Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo

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

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT

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

STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp 10

trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT

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

STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp 10

trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY

CODE: 60.14.10

SUPERVISOR: Vò mai trang, M.A

HANOI – 2012

TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii

ABBREVIATIONS viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aim of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theory on listening comprehension 5

1.1.1 Definition of listening 5

1.1.2 Classification of listening 6

1.1.2.1 Real – life listening 6

1.1.2.2 Classroom listening 7

1.2 Listening teaching skills 8

1.2.1 Grammar – translation method 8

1.2.2 Grammar method 8

1.2.3 Audio – lingual method 9

1.2.4 Task – based method 9

1.3 Stages of a listening lesson 9

1.3.1 Pre - listening 9

1.3.2 While - listening 10

1.3.3 Post - listening 11

1.4 Theory on activities 11

1.4.1 Definition of activities 11

1.4.2 Classification of activities 12

1.4.3 Criteria for Activities Evaluation 13

1.5 Adapting material 14

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 Situation analysis 15

2.1.1 The setting of the study 15

2.1.2 Subjects 15

2.2 Instrument for collecting data 17

2.3 Description of procedure for collecting data 18

2.3.1 Survey questionnaires 18

2.3.2 Interview 19

2.3.3 Class observation 20

2.4 Procedures 20

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21

3.1 Data analysis of teachers‟ survey questionnaire and interview 21

3.2 Data analysis of students‟ survey questionnaire and interview 23

3.3 Data analysis of class observation 31

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS 35

4.1 Major findings 35

4.1.1 The current situation of teaching and learning listening skill 35

4.1.2 The current situation of listening activities used by teachers at Tran Hung Dao high school 35

4.1.3 The students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the text book and their suggestions 36

4.1.4 Evaluation of the listening activities used by teachers at THD high school 36

4.1.5 The students‟ preference for class listening activities and their

perception on authentic listening 37

4.2 Suggestions 38

4.2.1 Improving the listening activities available in the text book 38

4.2.2 Improving the ways that the teachers use listening activities 39

4.2.3 Using authentic materials and situations 39

4.2.4 Useful activities for three stages of a listening lesson 40

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Recapitulation 41

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDIXES I

LIST OF TABLES AND charts Tables:

Table 1: The current situation of using listening activities

Table 2: The ways teachers use listening activities

Table 3: Students‟ attitude towards listening

Table 4: Students‟ evaluation of the activities used by the teacher

Table 5: Students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the textbook Table 6: Students’ perception on the authentic listening

Charts:

Chart 1: Pre-listening activities used by teachers and students‟ preference Chart 2: While-listening activities used by teacher and students‟ preference Chart 3: Post-listening activities used by teacher and students‟ preference

ABBREVIATION

THD Tran Hung Dao

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

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

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

In Viet Nam in recent years the number of people who want to know English has become increasing and teaching and learning English have paid much more attention In most schools, through out the country, English has become a compulsory subject However, how to teach and learn English effectively is not simple Compared to other language skills, listening is considered as one of the most difficult one for both teachers and students Many studies have been done to seek the ways to make listening lessons less difficult, to give students more confidence, and also some practical strategies to help them study listening skill better Like many teachers at other high schools, the teachers of English at THD high school also wish and always try their best to make listening lessons more interesting and attractive to their students Despite their great effort, the teachers still fail to get students involve in their lessons and a lot of the students fail to take the listening input so they can hardly understand the spoken messages That is the reason why many of them get bored or become stressful and ignorant when listening classes start even though all of them agree listening skill a very important language

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

like to do something to improve our teaching and learning English in general and listening skill in particular

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

the students‟ interest in listening Needless to say, it is necessary for the teachers to know what listening activities their students would like to take part in and what activities are really effective to them For those reasons, the researcher would like to

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

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

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

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

 Investigating the current English listening teaching and learning situations at THD high school

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

 Giving some suggestions to the teachers at THD high school in applying suitable listening activities to make their listening lessons more effective thereby enhancing students‟ interest in listening lessons

4 Scope of the study

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

5 Methods of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study was carried out with data collected from different sources: two questionnaires were designed for collecting data for analysis from students and teachers at THD high school The researcher also interviewed some teachers and students to double-check the information obtained from the survey questionnaires Beside survey questionnaires and interview, the researcher also makes some class observations to collect information needed for the study

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

- Part A: presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research,

the aims, the research questions, the scope of the study, the research method, as well

as the design of the study were briefly presented

- Part B: includes 4 chapters as follow

Chapter 1 presents the concepts relevant to the research topic such as theory on

listening comprehension including definition, classification of listening as well as some ways of teaching listening skill and stages of listening lesson In this chapter the researcher also mentioned theory related to activities as definition, classification

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

Chapter 2 deals with description of the subjects, instrument of the study and

description of the procedure

Chapter 3 is a focus on data collection and discussion

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

given

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

research and makes recommendation for further research in the same field

PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the reexamination of concepts most relevant to the thesis‟s topic It includes three sections The first section addressed major issues reflecting the theory on listening, including definition, classification of listening, some methods to teach listening skill and the discussion of three stages of the listening lesson Come up next in this chapter are major issues in theory on activities including definition, classification of activities and criteria for activities evaluation The last section included some theoretical discussions about materials adaptation Therefore, this chapter can be seen as the theoretical foundation for the applications for the study in chapter 3

1.1 Theory on listening comprehension

1.1.1 Definition of listening

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

of definitions of listening which hold different views towards the concept

According to Rost (1994), listening is referred to a complex process that enables us to understand spoken language Harmer (2001, p197) categorizes listening into receptive skill, the way in which people extract meaning form the discourse they hear or see

Wolvin and Coakley (1985) hold the same idea They see listening as "the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli" This definition indicates that listening is a complex process which students have to deal with The task of listening is not only perception of sound, but it also requires comprehension of meaning

Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and involved process One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise, and

also make a conscious effort to not 'switch off' or become distracted while listening All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given message

Anderson and Lynch (1988) pointed out that listening is really a receptive skill along side with reading skills and the role of the listeners is no longer passive but active After a period of listening the learners are exposed to be able to talk or write about what they have heard, that is the objectives of listening comprehension

Basing on the different definitions of listening mentioned above, it can be concluded that listening comprehension is an active process during which the listener constructs meaning from oral input and this is done by applying knowledge

to the incoming sounds

1.1.2 Classification of listening

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

a number of variables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and the types of text being listened to

1.1.2.1 Real-life listening

Many students feel a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and actual situation This is because most listening materials including dialogues in text books 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 learners encounter various people with different gender, age, accent, speed, voice, tone There may be improper grammar usage, incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap and so forth

There are two ways which people often listen in real-life, they are “casual” 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 we are doing something else We listen with no particular purpose This kind of listening is called “casual” listening, the typical feature is that

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

we hear or nothing is left in our mind

“Focus” listening

“Focus” listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the information we need to know or to study the language In this case we often listen with much attention, but we do not listen to every thing with equal concentration There is an association between listener expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener expects and needs are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understood than that which is expected, irrelevant or helpful

Listening intensively is quite important to understand the language form of the text as we have to understand both the lexical and grammatical units that lead to form meaning So, intensive listening requires attention to specific items of language, sound or factual detail such as words, phrase, grammatical units, pragmatic units, sound changes (vowel reduction and consonant assimilation), stress, intonation and pauses etc

Extensive listening

Extensive listening is freer and more general listening to natural language for general ideas, not for a particular detail and not necessary under the teacher‟s direct guidance The listening passage for extensive listening can be long or short The language that is used in the type of listening is often within the students‟ current ability so that they find it pleasing and interesting when they are listening With this type of listening, students are not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar point linked to the rest of the course This type of listening has also a greater ease than other types as it is concerned to promote overall comprehension of a text and never requires learners to follow every word and understand them Learners need to comprehend the text as a whole which is called global understanding Activities in this section must be chosen in terms with the proficiency level of the listeners

It is advisable that students to should do lots of intensive listening practice before move on to extensive English listening practice This helps to build a base of English that they have memorized The new English that they hear during extensive listening can then fit into that base and help them grow it

1.2 Listening teaching skills

In the article about teaching listening, Underwood (1989, p90-109) pointed out that there are at least four common methods of teaching second or foreign language listening: grammar-translation, grammar-method, audio-lingual method and task-based method

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

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

or grammar structures

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

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

between words and phrases, use forward and backward inferencing cues, and make intelligent guesses based on textual cues

Audio-lingual method: Audio-lingual method of listening emphasizes first

listening to pronunciation and grammar forms and then imitating those forms by way of drills and exercises Dialogues and drill are the basis of classroom practice with this method Students are encouraged to listen carefully either to the taped recording, or a teacher reading out, a dialogue, or a drill They then record their own version or respond to cues from the teachers to repeat parts of the dialogue or drill Basically, the more the students repeat a correct phrase or sentence, the stronger of their memory of the structure will be

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

learners do in class in order to develop their communicative competence A based syllabus should be constructed according to the difficulty of the tasks required of the learners at different stages in a course

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

1.3 Stages of a listening lesson

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

while-1.3.1 Pre-listening

It is obvious that learners will find it extremely difficult to do a listening lesson when they have no idea of what they are going to hear Even if the sounds or the words which they hear are familiar, they may still be unable to understand because they lack certain kinds of knowledge of the topic, setting or the relationship between the speakers Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations

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

“pre-listening activities”

According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening activities can consist of a whole range of activities, including: the teacher giving background information, the students reading something relevant, the students looking at pictures, discussion of the topic/situation, a question and answer session, written exercises, following the instructions for the while listening activity and consideration of how the while-listening will be done As for her the time available, the material is available or not, the interest of the class and the teacher, the place in which the work is being carried out, the nature and the content of the listening text itself are some main factors that the teacher should take into consideration when choosing an activity If one of these

is forgotten, the whole process of activity can be failed When the teacher pays attention to this factor properly, the activity chosen for students will be more specific and effective

1.3.2 While-listening

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

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

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

1.3.3 Post-listening

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

“post-listening” Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre- listening and while-listening stage and some relate only loosely to the listening text itself According to Underwood (1989), the purposes of this stage are:

to check whether the learners have understood what they need to or not; to see why some students have missed parts of the message or fail to understand the message;

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

to transfer learned things to another context; to make introduction for the planned work She also states that, when selecting post-listening activities: the teachers should keep in mind the following factors: the amount of language work the teacher wish to do in relation to the particular listening text, the time which is allowed to do post-listening work, the speaking, reading or writing skills should be included in the post-listening work, the students should work in pair or in groups, and the chosen activity should be made motivating

1.4 Theory on activities

1.4.1 Definitions of activities

There are many definitions of activities According to the webpage myeurope.eun.org, activity is defined as “collection of people, work items, communications, and processes that represent a collaborative effort to achieve a goal” From this definition we can infer that an activity is a way for us to organize our work and collaborate with others in a share working condition and coordination

in a small teams However, more narrow definition, such as that presented by definition.net an activity can be understood as a state or quality of being active; nimbleness; agility; vigorous action or operation energy; active force; as, an increasing variety of human activities

1.4.2 Classification of activities

Activities can be classified into many types Within the scope of a unit Simone-a teacher mentioned in the book “Designing Language Course A guide for teachers” (Graves, 2000) classifies activities into four types: warm-up activities, presentation activities, practice activities and consolidation activities This classification will be familiar to teachers who have learned about a three stage lesson planning model such as presentation, practice and production Whereas, according to features of activities, activities can be classified into three types, including tasks, exercises, and between task and exercise (Rod Ellis, 2003)

Tasks

 Richard (1983) and Nunan (1989) define task is an activity that involve language Bygate (2011) have the same point of view about tasks They stated a task is an activity requires learners to use language According to Lee (2000) a task can be defined as a “classroom activity or exercise”

Exercises

According to Macmillan dictionary, exercise is defined as an activity or set

of activities that someone do or a set of written questions that someone answer in order to learn how to do something An exercise usually has a restrictive focus on a single language element, and has a linguistic outcome

Between task and exercise

Some language-learning activities can not easily classify as a task or an exercise They have the features of both There is no exact name to call this type of activity; Rod Ellis (2003) calls this with the term “task-like” or “exercises alongside tasks” They are obviously seen as an exercise; however, they have some features of tasks

or vice versa

It is widely known that in language teaching and learning tasks are good for improving students‟ ability in using language to communicate because they are related to daily life They are ultimately free to use what grammar constructs and

vocabulary they want This allows them to use all the language they know, rather than just the 'target language' of the lesson, which may further motivate them in their language learning; whereas, exercises are beneficial especially when focusing

on accuracy In order to become successful in language teaching, it is wise for teachers to combine both tasks and exercises to fulfill the goal of each lesson

1.4.3 Criteria for Activities Evaluation

According to Dudley- Evans and St John (1998), in the evaluation process, evaluators must take evaluation criteria into account before any evaluation takes place Graves, 2000 synthesized fifteen criteria that should be paid attention to when designing listening activities However, in this paper, the author only mentions some most frequent consideration criteria The following is the list of these criteria:

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

ones To achieve this criteria, activities should:

+ help students develop specific skills they need for authentic communication

+ focus on students‟ outside class needs, if appropriate

+ use authentic text or realia when possible

+ build students‟ confidence so that they can feel confident in transferring what they lean outside of the class

- Suitability: Activities should be suitable with students‟ ability and needs, draw on

what students know (their experience, their current situation) and be relevant to them so that they can engage students‟ interest

- Integration: Activities should integrate the four skills of speaking, listening,

reading and writing because the four skills mutually reinforce each other

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

1.5 Materials adaptation

Materials adaptation is a process of matching the teaching material with the needs, interests of learners, and teachers‟ own capabilities Materials adaptation plays an important part in the process of language teaching and learning It makes the teaching materials more relevant to the needs of students and to the objectives of the course, and therefore, would stimulate the effectiveness of teaching and learning Its purpose is to maximize the appropriateness of teaching materials in context, by changing some of the internal characteristics of a course book to better suit the particular circumstances McDonough and Shaw (1993: 86) state that reasons for adaptation rely on four main aspects namely “language use; skills; classroom organization; supplementary material.” and there are also six important ways of modifying materials They are adding; deleting or omitting; modifying; simplifying; re-ordering; re-placing (See Appendix 6)

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY

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

2.1 Situation analysis

2.1.1 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at THD high school, where the author is teaching The school was set up 35 years ago with only two classes However, today it is widened with 30 classes The size of the class is rather large Each class has from 43

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

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

2.1.2 Subject of the study

2.1.2.1 Teachers of English

The school now has eleven English teachers including the researcher They are aged between 30 and 53 Eight are female teachers and only two are male ones Two of them graduated from the English department, college of foreign languages, Viet Nam National University Eight others are from the English department, Hai Phong University One of them completed their post-graduate courses All of the teachers are willing and enthusiastic toward their teaching However, they all meet some difficulties when teaching at the school First, the teachers do not have enough materials, such as cassette, CDs and reference materials, which are very necessary for both the teachers and students The second difficulty is that the teachers do not

have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can give very precious help and advice Last but not least, the living condition of the people in An Lao district where the school located in is still very low; therefore, not only students and parents but also the teachers have many difficulties in their learning and teaching

2.1.2.2 Tenth-form students

The subjects of the study were 140 students from class 10C1, 10C3, 10C9 at

THD high school They are ages from fifteen to sixteen Most of them come from comparatively poor families so their learning condition is not good enough Their parents can hardly afford to pay even small amount of money for their children‟s schooling A dictionary, a cassette player or even some English books are beyond their reach Their tools are the text book “Tieng Anh 10” only Although most of them already learnt English for at least four years at lower secondary school, their knowledge of English is still poor and limited Hardly can they say a correct sentence in the target language and hardly hear anything when first learning how to listen In addition to this, they have no chance to communicate with native speakers so that they are not familiar with their accent That is reason why listening

is the most difficult skill for them and most of them are not interested in this skill Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to design interesting activities that suitable with students‟ interests, ability and meet their needs so that can arouse their interest

in learning listening skill

2.1.2.3 The text book

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

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

Generally, many of them are of students‟ interest, familiar and suitable with students‟ ability For example, in unit 2 students are asked to listen to some small talks at school or a text about a picnic at Botanical garden of students in unit 6, or interesting topics about Van Cao, a well-known Vietnamese musician is provided in unit 12

However, there are also some listening texts too difficult for students as these listening texts containing many new and difficult words, such as listening text about whales in unit 9 or about Vang Trang Khuyet in unit 4 Many students find it difficult to comprehend the listening text about the statue of Liberty in unit 15 or about the accent town of Hoi An in unit 16 because of their lack of background knowledge

2.2 Instrument for collecting data

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

As for Survey questionnaire it is one of the most common methods of data collection It is easily designed and can help the researcher collect a large amount of information only within a short time According to Wallace (2001), the questionnaire is a popular means of collecting data as it enables the researcher to collect data in field settings Furthermore, it is rather easy for the researcher to summarize, analyze and report the data because all the answers are given to the same questions Finally, the questionnaires can consist of both close and open questions so that the informants have chances to express their opinion individually For the above reasons, doing the questionnaires, the researcher can investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude to the activities used in listening lessons

Another tool of the study is classroom observation Wallace (2001) asserts that it is an important technique for the researcher to record what is happening at the time that the teaching and learning of the foreign languages take place In fact, with classroom observation, the researcher can watch, follow and record all activities that the teacher and the students are performing in a particular place Therefore, it is a very useful tool for the researcher to check the reliability of the data collected from the survey questionnaires

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

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

2.3 Description of procedure for collecting data

2.3.1 Questionnaires:

Two questionnaires were designed for both teachers and students to gather the data for the study

2.3.1.1 Questionnaire for teachers

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

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

2.3.1.2 Questionnaire for students

The questionnaire consists of 12 questions (see Appendix 3) The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese before delivering to 140 students of three classes 10C1, 10C3 and 10C9 The researcher used both multiple choice and open- ended questions With each multiple choice questions she also flexibly created one more open option for most questions, in which the respondents can give their own opinion The questionnaire for students is divided into four main parts (See Appendix 3)

Firstly, the first two questions are designed to find the students‟ attitudes towards listening skill The next question is aimed at finding out students‟ evaluation of the activities teachers used for teaching listening skill Question 4 focuses on the students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the text book Question 5, 6 are designed to find out the students‟ perception on authentic listening Finally, question 7,8,9,10,11 and 12 are aimed at finding the students‟ preferences for activities at three stages of a listening lesson From that the researcher will give some comments and suggestions to better situation of using listening activities in order to improve teaching and learning listening skill

2.3.2 Interview

The face-to-face interviews randomly choose five out of ten teachers and twelve students to investigate their evaluation of the activities the teachers use for teaching listening skill Each lasted for an average of fifteen or twenty minutes Language for interview was Vietnamese due to the preference of all respondents This choice of language did not threaten the reliability of the data collected Instead,

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

2.3.3 Classroom observation:

The observation was carried out three times for three different classes The researcher chose 3 different classes 10C1, 10C3, 10C9 and different units to observe: Unit 2, Unit 4, and Unit 5 For each lesson, the researcher observed 45 minutes She set a checklist for her observation including teachers‟ activities and students‟ attitude towards the teachers‟ activities, their involvement in the activities

as well as their references for these activities and their interaction with each other while complete the tasks She also observed the ways that the teachers organized listening activities and how they deal with long and difficult listening text and what activities can be used in the lesson to motivate students in listening to the text

Hopefully, with three different teachers, three different classes and three units, the researcher can get a lot of choice for the listening activities and can get involve in various lesson settings

2.4 Procedures

The questionnaire was filled out by both teachers and students after each class observation The participants were asked to complete the questionnaires seriously within fifteen minutes in their classroom The researcher asked the teacher for permission to have personal contact with the study population in order to explain the purpose, relevance and the important of the study, as well as to clarify any questions that the students had

After gathering back questionnaires, the researchers interviewed 4 students

in each class to clarify their answers to survey questionnaire and clarify what could not be revealed from questionnaires The researcher also randomly chose 5 out of ten teachers to interview about their feeling of the activities they use for teaching listening skill and their ideas to improve the effectiveness of the lesson

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Data analysis of teachers’ survey questionnaire and interview

C Between task and exercises

D All of the above

Table 1: The current situation of using listening activities

Looking at the table 1, the most noticeable thing is that 100% of the teachers flexibly combined three kinds of activities (tasks, exercises and between task and exercise) in teaching listening comprehension None of them used only single type

of activities in their lesson However, exercises were mainly used by the teachers They explained that most of the activities available in the text book belong to exercises These exercises were rather suitable with the students‟ level so the teachers didn‟t have to spend much time designing them

Responding to the question “What do you think of the activities you use for teaching listening”, the teachers self evaluate their activities as follow:

A large number of the teachers (40%) assumed that the activities they use for teaching listening are not effective The evidence to for this was that students perform not well in the lesson They said that many of the activities they used were not eagerly participated by the students Two out of ten teachers (20%) considered that some of the activities they used were effective and some were not 40% of the teachers confessed that the activities they used were effective None of them thought that the activities they use were very effective From the figure it indicated that although the teacher of THD high school had tried their best to design various kinds of activities to make their lesson more interesting and raise the students‟ interests, however, they were really satisfied with what they had done

3.1.2 The ways that teachers at THD high school use the listening activities

(See table 2 at Appendix 6)

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

From the answers to question 3, 4 and interview question 3, it revealed that most of the teachers at THD high school flexibly used the listening activities available in the text book Six out of ten teachers (60%) said that sometimes they changed the activities available in the text book if they found these activities not suitable with students‟ ability and interests Four of them (66.7%) often replaced the activities in the text book, 50 % of them changed the lead-in activities the text book to make their lesson more interesting by adding some beautiful pictures to motivate students and rouse their attention to the lesson With too difficult activities which could not

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

Responding to question 5 (What do you think of your lesson after changing listening activities available in the text book?), 66.7 % of the teachers agreed that the lesson was much more interesting and effective after changing the activities However, they confessed that they didn‟t change or redesigned the activities in the text book very often in spite of the fact that they realized some activities were not of students‟ interest or not suitable with their ability The reason they showed was that

it is difficult and time-consuming to design them The findings above revealed that the work of choosing suitable activities for the students seems not easy as each type can be suitable in this situation but it is not in the others Thus, the teachers should take the students‟ interest and ability into account before designing as well as applying the activities to their lessons

3.2 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire and interview

(See Appendix 3, 4)

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

(Question 1, 2- See Appendix 3)

When being asked about the importance of listening skill and their opinion

about listening skill, 61,4 % of the students responded that listening skill is very

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

As for the students‟ attitude towards listening skill, most of the informants (nearly 73%) found listening the most difficult skill in comparison with others, 22

% students considered listening as difficult as other skills, and a small number of them (5%) stated it is easier than speaking, writing and reading skill, none of them considered listening is very easy

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

language skills, therefore, their actual performance in listening activities goes far

beyond their control and their thought

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

(See table 4 at Appendix 6)

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

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

students‟ evaluation of activities their teachers used and the ways they used them in

class The results of these questions showed that majority of the informants (64.3%)

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

them thought that the listening activities used by their teacher were suitable with

their ability and interests A large number of them (70%) agreed that their teachers

well integrated listening skill with other language skills Nevertheless, there were 19

informants (13.6%) admitted that they didn‟t highly appreciate the activities their

teachers used in listening lesson When being interviewed “Why you don‟t like the

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

used were boring and inflexible They claimed that their teacher used the same

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

activities available in the text book and they didn‟t like some of them as they too

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

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

result, it revealed that most of the activities that the teachers used were of students‟

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

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

language proficiency It could be better if the teachers added more interesting

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

raise students‟ interest in listening

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

(See table 5 at Appendix 6)

(Question 4- See Appendix 3 and interview question 4- See Appendix 4)

It is advisable for the teachers to know how their students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the text book in order to design activities suitable with their ability and interests When being asked „What do you think of the activities available in the text book?‟ in response to this question, the informants showed different ideas 51.2 % of the informants thought that the activities available in the text book are interesting and suitable for their ability and interests 22.9 % of the informants found these activities a bit difficult and not appropriate to their ability and interests It is clear that no text book is completely perfect and meet all learners‟ needs and interests, that is the reason why there are still 7.9 % of students criticized these activities are boring and they suggested that their teachers should add more interesting activities or employ authentic listening text from other sources such as internet , TV or radio

3.2.4 Students’ perception on the authentic listening (See table 6 at Appendix 6)

(Question 5, 6- See Appendix 3)

Basing on the students‟ answers to question 4 and 5 we can see the fact that all of the teachers (100 %) of THD high school made full use of the listening text available in the text book The students reported that their teacher have never exploited other sources of listening apart from the text book

To compare the difficulty between record-listening and authentic listening, most of the informants (78.6 %) assumed that listening to the recording is much more difficult than authentic listening It can be calculated from table 3 about the reason for this, a large number of the informants (46.4 %) explained that it is easier for them to listen if they see the face and the lip movement of the speaker‟s 20.9 % of them thought that listening to the tape recording is much more difficult than authentic listening because they can not ask the speaker to repeat what they do not catch 13.7

% tried to understand all the words they hear and found listening to the tape recording more challenging with unknown words or grammar structures, especially

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

From the result presented above, it is clear that the students wish to listen to some authentic listening besides the listening in their text book to improve their ability of listening in the real life It is hoped that teachers should employ authentic listening beside the listening texts available in the text book in order to give students opportunity to get familiar with spontaneous spoken English in real life real so that the students can improve their listening skill and they are more confident when they have chance to communicate with native speakers

3.2.5 Students’ preference for class- listening activities

3.2.5.1 Students’ preference for pre-listening activities

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

Students' preference

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

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

to read through the questions (63.6%) or discussing the listening topic in pairs of in group (50.7%) Some others less common activities are asking the students to make