at Van

Xuan Ingh school and her 40 students im class 12 11 (2012 - 2013) who wore so

generous and willing to help me during, six weeks of conducting my research

1 would like to thank all the teachers of Post-Graduate Department for their valuable lectures, whose knowledge is the foundation for my thesis

Finally, I would like to express my biggest love and thanks to my family for their

uncondiional contributions during the time T conducted my research IL was my

parcnts and my husband who gave me the will to complete this challenging work

Phú Thị Bích

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of note-taking in listening comprehension was investigated in

many previous studies This quasi-experimental study conducted upon forty

students of class 12D] at Van Xuan high school aimed at finding out the note-

taking strategies used by high-school students, the difference in students’ listening

performance aller using note-taking stralegics

as well as the sludents* epimnon of applying note-taking strategies in listening lessons The results of pre-test, post-test and students questionnaire revealed that the use of note-taking strategies had facilitative effect on studenls’ islernng comprebension and high-school students appreciated the application of note-taking strategies in their listening lessons ‘hese

fñndmgs could be used as relevaril reference for further studies

ii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Factors influcncing Listening Comprehension

Table 2: Background about participants

Table 3: The pre-test and post-test results of the two groups

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test of control group and experimental group

‘Table 5: ‘The relationship between experimental and control group's test scores

Figure 1: The difference in gain values obtained by both groups aller experitent Figure 2: Students’ opinion of the importance of listening skill

Vigure 3: Student’s difficulties in studying listening skill

Figure 4: Siudents* frequency of noting down information while listening

Figure 5: Students’ ways of note-taking while listening

Figure 6: The benefits of note-taking to students’ listening

Figure 7: Students’ opinion of the note-taking facilitative effect on listening comprehension

Figure 8: Factors affect students from taking good notes

Figure 9: Students’ opinion of the application of note-taking in stening, lessons

Figure 10: Students’ opinion to the teacher's help to get the best effect of note-

laking in Histening lessons

Figure 11: Students’ activities to improve their note-taking in listening lessons

iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FFI English as Foreign Language

FSI English as Second Language

SD Standard Deviation

SLA Second Language Acquisition

TOHEL, ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language

ULIS University of Language and International Studies

VNU Vielnam National University

TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE

List of tables and Lg ures cssseensensnseictnnieeiistinenessisnetsisieetsesenensee IY

Table ĐŸ eOnItef, à so cài nh hư mmirerirrireiroree VE

PART A: INTRODUCTION

PART B: DEVELOPMEXT

CHIAPTER 1: THIEORETICAL BACKGROUSXU

1.1 Listening comprehension .csscsssvervisensmseensenoneenceeienstineasnnnae A

1.1.1 The nature of listening comprehension - - 4

1.1.3 Types of listening in t2 1, ree

1.1.4 Factors affects listening comprehension

1.1.5 Definition of note-takin cent esneneaee LO

1.1.6 Note-taking methods .cscsssnessnsnesnssesieensensieseeneimeneeete LI

1.2 Review of related works

3.5 Data analysis methods

their listening performance m doing

listening comprehension tasks

as measured by their test scores

after using, note-taking strategies?

3.2 Research question 2: What are students’ opinions 27

and attitudes towards note-talang and the application of note-taking

strategies in listening lessons?

vii

PART €: CONCIL.USTIONS

1 Recapitulation of main Idcas ào eee ieee tenses 3O

3 Recommendations for further studies - - - 38

APPENDICES

viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION:

1 Rationale for the Research

Listening clearly plays an important role in communication There has been a number of researchers who investigated the ways to improve listening skill for LI'L learners Among those, the impact of note-taking was also investigated for a long time Crawford (1925) began his study in the 1920s, centering on whether note- taking could improve students’ performance Over the years, researchers have tried

to verify thal note-laking help students “encode” the information imvolved

Nowadays, iL is very commom for teachers Lo implement the note-lakmg stralegies i

the EFL listening class because they think that taking notes can help students catch the main points easily, so they can effectively promote their listening

comprehension However, this silualion causes some rescarchers’ great, concerns

about whether taking notes is effective for students to enhance their listening comprehension or not Some researchers disagree with note-taking strategy because

of lack of vocabulary capacity (Ian 2004; Hsu, 2005); in addition, studerts cannot

concentrate on the text because they have to spend much time on taking notes (Zheng, 1996; Lin, 2004); on the other hand, there are still some scholars who agree

thal note-taking can effectively promote students’ listening comprehension because

they think that students can pay more attention by the process of taking notes (Yeh, 2004), and students can recall the content of listening passages easily from their

noles (Hale & Courtney, 1994)

Since the effects of note-takmg stratogics on students’ islening comprehension is still a controversial issue, this study was conducted to apply note-taking strategies in

listening lessons in class It aimed at finding out the effectiveness of note-taking on

high school students’ listening skill as well as the students’ opinion of applying

note-taking strategies at Van Xuan High school, Hanoi, Vietnam

2 Objectives of the research

‘This study was intended to investigate the followings:

- the improvement in students’ listening performance in domg listening comprehension tasks as designed in the textbook after practicing taking notes while

listemmng, anid

- students’ opinion of note-taking strategies as well as the application of note-taking

strategies in listening lessons

3 Research questions

The following questions wore made lo achiove the aims above

1 Do students of class 12D1 improve their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using

note-taking stralegies?

2 What are students’ opmions and attitudes towards note-taking and the

application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons?

4 Scope of the research

‘The study cannot cover the whole issue of applying all note-taking strategies for high school students within the framework of a minor thesis Therefore it only puts ainphasis on some nole-laking stralegies which are instrucled lo use while doing listening tasks designed in the textbook Furthermore, this study only focuses on

listening comprehension, not all aspects of listening skill

The muamber of parlicipants of the research is only 40 They are students of class 12

D1 (2012 — 2013) who are at the same age and have the same total years of lcarning,

Linglish 9 years with the same curriculum

5 Significance of the research

‘This study will look at a number of issues ‘hese include the use of note-taking strategies in listening lessons, the students’ attitudes towards and their perceptions

cL

of nele-laking straleg

am the Tight of developing their listening skill, and the ell

of note-taking strategies on high school students’ listening performance Therefore, the author hopes this research will be able to find out the strong points of note-

taking strategies as well as the feasibility to apply them to teaching listening skill at high school in the future It could also be the suggestions and implications for other

English teachers in Vietnam who arc

students’ listening skill

ching Cor the beller ways 10 improve their

6 Design of the research

‘There are three main parts in this study, namely Introduction, Development, and Conclusions The Introduction begins with the rationale, objectives, research

questions, scopes, signification, and the design of the study The second part

includes three chapters namely Theoretical Background, Methodology, Findings and Disoussions In the first chapter, Theoretical Backpround, presents definition of

major Lerms used in this study, including overview of lislening comprehension,

types of listening comprehension, factors affect listening comprehension, overview

of note-taking strategies, note-taking methods, as well as the review of related

works concerning advantages and disadvantages ol nole-Laking, and the relationship between note-taking and listening comprehension ‘he second chapter provides the methodology including settings, participants, data collection methods, data collection procedure, data analysis methods The findings and discussions are clearly presented in the next chapter which deals with three research questions ‘(he last part - Conelusions - inchides the summary of the findings, implications,

limitations and recommendations for further studies

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the re- examination of concepts most relevant to the thesis’s topic, Firstly, the listening comprehension are presented with the definition, process, types of listening, and the faciors afleel listernng comprehension Secondly, the writers review the theory of note-taking in terms of its definition and types Kinally, some related studies are presented as the background for this study

11 Listening comprehension

1.1.1 The nature of listening comprehension

Rescarch has shown thal listening 1s nol a passive process, and it requires Cull

participation and undivided attention of the leamers Vandergrift (1999, p 168) rejected the treatment of listening comprehension as a passive skill and states:

“Listening comprehension is anything bul a passive aclivily Tas a complex,

active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds,

understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and

trlonatiơn, relain whal was gathered in all of the above, and interpret i

within the immediate as well as the large sociocultural content of the

utterance Coordinating, all of this involves a great deal of mental activity on

the part of the listener Lisloring is hard work, and deserves more analysis,

and support”

According to Nation and Newton (2009, p.40), listening comprehension is an

inleracive process which reqnires Ile Hsteners to use top-down and bollom-up

processing simultaneously While he/she is listening to a passage, the listener needs

to apply knowledge of sound, grammar, conversational mechanisms, cohesion,

discourse structure, discourse type, and social relationships, all at the same time

Previous researches have identified a number of factors as determinants of

proficicney in a second or foreign language According lo Richards and Schmidt

(2002, p 313), listeners have to construct meaning by both linguistic and non- linguistic knowledge They are required to employ knowledge of words or lexical

items, grammatical rules, and cognitive and social skills in order to negotiate an

understanding of a passage or text Moreover, Morley (2001, p.74) proposes that

listening comprehension involves both top-down and bottom-up process In top-

down processing, learners are required to aclivale schematic knowledge and

contextual knowledge while they are listening to the texts Schematic knowledge

includes an activation of the content schemata, which is the background information

on the topic, and formal schemata, which is knowledge of how discourse is

organized, Contextual knowledge refers to an understanding of the specific listening

at hand like the knowledge about the participant, setting, and topic In a bottom-up

process, prior knowledge of the language system such as phonology, grammar and

vocabulary comes in to play a role Learners have to activate all kinds of knowledge required in order to be successful in listening process

Furthermore, Vian (1985, p 168) poinls out Ut listening comprehension is a

dynamic process involving the interaction between itself and the text during which meanings are negotiated This means that listeners do not just extract or draw the

meaning directly from the words or texts Rather, they have to create the meaning

by filtering the new information through their own accumulated experimental history, or socio-historical background The meaning created or constructed,

therefore, will depend upon, and vary between each individual person Nunarr

(1991, p 9) also proposes that listening comprehension involves utilizing both

bottom-up and top-down knowledge: “In comprehending aural language, listeners

do a greal deal of constructive and interpretative work in which hey integrate what

they hear with what they know about the world.”

Goh (2005, p 64) mentions thal Hstenmg comprehension 1s a very complex process which involves beth linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge Linguistic

imowledge includes phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics and discourse structure

while non-lnguislic knowledge as applied Lo listening comprohonsion involves

imowledge about the topic, context, and general knowledge about the world and

how it works She also states that these different types of knowledge do not occur in

a fixed sequence but are supposed to work simultaneously or in any convenient

order while listeners receive and try to interpret the aural message coming into their

ears [ledge (2000, p 235) says of listening comprehension:

“TL would be mistaken lo see top-down and botlom-up strategies as

somehow in opposition, It is now generally accepted that both fimetion simultaneously and are mutually dependem The current model of listening is therefore an interaclive one in which Hngaistic

infomation, contextual clues, and prior knowlodge interaet to enable comprehension”

From the review, il can be secn thal listening comprehension is actually dynamic and a complex process It requires an active role of learners in applying their background history together with linguistic knowledge at the same time when they

construct the meaning of ltstenmg texts that, they reecive, which 1s along the same

line as Constructivist theory lt puts more emphasis on the active side of learners In fact, learners are the ones who actively construct the meaning of texts and each

leaner would inlerpret the listening texis differently dependmg on their own

background In order to promote listening comprehension, teaching and leaming practice should, therefore, place more emphasis on learners by providing them with

environments or opportunities to confront with lexis im their own ways and

construct their own meanings They should be empowered to have control over their

own leaning process in order to be successful in listening

1.1.2 Listening comprehension process

According to Brown (1994), the process of listening may be understood as the decoding an aural message and making sense of it Ile suggested that after the process of reeciving sounds waves through the cars and transmitting nerve impulses

to the brain, the process of comprehension immediately takes place Llowever, this

is a complex process which consists of three following stages

Perception: Perception is the initial stage of comprehension in which the learer processes what is called “raw speech”, and holds ils image in shorl- term memory This image consists of the constituents (phrases, clauses,

cohesive markers, and intonation or stress patterns) of a stream of speech

Decoding: the second stage is decocing m which the hearer step by step:

= determines the lype of spsech event thal is being processed

"infers the function of the message

= brings a plausible interpretation to the message by recalling background information relevant to the particular context and

subjecl mater

"assigns a literal meaning to the utterance

* assigns an intended meaning to the utterance Recording for storage: After the hearer has successfully decoded the oral

input, the information is stored through the two following steps:

= the hearer determines whether information should be relained

in short-term or long-term memory Short-term memory is

appropriate in contexts that simply call for a quick oral

response from the hearer Long-lorm one is mare common

when the hearer is processing information in a lecture

" The hearer deletes the original form of the message in 99

percent of speech acls Important, information, af any, ws retained conceptually

To sum up, with the help of listening strategies, listeners construct meaning from the oral input by drawing upon their prior knowledge of the world and of the targeL language (Young, 1997) ‘hey also generate information on their long-term memory and make their own interpretation of the spoken texts (Mendelson, 1991) and fill in the gaps with logical guesses (Schmudt-Rinchart, 1994) Therefore, Brown (1994) claimed that both “bottom-up” and “top-down” processing play a

crucial part in listening comprehension Listener may predict what is to be heard or anticipate whal will occur next based on their oxsting knowledge

1.1.3 Types of listening

Reai-life listening

Real-life listening is listening in daily life According to Anderson (1995), there are two ways in which people listen in real-life, They are casual and focused listening

Casual listonng rofers to thơ listening with no purpose and often without much concentration /ocused listening, on the other hand, refers to listening with particular punpose to gel information the hearer needs Tr this case, he/she often

listens attentively, but not to everything with equal concentration

Class-room listening

Ur (1984) argues that classroom listening should be addressed accurately as real-life listening in classroom All the listening activities in the classroom aim at equipping students with skills to deal with real-life listening Some other researchers have

categorized listening into intensive and extensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for detailed information or for full comprehension ‘They may be much concrete information for

this kind of listening and leamers offen find it dilTicull to get full comprehension im

the first listening Therefore, intensive listening often gives students the challenge and helps them to develop listening skills or knowledge of the language in their

elTorl to do exercises or other activilics

Extensive listening is listening for pleasure and interest without having to pay much attention to content and language Extensive listening keeps the students’

motivation and interest high Students feel satisfied as they can understand the

passage well Morsover, the lopics are various and entertaining, which motivates

students to develop their listening skills as well as exposes them to valuable extra contact with spoken language

1.1.4 Vactors affect listening comprehension

Since listening is a complex active process in which leamers decode and construct

the meaning of the text by drawing on their previous knowledge about the world as

well as their linguistic knowledge, there are many factors that affect listening, comprehension Teng, (1993) further divided these factors into a comprehensive list

as prosonted mn the following lable

4, Degree of pauses and redundancies

5 Prestige and personality

Note-taking in EFL listening is a process that happens simultaneously with the

process of listermmg Note-takers need Lo take down some noles in their own ways

according to what has been heard for further reference Suritsky and Hughes (1991)

(quoted from Yang, 2007) proposed that note-taking invalves four broad skills

listening, cognilive processing, recording passage comlenL in wrillen form and

reviewing noted information Note-taking gives leamers the opportunity to

recognize, further develop and incorporate personal interpretation of new material

lo one’s cognitive stricture Di Vesta and Gray (1972) first studied the functions

of note-taking in the process of listening ‘hey proposed that there are two fumotions, encoding and external storage The encoding function refers to the process (or act) of note-taking According to the encoding function hypothesis, note-taking facilitates information processing ‘Ihe facilitative effect of the encoding function is revealed by comparing the performance of students who listen to a passage and take notes with the performance of those who listen but are not allowed

to take notes The external storage function refers to the fact that the notes taken can

10

serve as an external repository of information that allows later revision and review

‘Therefore, note-taking can be divided into two phases: encoding and reviewing

11.6 Note-taking methods

In this part, five methods applied in taking notes including Comell method, Outline method, Mapping method, Charting method and Sentence method are presented

Cornell method: The notes are written in the main space — the right-hand side

and label cach idea and detail with a key word or “cue” im the left-hand

space At the bottom of the page, the summary of notes is written By using this method, the information is well-organized and syslematic for recording

or reviewing later This method is simple, casy to uso, efficicnt, time and

effort saving

Outline method: Che information is written in an organized pattern based on space imdention, To show the level of importance, nole-takers use the distance from the major point and space relationships indicate major or minor point, This is a well-organized system which records the content as well as the relationship It is most effective when note-taking skills are good

Mapping method: t is a graphic representation of the content The nates

begins in the middle of the page and the ideas are added by radialing

branches from the centre idea or from previous branches All the ideas are

expressed in key words Topic comes first, the sub-topic and next supporting

details To show the links between parts of the map, note-takors use arrows and words This format helps learners to visually track the information they hear regardless of conditions Lite thinking is needsd and relationships can easily be seen It is also easy to edit notes by adding numbers, marks, and

on relevant content It also helps reduce the amount of wnitmg necessary and provide easy review mechanism for both memorization of facts and study of comparisons and relationships This method can be used when the information focus on both facts and relationships, its content is heavy and presented fast, and when the note-takers want to reduce the amount of time

ediling and reviewing

Sentence method: Note-takers write every new thought, fact, or topic on a

separate line, numbering as they progress ‘he advantage of using this

method is that the note-takers get more or all of the information Ilowever,

they camol determine major and minor points from the numbered sequence

It is difficult to edit the notes without having to rewrite them Learners can

hear different points, but they do not now how they fit together

1.2 Review of related works

A mmber of previous studies looked at the advantages and disadvantages of note- taking strategies Lin (2005), Yeh (200+), IJall & Courtly (1994) agreed on the advantages of nole-taking in lorms of helpmg college students concentrale more on the content as well as recall the content of listening materials easily

On the other hand, Lin (2004), IIsu (2005) investigated effect of note-taking on college students and they found that note-taking could not enhance students’ listening skill due to their lack of vocabulary capacity Zhong (1996) and Lin (2004) agreed on the negative effect of note-taking on college students’ listening comprehension performance Taking notes distracted students from concentrating

on [he conLent of listening passages

A number of other sludies looked al the relationship belwecn nole-taking stralogics and listening comprehension Some studies investigated the positive effect of note-

taking strategies on lisLering comprehension These studies were conducted by,

Zhou and Gou (2007), Kiewra (1989), Liu, B and Hu, Y (2012) They found that

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note-taking did facilitate college and lower-intermediate level EFL learners’ listening comprehension (Carrell, Dunkel and Mollaun, 2004; Liu, B and Iu, Y., 2012) However, the performance level of note-taking dependsd on the length and the topic of listening passages Note-taking was more beneficial in answering general questions rather than the detailed ones (Zhou and Gou, 2007) Kiewra (1989) claimed thal note-laking promoted listening comprehension (hanks Lo ils extemal repository of information which permitted later revision and review to stimulate recall of the information in listening passages

In contrast, other scholars found no positive effect of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension including Durikel, 1985, Hale and Courtley, 1994 They investigated offect of note-teking on EFL listening comprehension and in the context of TOBFL test They failed to find positive effect of note-taking

In conclusion, by reviewing related studies, it is clear that there is still no common theoretical background for the widely-held belief thal note-taking is favilitative to listening comprehension ‘The effectiveness of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension still needed further investigation In addition, these above previous studies on note-taking were conducted upon college students It was of great concem to conduct studies upon high-school students ‘Iherefore, this study was conducted upon students at Van Xuan - Iloai Duc high school in ITanoi, Vietnam to

apply note-taking strategies to improve students’ listening skills

13,

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Settings

This quasi-experimental study was conducted at Van Xuan — Hoai Duc high school

in the suburb of Hanoi TL is a public school winch was founded twelve years ago with thirty-six classes of three grades 10%, 11 and 12° ‘The students of classes

from Al to A10 of each grade have three English lessons every week For classes from D1 Ww D3 of cach grade, they have one more selective English lesson every week ‘Ihe textbook used for teaching is the new ‘lieng Anh 10, 11, 12 at basic level

The teachers at Van Xuan high school are at the age ranging from thirty to forty years old who are experienced and enthusiastic in teaching They are eager to enhance the teaching, skills and their students’ performance Llowever, they find out that the most challenging skill among four basic skills is listening skill They always

hope to improve their sludents’ lislening comprehension

The students come from villages im Hoai Due district They are choscr by passing the tenth grade entrance exami with the score of over 30 points, which is ranked at

the medium in comparison with olber schools in Hanoi The students have the same

‘years of learning English with the same curriculum and textbook

2.2 Participants

The study was conducted upon forty students of class 12D1 (2012 - 2013) within

three months of the second semester from January 28" to April 29", 2013 There

were thirty-four girls and only six boys They were at the same age of eighteen and had the same tolal yeur of learning English with the same curriculum irom primary school to high school Their academic performance in social science subjects was

better than ones in natural science subjects They were interested in learning

Rnglish Each weck, they bad three English lessons as olbier classes ad one more selective lesson In total, they had four English lessons every week Of all four

skills: reading, speaking, listening, and writing, the most challengmg for them is

14

listening skill They really hoped to improve their listenmg skill In the study they were divided into two groups of twenty students in each group One group was the control group and the olher was the experimental group The following table presents main background information about participants including gender, age, and their English proficiency level

Experimental Group Control Group Total number of

In order to collect the data for analysis, there were three data collection instruments employed including pre-test, post-test and students’ questionnaires

2.3.1 Pre-test

The pre-test was designed to identify the language proficiency level of the two groups: control and experimental group The purpose of the pre-Lest was te define whether there was statistically significant difference between the language

performance of the experimental group and the control group before the treatment

‘The total number of questions in the pre-test was ten and fell into two categories: five multiple choice questions and five delailed questions in which students had to fill in the blanks with the appropriate words or numbers [he question types used in the pre-test were familiar to the students

2.3.2 Post-test

The post-test was designed to determine the students’ listening performance of the

two groups afler three-month treatment, The question lypes were still multiple

choice questions and detailed questions The number of questions was the same as the pre-test, which was ten questions The difficult level of the post-test was

relatively higher than the pre-test To eusure the objectivenoss, the marking for the

post-test was carried out by another teacher who did not involve in this study

2.3.3, Questionnaire for students

In order to find out the student’s attitudes towards note-taking strategies in terms of

improving their listening corupreticnsion, the wrillen questionnaire was designed Lo

collect the experimental students’ attitudes towards note-taking strategies and the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons There were ten question

items falling into three different sections, namely overview of listening skills and

problems; perspectives of note-taking: and attitudes towards the application of note- taking in listening lessons The question types were raking questions and multiple

choiee questions in both lypes: closed-ended type which ean choose more thar one

option and open-ended type ‘The reason for choosing these two types of questions

was that the researcher could collect both controlled information as well as

students’ personal opinions towards the issue of note-taking al the same time The questionnaire was carefully explained in Vietnamese for all the respondents while

answering (o make sure thal they did not bave any language problems in

understanding every statement item,

l6

2.4 Data collection procedure

The research was conducted within three mouths of the second semester in the

academic year 2012 2013 upon the class 12191 or the first class meeting, the

researcher delivered the pre-test for all of the students and asked them to do the test

Based on the pre-test results, the researcher identified any differences in the pre-test score between the two groups (experimental and control group) After that, the

researcher instructed twenty students of experimental group to use note-taking

strategies in listening lessons for over two months Only experimental group were instructed the note-taking strategies and had an opportunity to practice taking notes

in istening lessons and weekly selective lessons The nole-laking stralegies used in

this study were the use of abbreviations, symbols, notations, shorthand forms of the

words, etc The researcher also taught the experimental students Comell and

Oullining methods of nots taking The experiment continued for over two months

Right after the treatment was over, post-test was administered to both groups to

measure their listening performance as the result of the treatment Based on the

post-test results, the researcher identified the differences in post-test scores between

the two groups

2.5 Data analysis methods

When the data collection was accomplished, the data analysis was initiated The pre-tests, post-tests were scored and analysed by using Excel application The

results were demonstrated in tables with detailed explanation

For the students’ questionaires, they were collected and analysed by means of descriptive statistics After that, they were processed in Hxeel application and then presented in the forms of tables, charts, or diagrams Additionally, some pictures

wore uscd as illustrations with analysis to complement findings (rom questiormarres

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter is a detailed presentation of the major findmgs of the study It is presented based on each research question, in which the results are shown with figures and explanation

After three months under treatment, students of experimental group had a chance to

practice note-taking strategies while listening and doing listening comprehension task By reviewing their notes, a number of striking features of using note-taking stralegies in both intensive listening lasks in the textbook of unit 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15; and the extensive listening activities designed by the teacher in selective lessons

clearly revealed

Virst, the majority of students in experimental group used abbreviations, symbols,

nolations (o lake notes They mainly used the abbreviations and symbols as follows:

1n addition, students used their shorthand forms of the words to take notes, some

resulted from the words used in chatting or daily spoken form They are as follows

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addition, students were aware of leaving: oul unimportant verbs such as “is”, “was”,

or “were”, or unnecessary articles “a”, “an” or “the” In thei notes, only key words, content words, numbers and the arrows to connect the ideas as well as the

indenlation 1o show the different level of importance

Among the two strategies Cornell and Outlining method of note-taking, students

were more familiar with using the Cornell method because this method was simple

and effective It helped students save time and effort Many of them avoided using

Outlining method to take noles since this method required more thought and close attention for accurate structure

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All in all, there were a number of notc-taking stratcgics which high-school students used in their lieteming lessons These strategiss includsd the use of abbreviations,

symbols and shorthand form of the words: the omission of unimportant words or

unnecessary articles; the use of key words and content words, the different

indentation to show different level of importance Moreover, the Cornell method

was better than Qutlining method for high-school students to take notes hecause it

was easier for students to write down and arrange the information

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3.1 Research Question 1; Do students of class 12D1 improve their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test

scores after using note-taking strategies?

In terms of quantitative analysis, the data collected from the pre-test and post-test

score were used to identify any improvement in students’ listening performance

after the experimental period

Table 3: The pre-test and post-test results of the two groups

‘This table presents the results of students’ listening performance in the pre-test and

post-test within and between the experimental and cantrol group It clearly revealed

that the results of post-test score of the two groups were slightly higher than those

of the pre-test The lollowing lable summarizes some significant descriptive

statistics of the results collected by two groups after three-month experimental

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test of control group

and experimental group (Max scare = 10)

As can be seen from the table 4, the experimental group obtained slightly higher

mean scores in both pre-test and post-test in comparison with those of control

group Such difference was too small io be significant, just at 1 aud 1.8,

respectively Regard to the mean, mode, and the median for the post-test scores in

both groups, they were all seen to be slightly greater than those of the pre-test

scores TLimphed thal, both cxpenmenlal and control group gencrally improved (heir

listening performance after the experiment In comparison with the control group's

posttest scores, it could be assumed that the experimental group obtained the

grealer improvement (am the control group with the means of 5.6 and 435,

respectively

Based on the pre-test and post-test score of the two groups, the researcher used a t-

test to compare the two groups to see if the treatment actually brought about any

difference in students’ listoning performances