demotivating factors in listening lessons of 10 grade students at no.1 lao cai high school = những yếu tố gây mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe của học sinh khối 10 tại trường thpt số 1 thành phố lào cai

Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of languages and international studies Department of post graduate studies HOÀNG THỊ HỒNG NHUNG Demotivating factors in listening lessons o

Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of languages and international studies Department of post graduate studies

HOÀNG THỊ HỒNG NHUNG

Demotivating factors in listening lessons

of 10 grade students

at No.1 lao cai High School

NHỮNG YẾU TỐ GÂY MẤT HỨNG THÚ TRONG CÁC GIỜ

HỌC NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH KHỐI 10 TẠI TRƯỜNG

THPT SỐ 1 THÀNH PHỐ LÀO CAI

A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Supervisor: Nguyen Quynh Trang, MA Code: 601410

Hanoi, 2012

LIST OF TABLES AND DIAGRAMS

1 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for students’ questionnaire

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Candidate’s statement i

Acknowledgment ii

Abstract iii

List of tables and diagrams iv

Table of contents v

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the study 1

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Research methodology 2

1.5 Scope of the study 2

1.6 Contribution of the study 3

1.7 Organization of the study 3

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Overview of listening 5

1.1.1 Definition of listening 7

1.1.2 Listening process 7

1.1.3 Listening in second language learning 7

1.1.4 Teaching listening 8

1.2 Overview of motivation 9

1.2.1 Definition of motivation 9

1.2.2 Types of motivation 10

1.2.3 Characteristics of motivated students 11

1.3 Overview of demotivation 12

1.3.1 Definition of demotivation 12

1.3.2 Previous studies of demotivation 12

1.3.3 Characteristics of demotivation students 16

1.4 Possible demotivating factors in listening 16

1.4.1 Students- related factors 16

1.4.2 Learning conditions 18

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Research questions 19

2.2 Participants of the study 19

2.3 Method of the study 20

2.4 Instruments 21

2.4.1 Questionnaire for students 21

2.4.2 Questionnaire for teachers 21

2.4.3 Interview for teachers 21

2.5 Data collection and data analysis 21

2.5.1 Data collection 21

2.5.2 Data analysis 22

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 23

3.1 Demotivating factors in listening 23

3.2 Teachers’ teaching strategies 27

3.3 Overcoming demotivation in listening 30

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 33

3.1 Conclusions 34

3.2 Implications 35

REFERENCES 36 Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Despite being aware the importance of English to career prospects, a large number of students seem to lose their interests in learning this international language English has taken an important role in not only Vietnam but also countries around the world

In Vietnam, it cannot be deniable that one’s English proficiency has become his passport to a better job in all aspects of modern life In fact, Vietnamese students have learnt English through compulsory programs at school for many years Despite teachers’ efforts and the shift from the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching, English is still considered as a compulsory subject that needs to be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication As

a result, most of learners find themselves unable to use English for day-to-day communication after having passed the English national examination as a requirement for the General Education Diploma

Although “listening is fundamental to speaking skill” in second language acquisition

(Nunan, 1997), students’ low proficiency in listening is deniable At No.1 Lao Cai High School, students are bored in listening lessons Most of the learners have passive attitudes in listening lessons because of underlying reasons that need to be investigated A large number of researches have been conducted on language learning demotivation in general, but few studies have addressed possible demotivating factors in listening skill particularly It is necessary for teachers to be aware of the possible demotivating factors that cause students lose their motivation

in listening lessons

Hopefully, the major findings of the study will provide the teachers with students’ possible demotivating factors in listening lessons as well as factors that might assist their students to overcome demotivation With those factors in mind, they might

have more appropriate teaching method to help their students make process in listening

1.2 Aims of the study

The study aims at investigating possible demotivating factors in listening lessons of the 10th grade students at No.1 Lao Cai High School The main purposes of the study are summarized as follows:

1 To investigate main demotivating factors that reduce students’ interests in listening lessons

2 To explore techniques used by teachers of English to motivate their students in listening lessons

3 To investigate factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening lessons

1 3 Reasearch questions

This study aims to answer the following questions:

1 What are the dominant demotivating factors affecting students’ listening lessons?

2 What are techniques used by teachers to motivate their students in listening lesson?

3 What are factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening lessons?

1.4 Research methodology

This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods For quantitative method, two questionnaires were delivered to four teachers and 110 students A semi structure interview for teacher was also conducted to collect data qualitatively

1.5 The scope of the study

This study focused only on demotivation in listening lessons of student in grade 10

at No.1 Lao Cai High School In details, the study was carried out to investigate students’ main demotivating factors in listening lessons, to discover techniques used

by teachers to motivated students in listening lessons and to discover main factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening

1 6 Contribution of the study

This is one of the first studies discovering demotivating factors in a particular listening There have been a large number of studies on students’ demotivation generally in learning English as a second language such as Christophel & Gorham, 1992; Gorham and Millette, 1997; Kearney, Plax, Hays, & Ivey ,1991; Zang’s 2007; Ikeno, 2002; Arai, 2004; Falout & Maruyama, 2004; Hasegawa, 2004; Kikuchi, in press; Tsuchiya, 2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b; Kojima, 2005

skill-However, few studies focus on demotivating factors that prevent learners from enjoying studying English in a particular skill, especially in listening skill The study’s contribution can be summarized as follows:

Theoretically, this study will shed a light on research area that few researchers have addressed: demotivation in listening

Practically, findings of this study will provide teachers of English at No.1 Lao Cai High School with deep understanding of demotivating factors encountered by their students in listening lessons so that they might have more appropriate teaching method To students, the findings suggested some factors that might help them to recover their interests in listening

1 7 Organization of the study

This study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion

Chapter 1: Literature review

This part presents theoretical background of motivation and demotivation, reviewing studies of demotivation in second language acquisition, and brief view

on concepts of listening and demotivating factors in listening

Chapter 2: Methodology

Research questions, participants, method of the study, instruments, data collection and data analysis are discussed in this chapter

Chapter 3: Research findings and discussion

This chapter presents major research findings and discussion in details

Part 3: Conclusion

This part presents conclusions and implications

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Overview of listening

1.1.1 Definition of listening

Scholars claim that listening is a complex and active process Wipf (1984) states that listening is an invisible mental process in which listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance

According to Rost (2002), listening is a process of receiving what the speaker actually says; constructing and representing meaning; negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding; and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy

1.1.2 Listening processes

According to Richard (1990), there are two distinct processes in listening: top-down and bottom-up, and listeners need to use both of them in their listening comprehension Listeners apply “top-down” processes when they use prior knowledge to understand the meaning of a message Prior knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term memory Listeners use content words and contextual clues to form hypotheses in an exploratory fashion On the other hand, listeners apply “bottom-up” processes when they use linguistic knowledge to understand the meaning of a message They build meaning from lower level sounds

to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message Listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up

processing, but an interactive, interpretive process where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages The degree to which listeners use the one process or the other will depend on their knowledge of the language, familiarity with the topic or the purpose for listening For example, listening for gist involves 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

Byrnes (1984) emphasizes that context takes an important role in listening process Research from cognitive psychology has shown that listening comprehension is more than extracting meaning from incoming speech It is a process of matching speech with what listeners already know about the topic Therefore, when listeners know the context of a text or an utterance, the process is facilitated considerably because listeners can activate prior knowledge and make the appropriate inferences essential to comprehending the message Therefore, teachers need to help students organize their thoughts, to activate appropriate background knowledge for understanding and to make predictions, to prepare for listening This significantly reduces the burden of comprehension for the listener

In listening process, Richards (1990) states the learners need to be aware of the purpose of the task He differentiates between an interactional and a transactional purpose for communication Knowing the communicative purpose of a text or utterance will help the listener determine what to listen for and, therefore, which processes to activate Listeners listen selectively according to the purpose of the task This determines the type of listening required and the way in which listeners will approach a task Interactional use of language is socially oriented, existing largely to satisfy the social needs of the participants such as small talk and casual conversations Therefore, interactional listening is highly contextualized and two-way, involving interaction with a speaker A transactional use of language, on the

other hand, is more message-oriented and is used primarily to communicate information, for example, news broadcasts and lectures In contrast with interactional listening, transactional listening requires accurate comprehension of a message with no opportunity for clarification with a speaker Knowing the context and knowing the purpose for listening also greatly reduces the burden of comprehension since listeners know that they need to listen for something very specific, instead of trying to understand every word

1.1.3 Listening in second language learning

According to Oxford (1993), the importance of listening in language learning has only been recognized recently Vandergriff (1999) also states that listening plays an important role in audio-lingual methods Students listen, repeat and develop a better pronunciation for speaking Beginning in the early 70's, Krashen emphasizes the role of listening as a tool for understanding and a key factor in facilitating language learning Then, Feyten (1991) concludes that listening has emerged as an important component in the process of second language acquisition

Vandergrift (2002) states that listeners need to use metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make their learning

more effective Metacognitive strategies are important because they “oversee,

regulate or direct the language learning process” Cognitive strategies manipulate

the material to be learned or apply a specific technique to a listening task affective strategies describe the techniques listeners use to collaborate with others,

Socio-to verify understanding or Socio-to lower anxiety Research shows that skilled listeners use more metacognitive strategies than their less-skilled counterparts (O'Malley & Chamot, 1990, Vandergrift, 1997a) When listeners know how to analyze the requirements of a listening task, activate the appropriate listening processes required, make appropriate predictions, monitor their comprehension and evaluate

the success of their approach, it means that they are using metacognitive knowledge for successful listening comprehension

1.1.4 Teaching listening skill

Mendelsohn (1998) emphasizes that in teaching listening, teachers need to help students become self-regulated learners He claims that listening should be changed from product to process, and the role of teacher is to teach his/her learner “how” to listen, not to test their listening proficiency during listening lessons

Vandergrift (1999) composed a pedagogical sequence in which teachers and students’ responsibility were indentified clearly in listening lessons This consequence can develop teachers’ awareness of the process of listening and help students acquire the metacognitive knowledge to success in listening comprehension The consequence consists of three main periods: planning for the successful completion of a listening task, monitoring comprehension during a listening task and valuating the approach and outcomes of a listening task

For the period of planning for the successful completion of a listening task, listening activities takes a very important role These activities help students make decisions about what to listen for and, subsequently, to focus attention on meaning while listening During this critical phase of the listening process, teachers prepare students for what they will hear and what they are expected to do First, students need to bring to consciousness their knowledge of the topic, their knowledge of how information is organized in different texts and any relevant cultural information Second, a purpose for listening must be established so that students know the specific information they need to listen for and/or the degree of detail required Using all the available information, students can make predictions to anticipate what they might hear

pre-During the listening process, students monitor their comprehension and make decisions about strategy use Students need to evaluate continually what they are comprehending and check the consistency with their predictions, and the internal consistency, for example, the ongoing interpretation of the oral text or interaction Teacher intervention during this phase is virtually impossible because of the ephemeral nature of listening Periodic practice in decision-making skills and strategy use can sharpen inferencing skills and help students to monitor more effectively

In addition, students need to evaluate the results of decisions made during a listening task The teacher can encourage self-evaluation and reflection by asking students to assess the effectiveness of strategies used Group or class discussions on the approach taken by different students can also stimulate reflection and worthwhile evaluation Students are encouraged to share individual routes leading

to success, for instance, how someone guessed the meaning of a certain word or how someone modified a particular strategy

In order to help students consciously focus on planning, monitoring and evaluation before and after the completion of listening tasks, teachers can develop performance checklists These instruments help students prepare for a listening task and evaluate their own performance

1.2 Overview of motivation

1.2.1 Definition of motivation

Researchers have different ideas in defining what “motivation” is, but all of them agree that motivation is a very important factor that encourages students to enjoy their studying and to become successful learners

Gardner (1985) referred motivation as “the extent to which the individual works or

strives to lean the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction

experienced in this activity (p.10) Ames & Ames (1989) defines motivation as the

impetus to create and sustain intentions and goal seeking acts Oxford and Shearin (1994) states that motivation is a desire to achieve a goal combined with the energy

to work toward that goal

According to Dornyei (2001), motivation is one of the most important factors that

influences the rate and success of second language learning He states, “Motivation

provides the primary impetus to initiate learning the L2 and later the driving force

to sustain the long and often tedious learning process” He claims that without

sufficient motivation, even individuals with remarkable abilities couldn’t accomplish long-term goals However, high motivation can make learners get considerable achievement in spite of their language aptitude and learning condition

Gardner and Lambert (1972) also emphasize that motivational factors can override the aptitude effects They provide a convincing example is that where social setting demands a certain language as national language, many people seem to master the L2, regardless of their aptitude differences

1.2.2 Types of motivation

Gardner and Lambert (1959, 1972) are the first authors who tried to explore the nature of motivation to language study Gardner classifies motivation into two types: instrumental motivation and integrative motivation

 Instrumental motivation: the desire to learn a language because it would fulfill certain utilitarian goals, such as getting a job, passing an examination, etc

 Integrative motivation: the desire to learn a language to communicate with people from another culture that speak that language; the desire is also there to identify closely with the target language group

According to Hayamizu (1993), the distinction between “integrative” and

“instrumental” motivation is the desire of learners in their studying process The first is to identify with and integrate into the target-language culture In contrary, the second one is the wish to learn the language for the purpose of study or career promotion Gardner and Lambert (1972) found that if learners’ motivation belongs

to instrumental, their success in a foreign/second language may be higher However, Burstall et al., (1974) concluded that there is no distinction in practice between the two kinds of motivation

1.2.3 Characteristics of motivated students

Naiman et al (1978) stated that the most successful learners are those who display certain typical characteristics, most of them associated with motivation:

 Positive task orientation

According to Dornyei (2001a.), demotivation is defined as “specific external forces

that reduce or diminish the motiavational basis of a behavioral intention or an

ongoing action” (p.143) As a leading author in this field, he has a great

contribution to the basic understanding of motivation as well as demotivation However, there is a limit to the demotivating factors in Dorney’s original definition, which concerns only on external factors that may cause Japanese students lose their motivation The later authors expend both internal and external ones in their studies

Flout and Maruyama (2004) states that demotivation has a negative influence on students, preventing them from gaining expected learning outcomes In other words, demotivation causes learners lose their motivation in studying, which leads to unsuccessful mastery of English language proficiency Demotivation can be classified into two main categories: external factors and internal factors The former relates to factors that come from “outside” such as teachers, learning conditions, learning materials, grading and assessment, etc The later results from students themselves including their attitudes toward English, their self-esteem, their experience of failure or lack of success, etc

1.3.2 Previous studies of demotivation

In the United States, demotivation has been investigate mainly in the field of instructional communication (Christophel & Gorham, 1992; Gorham and Millette, 1997; Kearney, Plax, Hays, & Ivey,1991; Zang, 2007) Most of the studies showed that teachers are the main reason that may prevent student from enjoying their learning

Gorham and Christophel (1992) tried to determined demotivating factors at a college students by taking introductory classes They concluded that teacher-related factors account for seventy-nine percent of all the responses Gorham and Millette (1997) conducted a further study based on Gorham’s previous research The conclusion once again confirmed that teachers- related factors such as teachers’

inappropriate behaviors, poor presentation skills, and lack of enthusiasm are dominant demotivating factors that prevent their students from studying effectively

Dornyei (2001a) states the nine demotivating factors indentified in an unpublished study (Dornyei, 1998, as cited in Dornyei, 2001a) In that study, 50 secondary school students in Budapest, Hungary were participants They studied either English

or German as a foreign language Dornyei found that 40% of the total occurrences relate to teachers By using 10-30 minute interview with demotiavated learners, nine demotivating factors are identified in order of their frequency as below:

1 teachers’ personalities, commitment, competence, teaching methods

2 inadequate school facilities (very big group, not the right level, or frequency change of teachers)

3 reduce self-confidence due to their experience of failure or lack of success

4 negative attitudes towards the L2

5 compulsory nature of L2 study

6 interferences from another language

7 negative feelings about the L2 community

8 attitude towards group members

9 attitude towards course book

(Possible reasons for student demotivation according to Dornyei (2001, p 152- 153)

While most of researchers used questionnaire to collect data, some authors asked students to recall their learning experience by writing an essay Oxford (1993) asked participants to look back their study process over five years The results showed four main demotivating factors: the teacher’s personal relationship with the students, the teachers’ attitude towards the course or the material, style conflicts between teachers and students and the nature of classroom activities

Ushioda (1998) asked twenty Irish learners of French to identify what they found to

be demotivating in their second language studying She found that their responses targeted negative aspects of the institutionalized learning framework, rather than personal factors Although the study had great distribution to the background of demotivation in second language learning, it is difficult to generalize the results of the research because of participants’ representative

Japanese researchers have recently investigated learners’ demotivating factors in studying English as a foreign language (Ikeno, 2002; Arai, 2004; Falout & Maruyama, 2004; Hasegawa, 2004; Kikuchi, in press; Tsuchiya, 2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b; Kojima,2005)

Ikeno (2002) asked 65 Japanese university students to write about their experiences

of motivation and demotivation He proposed 22 categories for motivating factors and 13 categories for the demotivating factors Some of demotivating factors were listed such as lack of a sense of control over what one us learning, distrust in the ability of teachers, doubts about the characteristics of teachers, a sense of classes being solely exam-oriented, feeling of inferiority about one’s English ability, and peers’ negative toward English learning The study could be more persuade if the author had took a larger size of sample In addition, some categories of demotivation such as learning difficulties, learning failure in the past did not be concluded in the questionnaire

Hasegawa (2004) studied Japanese English language learners’ experiences with English learning and demotivation with 125 junior high school students and 98 senior high school students Hasegawa asked the students whether they like to study English, their overall grade, what they like or dislike about their English classes, whether they have lost interest in studying and a description of the situation when they lost interest in studying English She pointed out that the experiences related to

teachers were the most frequently cited as a source of demotivation for both junior and senior high school students Based on the analysis, she concluded that inappropriate teachers’ behaviors might directly have influences on students’ demotivation Although it may be difficult to generalize her findings to other junior

or high school students, Hasegawa's study is of significance because she asked junior and senior high school students directly about factors that demotivated them

Arai (2004) asked 33 university students to answer whether they had had demotivating experiences in foreign language classrooms and to describe the experiences and their immediate reactions to those experiences Most of the participants were majoring in English and were considered to be highly proficient in English She collected 105 comments and categorized the reports into the following four areas: (a) teachers' behavior or personality, (b) classes being boring or monotonous, (c) class atmospheres, and (d) others The first category concerning teachers was considered as the most salient factor which account for 46.7%

Kojima (2005) used two surveys to investigate demotivating factor in learning foreign language of 2198 high school students In his study, participants responded

to two consecutive surveys In the first survey, the participants completed ended questions Based on the results of the first survey and previous studies, a closed-response questionnaire was constructed and used so that a structural equation model of English language demotivation could be tested The five constructs that made up the model were the language level problem, the learner level problem, the learning situation level problem, the students' listening problem, and the problem concerning the amount of homework The results indicated that the learner level problem influenced demotivation the most, followed by the language level problem, and finally the learning situation level problem It is worth noting that he found students' listening ability and the amount of homework to be

open-demotivating factors for senior high school students, which were not reported in the studies with university students

Kikuchi and Sakai (2007) investigated possible demotivating factors in high school English classes using a similar approach to Kojima (2005) Based on the findings of

an earlier qualitative study, they developed a 35-item questionnaire to gather quantitative data regarding possible demotivating factors for Japanese high school students One hundred twelve participants attending three private universities in eastern Japan were asked to complete the questionnaire on the Internet Using a principal axis factor analysis with a direct oblimin rotation, five factors were extracted: Course Books, Inadequate School Facilities, Test Scores, Non-Com-municative Methods, and Teachers' Competence and Teaching Styles

1.3.3 Characteristics of demotivated students

Chambers (1993) describes demotivated students- who lose their interests in learning as:

 poor concentration

 lack of belief in own capabilities

 no effort made to learn

 negative or nil response to praise

 lack of cooperation

 disruptive

 distracted

 distracts other pupils;

 produces little or no homework

 fails to bring materials to lessons

 claims to have lost materials

1.4 Possible demotivating factors in listening

1.4.1 Students – related factors

Willis (1981) states that students might become demotivated because of learning difficulties Learning difficulties mainly comesfrom three sources: the message to

be listened to, the speaker, the listener

In terms of the message, many learners find it more difficult to listen to a taped message than to read the same message on a piece of paper, since the listening passage comes into the ear in the twinkling of an eye, whereas reading material can

be read as long as the reader likes In addition, the listening materials may deal with almost any area of life It might include street gossip, proverbs, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the student On the other hand, linguistic features such as liaison elision are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to distinguish or recognize individual words in the stream of speech They are used to seeing words written as discrete entities in their textbooks

Ur (1984:7) states: “in ordinary conversation or even in much extempore making or lecturing we actually say a good deal more than would appear to be necessary in order to convey our message Redundant utterances may take the form

speech-of repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and apparently meaningless additions such as I mean or you know.” This redundancy is a natural feature of speech and may be either a help or a hindrance, depending on the students’ level It may make it more difficult for beginners to understand what the speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may give advanced students more time to “tune in” to the speaker’s voice and speech style Learners tend to be used to their teacher’s accent or to the standard variety of British or American English They find it hard to understand speakers with other accents

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture Listeners- students

are not familiar enough with clichés and collocations in English to predict a missing word or phrase In addition, learners usually devote more time to reading than to listening, and so lack exposure to different kinds of listening materials Even our college students majoring in English have no more than four hours’ regular training per week

1.4.2 Learning conditions

According to Willis (1981) noise and quality of listening facilities might cause students’ listening become challenging, which lead to demotivation Noise including both background noises on the recording and environmental noises, can take the listener’s mind off the content of the listening passage Besides, listening material on tape or radio lacks visual and aural environmental clues Not seeing the speaker’s body language and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker’s meaning Moreover, unclear sounds resulting

from poor-quality equipment can interfere with the listener’s comprehension

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY

2 1 Research questions

The study aims at answering the three following questions:

1 What are dominant demotivating factors affecting students in listening lessons?

2 What are techniques used by teachers to motivate their students in listening lesson?

3 What are the factors that assist students to overcome demotivation in listening?

2.2 Participants of the study

Four teachers of English and 110 students participated in this study The students attend 10th grade at No.1 Lao Cai high school They are students in three classes that were chosen randomly from eight classes Originally, questionnaires were delivered to 125 students but only 110 questionnaires were collected Although there are totally ten classes in grade 10, two classes study Chinese as a second language For those who study English, they have learnt English for 4 years and a half as a compulsory subject They have three periods of English per week Each period lasts 45 minutes In general, most of the students have same age (16-17 years old), background knowledge and equality in gender (60 male and 65 female) The four female teacher’s age ranges from 29 to 37 They had been taught the textbook

“Tiếng Anh 10” All of them are university graduates and they have at least six years of English teaching

2.3 Method of the study

The methods used in this study are quantitative and qualitative In particular, data was collected via two survey questionnaires, one for the four teachers and the other for 125 students At first, 10 students did the pilot questionnaire Then, the final version was delivered to the students Besides, a semi- structure interview with the teachers was conducted to get information on teachers’ techniques used in their listening lessons in order to motivate their students The research methodology is illustrated as follows:

Diagram 1: The research methodology

Methodology

Teachers (4) Students (125)

Survey questionnaire

Pilot questionnaire

(10)

Final version

125 students

Interviews Survey

questionnaire

Results Results Results

2.4 Instruments

The instrumentation of the research was two survey questionnaires for students and teachers staff In addition, a semi structure interview with the teachers was carried out to get deeper understanding of relevant information

2.4.1 Questionnaire for students

The purpose of this questionnaire is to identify main demotivating factors which affect 10 grade students’ listening at No.1 Lao Cai High School and possible factors that help students to overcome demotivation The questionnaire contains three main parts The first part aimed to discover students’ perceptions of their own listening proficiency and motivation in listening lessons In the second part, the researcher generated 35 possible demotivating items depending on the results of relevant studies on demotivating in second language learning in general and on her experiences as an English language teacher In the third part, students were asked about some possible reasons that help them recover their interests in listening lessons to investigate factors that assist them to overcome demotivation in listening

2.4.2 Questionnaire for teachers

This questionnaire consists of eight questions The questions are of three kinds: close-ended, open-ended and scaling The questionnaire aims to identify teachers’ opinions on teaching listening and their teaching activities in listening lessons and teachers’ perceptions on their students’ listening proficiency and motivation

2.4.3 Semi structured interview for teachers

Interviews were conducted to obtain qualitative data The four teachers were asked seven questions to discover strategies used by the teachers to motivate their students in listening lessons and relevant information

2.5 Data collection and data analysis

2.5.1 Data collection

At the end of the first semester of the academic year 2011-2012, questionnaires were delivered to the four teachers of English and 110 students At first, the pilot questionnaire was completed by 10 students After the pilot study, the students were asked to restructure and to rewrite any statements that they found hard to understand The final questionnaire version was distributed to 125 participants They had 30 minutes to complete the questionnaires 110 questionnaires were collected

To teachers, the questionnaire in English were answered by the four teachers

Informal interviews were conducted after one week when the teachers were having recession for their next period Each interview lasted around 20 minutes and the language of the interview was Vietnamese to ensure mutual understanding between the teachers and the interviewer To make the four teachers feel comfortable when taking part in informal interviews, the researcher took notes of important points during the interviews instead of using visual and audio aids such as camera or tape recorder

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Demotivating factors

The first question aimed to identify main demotivating factors that caused 10 grade students at Lao Cai High School lose their interests in listening lessons 35 demotivating items were classified into 8 groups of factors:

i listening difficulties (1-6)

ii lack of self-determination(7-12)

iii xenophobia (13)

iv teachers’ style and competence (14-24)

v inadequate school facilities(25-26)

vi lack of target language environment (27-30)

vii exam- orientation(30-33)

viii domination of other languages (34-35)

Table 1: Descriptive statistics for students’ questionnaire responses (N=110)

The analysis of the data includes calculating a mean of responses using the following values:

Not true:1

Mostly not true:2

Neither true nor untrue:3

To some extent true:4

True:5