000094761 FOSTERING POSITIVE LISTENING HABITS AMONG EFL LEARNERS AT UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (ULIS) THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF LISTENING STRATEGY AND SUB-SKILL INSTRUCTIONS (NUÔI DƯỠNG THÓI QUEN NGHE TÍCH CỰC CHO SINH VIÊN EFL TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGÔN NGỮ VÀ NGHIÊN CỨU QUỐC TẾ (ULIS) THÔNG QUA VIỆC ÁP DỤNG CHIẾN LƯỢC NGHE VÀ HƯỚNG DẪN KỸ NĂNG PHỤ).
Summary o f findings and con clu sion
The purpose o f this study w as to gain deeper insights into the effects o f explicit instructions o f strategies on developing and enhancing students’ positive listening habits
D ata collected through narrative fram es, observations, and individual interview s were them atically analyzed, and several significant findings can be sum m arized as follows:
The intervention successfully changed students’ listening habits both inside and outside the classroom Participants became more active in the listening process, applying knowledge of listening strategies and sub-skills to support comprehension They broadened their repertoire of listening strategies to address new comprehension challenges and refined the ones they already had, learning to combine several strategies at once to solve problems As a result, they could make more sense of the listening materials in class and of English films or entertainment programs they watched at home.
Secondly, several factors w ere identified as being able to affect the participants’ engagem ent w ith th e intervention The first factor w as th e ty p e o f strategies introduced
Other factors affecting students' attention during lessons, as reported by the students themselves, include the topics of the listening texts, the texts' difficulty levels, personal health, and the classroom environment.
Integrating both LS and SS into the syllabus clarifies the steps participants should take when practicing a strategy and highlights the benefits they can gain afterward, creating a clearer learning path and more outcome-oriented instruction.
This study confirms the positive effects of an LS and SS integrated syllabus on teaching listening in Vietnam It shows that teachers who still rely on the traditional CA approach, especially when working with low-proficiency students, should shift to the LS and SS framework to actually teach students to listen rather than merely test their listening skills.
Findings from the current study reveal important pedagogical implications for teaching listening, highlighting the need to integrate explicit LS and SS instructions into listening lessons, particularly for low-level learners Following the intervention, participants adopted positive listening habits that enhanced both in-class and outside-class listening comprehension Moreover, they engaged positively with the intervention, despite many experiencing it as their first exposure to this approach to teaching listening.
Secondly, to create an effective listening course, teachers should consider learners’ needs and tailor the syllabus for them There is no one-size-fits-all syllabus The first step in designing a course is to define the field and align the curriculum with learners’ goals, ensuring the course design meets their listening objectives.
In 2008, a diagnostic approach to teaching listening was advocated before implementing the LS and SS syllabus Teachers should start by diagnosing students’ listening problems and identifying the drawbacks of the prescribed course materials, then make targeted adjustments, including explicit introductions of listening strategies and sub-skills During implementation, instructors should provide ample opportunities for students to practice these listening strategies in both academic and real-life contexts, ensuring the development of transferable listening skills (Siegel, 2008).
Thirdly, instructional strategies and their corresponding sub-skills should be carefully selected based on learners' needs and matched so that applying a strategy helps learners master a sub-skill more easily The sequence of strategy and sub-skill should not be fixed; it should be flexible, with components that can be swapped or adjusted according to students' needs and their responses to the syllabus during implementation, enabling adaptive teaching and a more personalized learning experience.
Pedagogical im plications
Providing instructions in English involves varying intonation and pacing—speaking slowly or more rapidly—to activate strategies like voice inferencing and extralinguistic inferencing Teachers may, from time to time, resort to Vietnamese to ensure students fully comprehend the instructions, as one of the primary objectives of the strategy and sub-skill syllabus is to enable students to use listening skills (LS).
Finally, simple data-collection tools such as narrative frames and group or individual interviews should be designed and implemented throughout the course to gather learners’ comments and feedback on the LS and SS integrated syllabus The information collected through these tools can be used to make timely amendments to the syllabus when needed.
Lim itations and suggestions for further re se a rc h
Despite careful measures to ensure the study's reliability and validity, several limitations should be acknowledged Foremost is the small sample size of twenty students from the University of Languages and International Studies Although the study yielded meaningful insights into participants’ engagement with the intervention, its findings cannot be generalized to the entire population of Vietnamese EFL learners Nevertheless, the results are transferable to other contexts that share similar features with the study sample, providing useful implications for comparable settings.
Eight fifty-minute sessions may raise participants' awareness of listening strategies and related sub-skills learned in class, but this duration did not provide sufficient opportunities to practice them The action research reported that only one cycle of intervention was completed If a second cycle had been implemented, participants would have had additional opportunities to understand the intervention and to apply the strategies to develop the corresponding sub-skills.
Several directions for future research in strategies and sub-skills can be proposed To enhance intervention effectiveness, future studies should expose participants to an integrated listening strategies (LS) and sub-skills (SS) program over a longer period, ensuring that each strategy is practiced in at least two in-class sessions, though these sessions need not be consecutive Researchers can also incorporate a delay before post-intervention assessments to examine the longer-term impacts of explicit listening strategy instruction and sub-skill training, adopting a delayed post-intervention design to capture sustained outcomes.
4 9 retention test, but what is investigated is not knowledge but ability to apply strategies to aid listening com prehension.
Moreover, future research could scale up the study using the current sample Participants could be divided into several classes, with each class consisting of students at homogeneous proficiency levels This setup would enable teachers to create more targeted and relevant learning activities and tasks for each group, potentially enhancing instructional effectiveness.
Qualitative methods offer deep insights into students' experiences with the new approach to teaching listening and how their strategy-use habits evolve over the course; however, to determine whether listening comprehension improves after the intervention, quantitative methods should be employed Quantitative instruments provide objective data that can triangulate with subjective evidence from interviews and observations, thereby enhancing the study’s reliability and generalizability.
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A ppendix A Permission Letter from the Dean
Faculty o f English language teacher education
U niversity o f Languages and International Studies, VNU
Pham Van D ong, Cau G iay, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Email: p.tran76@ gm ail.com
To whom it m ay concern:
I am Phuong Tran, D ean o f the Faculty o f English language teacher education,
University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University This letter certifies that Mr Hoang Nguyen is currently employed as a teacher in our faculty and is conducting a research project there as part of his Master of TESOL program at Victoria University He sought and was granted permission to conduct his research on April 1, 2015.
I wish him the best with his proposed research project and believe the results will benefit him as a researcher and, ultimately, our students who will be the beneficiaries of his initiative once the project is completed.
Should you need further information about M r H oang N guyen, please feel free to contact me.
Appendix B Inform ation to Participants Involved in Research Form
You are invited to participate
You are invited to participate in a research project entitled Fostering positive iistening habits among EFL learners at ULIS through the application o f listening strategy and sub-skill instructions
This project is led by Hoang Nguyen, a master's student at Victoria University, and is conducted under the supervision of Dr Oksana Razoumova from the College of Education at Victoria University.
This study engages EFL learners who will receive explicit instruction in listening strategies (defined here as learner actions that make listening more effective and enjoyable) along with training in listening sub-skills, and it runs over eight weeks to examine how these instructions influence classroom practice and students’ listening habits Throughout the project, data will be collected using narrative frames, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews to explore how learners apply listening strategies and sub-skills in real settings The study also aims to assess the effects of listening strategy and sub-skill instruction on EFL students’ listening habits and overall listening proficiency.
W hat w ill I be asked to do? _
When participating in this research project, participants will:
• receive instructions on listening strategies and sub-skills
• apply listening strategies and sub-skills when solving listening comprehension problem
• complete tasks and participating in activities actively
• reflect on the lessons and the use o f strategies
• process and complete narrative frames
• process, reflect, and answer the interview questions
• be audio recorded during interviews or during lessons
W hat w ill I gain from participating? _
Participants in this research study may directly benefit by learning targeted listening strategies and sub-skills, which could improve ESL listening comprehension However, such improvement cannot be guaranteed.
There will be no financial costs to be charged for students' participation in this study They will not be reimbursed or paid for their participation in this study.
How w ill the inform ation I give be used?
All information collected during the course of this project will be used exclusively for research purposes, and all data will be coded before reporting to preserve the anonymity of participants.
W h a l are th e p o te n tia l ris k s o f p a rtic ip a tin g In th is p ro je ct?
Some interview questions or elements of the narrative framework may cause participants to feel uncomfortable or upset, but they are free to decline to answer any questions or to stop the conversation at any time.
To protect confidentiality and participant anonymity, the researcher will implement all necessary measures throughout the study No individual identities will appear in reports or publications, and pseudonyms will be used to safeguard participants.
H ow w ill th is p ro je c t be c o n d u c te d ?
This study employs a qualitative research design to explore the experiences of individual learners with the new teaching method Data will be collected through three instruments—semi-structured interviews, narrative frames, and observations—to capture learners’ perceptions, engagement, and evolving listening skills These data collection instruments will be administered to examine learners’ experiences with the new teaching method and to determine whether they actually improve their listening habits after an eight-week innovative teaching project.
W ho Is c o n d u c tin g th e s tu d y ?
C h ie f Investigator: Dr Oksana Razoumova
Email: Oksana.Razoum ova@ vu.edu.au
Student Researcher: Mr Hoang Nguyen
Email: hoanghnguyen88@ gm ail.com
Any queries about your participation in this project m ay be directed to the C hief Investigator listed above.
If you have any questions or complaints about the way you have been treated, you may contact the Ethics Secretary of the Victoria University Human Research Ethics Committee (Office for Research) You can reach Victoria University at PO Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC 8001, or via email at researchethics@vu.edu.au, or by phone at (03) 9919 4781, extension 4461.