A STUDY ON THE APPICATION OF TOP-DOWN TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS TO ENGLISH NON-MAJOR 10 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT TAM DUONG HIGH SCHOOL

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES --- ĐÀO THỊ HỒNG YẾN A STUDY ON THE APPICATION OF TOP-DOWN TECHNI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

ĐÀO THỊ HỒNG YẾN

A STUDY ON THE APPICATION OF TOP-DOWN TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS TO ENGLISH NON-MAJOR 10 TH

GRADE STUDENTS AT TAM DUONG HIGH SCHOOL

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP “TOP-DOWN” TRONG GIẢNG DẠY KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH

LỚP 10 TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT TAM DƯƠNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

ĐÀO THỊ HỒNG YẾN

A STUDY ON THE APPICATION OF TOP-DOWN TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS TO ENGLISH NON-MAJOR 10 TH

GRADE STUDENTS AT TAM DUONG HIGH SCHOOL

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP “TOP-DOWN” TRONG GIẢNG DẠY KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH

LỚP 10 TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT TAM DƯƠNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Ph.D Ngô Hữu Hoàng

Hanoi, 2014

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DECLARATION

I hereby, certify the thesis entitled “A study on the application of top-down techniques in teaching listening skills to English non-major 10th grade students at

Tam Duong high school” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of

Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any

other universities or institutions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study and research

Hanoi, 2014

Đào Thị Hồng Yến

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest thanks to Mr Ngô Hữu Hoàng for his assistance, encouragement as well as his guidance he gave me while I was doing my research

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all my lecturers

at the Department of Post-graduate Studies, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi whose support and considerations have enabled me to pursue the course

I would also like to express my thanks to the teachers of English at Tam Duong high school who helped me in providing the materials, giving me encouragement and making constructive comments

I am also thankful to my English non-major 10th grade students for their whole-heated participation in the study

Last but not least, I owe my sincere thanks to family who have always inspired and encouraged me to complete this study

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ABSTRACT

The research was implemented to investigate the effect of top-down techniques

in teaching and learning to the English non-major 10th grade students of Tam Duong high school In this research the investigator attempted to apply top-down techniques

in teaching listening to improve the 10th grade students‟ listening skills Two tests and

a questionnaire survey were used as the powerful instruments to collect data After that the data was analyzed and contrasted to check how top-down techniques can help

to enhance students‟ listening skills At the end of the research, the investigator proposed some suggestions to improve the learning and teaching listening skill at Tam Duong

Table 1.1: Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners

Table 1.2: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test

Table 1.3: Procedures of the study

Table 1.4: Paired Samples Statistics

Table 1.5: Paired Samples Test

Table 1.6: Activities motivated students in the pre-listening stage

Table 1.7: Activities attracted students in while-listening stage

Table 1.8: Useful and effective activities to students after listening

CHARTS:

Chart 1.1: The students‟ opinion about listening tasks

Chart 1.2: The students‟ opinion about learning listening with top-down techniques Chart 1.3: The students‟ opinion about their listening skill after term learning with top-down techniques

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ………i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……… …ii

ABSTRACT ……… iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES AND CHARTS……… iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… v

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Significant……… 3

5 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1.1 Theory on listening 6

1.1.1 Definitions of listening 6

1.1.2 Listening process……….………7

1.2 Teaching listening skills 7

1.2.1 Stages of a listening lesson 8

1.2.1.1 Pre-listening 8

1.2.1.2 While-listening 9

1.2.1.3 Post-listening 10

1.2.2 Top-down process……….………12

1.3 Factors that make listening difficult in learning a foreign language 14

1.4 Summary 16

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18

2.1 Research approaches 18

2.2 Research setting 19

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2.3 Participants……… ………20

2.4 Research types 20

CHAPTER III: THE STUDY……… 21

3.1 Study stages ……… … 21

3.1.1 Finding out a problem ……… 21

3.1.2 Setting a hypothesis……… 21

3.1.3 Forming a pilot course……… 22

3.2 Students‟ perceptions after taking a pilot course…… ………….…….29

3.3 Discussions 35

3.3.1 For students 35

3.3.2 For teacher 36

3.3.3 Weakness 36

3.4 Summary 36

PART C: CONCLUSION 38

1 Conclusions 38

2 Pedagogical Implications……….39

3 Limitations……… 42

4 Suggestions for further study 43

REFERENCES……….44 APPENDIX 1……… I APPENDIX 2………….……… III APPENDIX 3………….……… VI

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Being the international language, not only is English a foreign language but

it is also considered a means to communicate and promote mutual understanding and cooperation between people all over the world With the rapid use in the fields of science, technology, culture, education, economy and so on, the need of teaching and learning becomes one of the most significant problems in each nation including Viet Nam

Recently, the number of people who would like to learn and become a master in English in their fields become more and more increasing, especially when Viet Nam adopted the policies to integrate with other countries all over the world, teaching and learning English is not only a personal concern, but it also becomes one of the noticeable nation‟s problems Moreover, English also affirms its important role by becoming a compulsory subject at high school and universities Thus, the teaching and learning English is one of the most crucial issues for not only students and teacher but also our society However, the teaching and learning English is seriously influenced by the traditional methods such as Grammar Translation Method, or Audio-lingual Method and so on which mainly focus on the grammar, vocabulary and structures; and listening and speaking skills „seem to be forgotten‟ in high school

The researcher has worked as an English teacher in Tam Duong high school since 2011 With her experience in teaching English at high school, she realized some reasons which made her have a strong motivation to do this study Although

in class, students are taught and follow the English course book offered by the Ministry of Education and Training Department, in which each unit is designed to

be composed of five parts - reading, listening, speaking, writing and language focus; assessment and testing only aim at students‟ knowledge of English grammar along with reading or writing Therefore, they have encountered many difficulties in learning listening and speaking English

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In addition, when students studied at primary school or secondary school, teaching listening seems to be ignored They even don‟t have enough essential equipment for their listening lessons as qualitative records or cassettes, stereos Instead of using stereo, their teacher often read tape script for them in listening lesson so that when attending class in high school, they feel really difficult to listen

to the native speaker‟s voice and listening tape script Most of the time, the teacher used her native language to develop the class and the listening input in the second language was only evident when reading aloud sentences or phrases written on the board It showed that learners had few opportunities to listen to the target language

One more reason is that the limited time in learning and teaching English in class According to estimating, students are learnt one listening period (45 minutes) per week, and most of them don‟t spend their time to practice English at home Because of these above reasons, students have little or even no motivation and interest in learning English, especially listening

According to Nunan (1998), he believes that listening is the basic skill in language learning Without listening skill, learners will never learn to communicate effectively; in fact, over 50% of the time that students spends functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening

For all the reasons above, the researcher decided to do a study on the application of top-down techniques to help improve listening skills of her students

in English non major 10th grade students

2 Aim of the study

The study aims at finding the most suitable ways to improve the students‟ listening competence at Tam Duong high school To reach this aim, the students‟ difficulties when they listen and do English tasks will be explored first, and then top-down techniques will be applied to teach listening skills for students by teacher

to find out that if it is the most suitable way for enhancing students‟ ability in learning listening Teacher will investigate the effects of using top-down techniques

in teaching listening when she applies them in her listening lessons

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Simultaneously, the study also aims at studying the learner‟s perception regarding listening activities using top-down listening techniques The final aims is formulating pedagogical implications and making suggestions for improving the teaching and learning of the listening skill at Tam Duong high school The focus of the paper was directed toward high school students because the problems in listening have their origins in high school where few students have been the recipients of listening teaching Thus, these high school students have difficulties in learning English not only at present, but also in the future if they can‟t find the solutions for it

In order to find out the answer for the study, two research questions was conducted as following:

Research questions

1 What is the effect in terms of English language learning with the application

of applying top-down techniques in teaching listening for English non-major

10th grade class?

2 What are the learner´s perceptions regarding listening activities using down techniques in an English non-major 10th grade class?

top-3 Scope of the study

In this study, the researcher intends to use top-down techniques to help English non-major students who are at grade ten in Tam Duong high school, can overcome their difficulties in learning listening skills, not using the other kind of techniques These techniques were conducted over a period of time with 8 weeks and were applied in the three stages of a listening lesson: pre-listening; while-listening and post-listening The sample populations are 35 students from class: 10A10

4 Significance of the study

First of all, this study brings benefits for the researcher‟s professional development The findings will indicate that whether top-down techniques is useful

to be applied to raise her students up in learning listening as well as raising their

In addition, this study also contributes to develop the learning English movement between the investigator‟s colleagues in her school or even from the other schools Most of her colleagues often claim that teaching listening often causes stresses and demotivation because of students‟ attitude and their abilities in learning listening Therefore, this study can promote a movement or a competition

in finding the best ways to teach not only listening but other skills to improve students‟ competence in learning English The other teachers are able to express their ability and creativity in teaching listening and contribute to enhance the quality

of teaching and learning English

Moreover, the findings will help the researcher to realize her weaknesses in teaching listening and from them she will improve to make them become more suitable and better to her students‟ learning This study also is considered as a report for what the researcher did to deal with listening English problems in her high school as well as finding a better way to improve her students‟ ability in learning listening

5 Design of the study

There are three main parts in this study:

Part A: Introduction, presents the rationale, research questions, aims, scope,

significance and design of the study

Part B: Development, which is divided into 3 chapters:

- Chapter I: “Literature review”, sets up theoretical background that is relevant to

the purpose of the study

- Chapter II: “Methodology”, indicates the setting, the participants, the methods

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- Chapter III: “The study”, shows the way to collect data, the application of

top-down techniques on teaching and learning listening skill at Tam Duong high school, the findings and some discussions

Part C: Conclusion, summarizes the key issues in the study, giving the implications

of the study in which suggestions for improving listening skills to the students at Tam Duong high school are proposed points out, the limitations and provides some suggestions for further study

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter aims at providing a theoretical background for the study by giving the concepts most relevant to the topic Firstly, a number of the theory on listening is introduced Secondly, some difficulties in learning listening and some problems in teaching listening skills are discussed Finally, top-down processes along with its techniques in teaching listening will be presented

1.1 Theory on listening

1.1.1 Definitions of listening

It is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development in

a native language and in a second language Therefore, there have been numerous definitions of listening (by Anderson and Lynch (1988); O‟Malley, Chamost and Kupper (1989); Buck (2001)) which present different views of scholars towards the concept

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), there are two influential views about listening: traditional view and alternative view

Traditional view considered listening as a passive language skill, like reading skill It means that learners learn in a passive way in listening lessons The learners tends to listen to the information which relates to their exercises without paying sufficient attention in the discourse such as the background knowledge of the speakers

as well as their intentions, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning etc This leads to a serious problem: teachers merely test students‟ capacity of hearing and remembering utterance they hear in the recording, not students‟ understanding of the conversation or talk In fact the learners are not provided enough information about what they are going to hear before the tape plays and they cope with a wide range

of problems while they are listening and the result is that they cannot get any listening experience from the teacher For this perception, teaching listening, in the traditional way, is thought as teaching listening for sounds not for meaning Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as inappropriate and inadequate

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On the other hand, alternative view considers the learner as an “active model builder” Listeners of this kind can combine the new information with their own background knowledge to reach full comprehension of what has been heard Both researchers agree with this view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of listeners on incoming information

According to Littlewood (1981), listening demands active involvement from the hearer In order to construct the message that the speaker intends , the hearer must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources Only by applying the knowledge of the language , can the hearer divide the continuous stream

of sound into meaningful units and only by comparing these units with the shared knowledge between himself and the speaker , can the hearer interpret their meaning The nature of listening comprehension means that the hearer should be encouraged to engage in an active process of listening for meanings, using not only the linguistic cues but also has nonlinguistic knowledge

1.1.2 Listening process

A variety insights into the listening process have been developed in the past

40 years by Richards (1983); Anderson (1983; 1985); Wolvin and Coalky (1985); Underwood (1989); Buck (2000) Listening to spoken language has been acknowledged in second language theory to consist of active and complex process that determines the content and level of what is comprehended These processes use utterance as the basis for constructing meaning based propositional presentations that are identified initially in short term memory and stored in long term memory

Anderson (1983; 1985) differentiates comprehension into three interrelated and recursive process: perceptual processing, parsing and utilizing During a single listening event the processes may flow one into the other, recycle and may be modified based on what occurred in prior or subsequent processes

On the other hand, the conceptions of bottom-up and top-down processes in comprehension are mentioned by some authors such as Lynch (1988), Nunan (1999) According to them, bottom-up process refers to the listening process that

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starts with discriminating sounds, identifying words and comprehending grammatical structures and build eventually to comprehension of meaning This is a somewhat mechanistic or "data-given" (Brown, 1994) view of processing and has been the focus in some styles of teaching

Top-down process may be described as holistic or "conceptual driven" in that they focus on the overall meaning of the passage and the application of schemata Schemata are mental frameworks based on past experiences which can be applied to help us interpret the current situation Inferring ideas, guessing words‟ meaning and identify topics are all examples of top-down processing As such, bottom-up process sees language comprehension as a process of passing through a number of consecutive sequences or levels and the output of each sequence becomes the input for the next higher one

Generally, the results of the studies, Bacon (1992) as well as O‟Malley (1989), show that successful or effective listeners use more top-down strategies compared with less successful or ineffective listeners Moreover, ineffective listeners are at a disadvantage because they fail to elaborate on what they hear; they are not able to make the connections between what they hear and their own

„personal experiences‟

1.2 Teaching listening skills

1.2.1 Stages of a listening lesson

1.2.1.1 Pre-listening

According to Davies and Pearse (2000), it is a useful stage to prepare the learners for what they are going to hear, arouses students‟ interest and provides students with the purposes of listening, just as we usually prepare for real-life situations

Pre-listening stage consists of activities to help listeners get certain knowledge

related to listening text gradually It is undeniable that learners will encounter certain difficulties to do a listening lesson without being provided with the idea of what they are going to hear Even if the sounds or the words they hear are familiar,

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they may still be unable to understand because they lack certain kinds of knowledge

of the topic, discourse or the relationship between the speakers It is, therefore, of

great importance to let students know what to expect for the tasks before listening

This kind of work is generally called pre-listening stage According to Penny Ur

(1984), he states that “I t would seem a good idea when presenting a listening passage in class to give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening”

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

+ To motivate students to pay more attention to the listening text

+ To activate or build students' prior topical and linguistic knowledge It is important for students to be able to relate what they already know to the speaker's content

+ To help the students match what they hear with their stored knowledge by activating their prior knowledge about the coming topics

+ To set purposes for listening: When students set purposes for listening, they

become active listeners who listen for something, not to it

These purposes can be achieved by one of the following activities: the teacher introduces the listening topic, gives background information, gives clear instructions for the while-listening activity; or the students are given guidance on

the structure of what they are going to hear, discuss the topic situation, look at

pictures, read through the questions if asked Each of the above activities will help the students focus on the main points of listening passage by narrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating their previous knowledge

1.2.1.2 While listening

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

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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 Therefore, activities of this stage must be interesting and carefully chosen

To be effective activities, these while-listening ones should possess the two following characteristics Firstly, they should be interesting enough to make the students want to listen and complete the activities The topic, the content and the length of the listening text as well as the students‟ interest decide the success of the while-listening activities If students have to do the same kind of work again and again, they may get bored and lose their interest Secondly, they should be things that are within the capacity of most students It is because failure can easily and rapidly lead to de-motivation The level of difficulty can be adjusted by giving

support (which can be done at the pre-listening stage) It is advisable to provide

while-listening activities which are a challenge for the more advanced students, but

not discouraging those who only gain little success

Like choosing pre-listening activities, as suggested by Underwood (1990:49), the teachers must consider a number of factors when choosing while-listening activities as follow: the possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if needed, the convenience of carrying out activities which need individuals to give oral responses

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

as self-study and either in a listening center or at home, material or ideas which might be used for post-listening work, immediate feedback on the extent to which the students have succeeded in the task

To conclude, "Good while-listening activities help learners find their way

through the listening text and build u p the expectation raised by the pre-listening activities" (Mary Underwood, 1990:46)

Post-listening stage relates to the activities which are done after the listening

is completed Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages and some relate only loosely to the listening

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text itself This stage is also very importance, with certain purposes as well as

activities

According to Underwood (1989), the first purpose of post-listening activities is

to check how well the students understood and whether they have completed the listening task The teacher may give an answer orally, showing the answer on the board

or on the over-head projector or ask students to check again the answer in the book Students can work in pairs to check each other‟s answer or work in group to discuss any problem related to the listening text The second purpose of the post-listening work

is to reflect on why some students have failed to understand or miss parts of the passage.Another purpose of post listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of the listening text Students are asked to deal with activities which are more

or less general language learning activities Sometimes, this does not mean that they should not be done, but it should be recognized they do not give practice in listening skill, although the additional language learning can well enable students to listen more successfully in the future.The fourth purpose is to give students opportunity to consider the manner and attitude of the speaker in the listening text This is also important because the listeners can see the aims of the speakers based on his/her attitude

Additionally, the general factors listed in pre-listening and while-listening, Underwood (1989) indicated that the attention should be given to the following factors

in selecting post-listening activities:

+ The amount of language works the teacher wish to do in relation to the particular listening text

+ The speaking, reading or writing skills should be included in the post-listening work

+ The students should work in pairs or in groups

+ The chosen activity should be make motivating

It can be seen that the learning language programme consists of four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing In fact, speaking, writing and reading can arise from listening, especially from post-listening work The order and organization of

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a language lesson are usually not decided at the same time integrating these into other language skill work For instance, the students listen and respond in writing, the teacher ask students to answer orally Therefore, listening exercises always involve in the rest three skills

To achieve these mentioned purposes, the following are possible activities:

 The teacher give the answers orally, or show the answer on the black board

 The teacher draw the students' attention to specific parts of the listening text and focus on the forms and function, lexis, stress and intonation which have caused problems for the students

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

Anderson and Lynch (1988 : 11) refer to such listeners as “active model builder.” To arrive at such listening comprehension, they suggest that three sources of knowledge are needed: schematic or background knowledge, context and systemic knowledge

Exercises that require top-down processing develop the learner‟s ability to do the following:

+ Use key words to construct the schema of a discourse

+ Infer the setting for a text

+ Infer the role of the participants and their goals

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+ Infer causes or effects

+ Infer unstated details of a situation

+ Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation

The following activities develop top-down listening skills:

+ Students generate a set of questions they expect to hear about a topic, and then listen to see if they are answered

+ Students generate a list of things they already know about a topic and things they would like to learn more about, then listen and compare

+ Students read one speaker‟s part in a conversation, predict the other speaker‟s part, then listen and compare

+ Students read a list of key points to be covered in a talk, then listen to see which ones are mentioned

+ Students listen to part of a story, complete the story ending, then listen and compare endings

+ Students read news headlines, guess what happened, then listen to the full news items and compare

Peterson (1991, p.114-121) suggested several techniques for teaching listening comprehension Top-down techniques are more concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving meaning, with global understanding, and with the interpretation of a text Below are some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners (table 1.1)

- Listen to a number of short biographies and for each write the title that expresses the main idea Recognize the topic - From a list of possible topics predict the topics

that people will discuss when they don‟t know each other well Listen to conversations and note which are discussed

- Listen to a series of process descriptions and mark the picture that it tells about

Table 1.1: Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners

1.3 Factors that make listening difficult in learning a foreign language

It is undeniable that listening is considered to be the most difficult among the four skills Therefore, there are a number of difficulties which students had encountered such

as different aspects of listening comprehension, factual or literal comprehension, interpretation or critical listening The followings are some potential problems that should be paid attention to in order to help listeners feel self-confident to overcome them

1.3.1 Inability to control over the speed of the speaker

In learning English, the greatest difficulty in listening comprehension is that learners are not able to control the speed of the speaker Learners often feel that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out or they can get the message When they fail in sorting out the meaning of one part, the following will be missed This can lead to the ignorance of the whole chunk of discourse Obviously they fail to listen

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1.3.2 Inability to concentrate

It is a major problem if learners lack concentration in listening work This can be caused by a number of things such as: the bad quality of machines, the poor quality of listening materials Other reason for loss of concentration is that the topic is not interesting or not familiar and learners find it difficult to understand Sometimes, listeners easily lose their concentration, as they feel tired of making a great effort to hear word by word The break in attention, even very short, can seriously impair the comprehension of the whole process of listening Concentration of the listener is considered vitally important in a successful listening lesson

1.3.3 Problems in understanding different accents

Many foreign-language learners who are used to the accent of their own teacher are surprised and dismayed when they find they have difficulty understanding someone else Some of them try to get over this at first by claiming that the second speaker‟s accent is somehow inferior or wrong But strictly speaking there is rarely such a thing as a

“wrong” accent, there are simply accent that are more or less difficult to understand- that

is, broadly speaking, ones that are more or less removed from the original variety learned What we can do is to try to give learners a reasonable familiarity with the two most useful English accents - that is to say the British and American standard varieties- and then perhaps let them have a taste of some others simply to open their eyes to the possibilities and give them some practice in coping with them

1.3.4 Problems in vocabulary limitation

When listening, there are words or phrases that are not known to the listeners This causes the listeners a lot in getting the message of the passage and this may interrupt the listeners‟ concentration or thinking The listeners have to try to follow the speaker and sometimes they have to guess the meaning of a word or phrase depending

on the context Teachers, therefore, should help the learners to know that there is not equal importance for every word and there is no need for learners to understand all the new words when listening

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1.3.5 Teacher’s role in teaching listening

As many students feel afraid of listening, teachers should be a guide to help them and encourage them Teachers should give students practice in listening which ask students to interpret and understand meaning, together with listening which teaches learners about how English is actually spoken That is, students need practice in

listening for meaning and instruction about how to do this

According to Gardner and Lambert (1972), the way teacher presents the contents must be dynamics and interesting to get students‟ attention Besides, teachers should have to look for activities and employ different techniques Rost, M (1994) stated that “language teachers need to provide various types of support to their learners

to help them develop listening skill This includes talking to learner in the target language, raising learners‟ awareness of their listening styles and strategies and introducing a range of materials, speaking styles and listening situations”

Underwood (1989, p.22) indicates that teacher needs to provide planned and systematic opportunities for their students to learn how to:

- determine what an utterance or conversation is about

- establish who is talking and to whom

- recognize the mood and attitude of the speakers

Part of the teacher‟s role is to ensure that the lesson proceeds in an orderly and productive way so that the students feel secure, relaxed and unthreatened by the listening tasks

1.4 Summary

The chapter has presented the relevant literature, which has helped to form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study

Firstly, a number of concepts about listening comprehension are given according

to some leading scholars and types of listening are presented

Secondly, the investigator has shown the way how to teach listening skills (focus

on the stages of listening lesson which includes three stages: pre-listening;

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CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter aims at providing readers a detailed description of which research approach would be conducted, how the study is carried out, who are the participants

2.1 Research approaches

The aim of this study is applying the top-down techniques in teaching listening skills for students at Tam Duong high school to improve their listening skills Moreover, the study was formed with several uncertainties and suspicions, thus it needed the alteration and improvement during the research process After careful studying, the researcher decided to implement this study by using action research approach

The concept of action research is generally attributed to the father of social psychology, Kurt Lewin, who wrote about it in the 1940s (see Lewin, 1948, 1951; also Burns, 1999, 2005) It was later taken up by educators, who saw it as a means

by which teachers could take control of their own professional destinies Carr and Kemmis (1986), two of the leading advocates of educational action research, wrote that:

“Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of those practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out” (p 162)

According to David Nunan, 1992, there are seven steps in the action research cycle:

Because the school is located in a small town and most of students are grown

up in a farmer‟s family so that English seemed not to be concerned In addition, students learn spoken English in an isolated environment (means that they don‟t have any chances to communicate with native speakers neither in class nor outside classroom) Consequently, their ability to speak and listen to English cannot be improved and motivated Besides, in students‟ view, English is only focused as a compulsory subject must only be completed in school so that learning English is

only their obligated duty Moreover, be affected by passive process in learning,

students tend to prefer written work and reading to listening and speaking Among the four skills, listening is regarded to be the hardest for them From the writer‟s classroom observation many of them have associated listening lessons with pain and boredom and claim that they benefit very little from them

The teaching staff consists of 9 teachers of English, most of them graduated from University of Language and International Studies, Viet Nam National University, Ha Noi Their age varies from 25 to 36 The researcher is a teacher of English at this high school; she is 25 years old and has about 3 years of teaching experience at this school

The curriculum of high school students is strictly applied from the textbook: Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11 and Tieng Anh 12 However, from the researcher‟s observation and from students‟ reflection, the listening records using in this book are not rich and variable enough to motivate students to practice listening skills

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regularly Therefore, the researcher decided to take PET (Preliminary English Test)

as main material for teaching listening at the class Besides, she also used British council web as a believable source for listening material

2.3 Participants

The participants involved in this thesis study were included 35 students from class 10A10 at Tam Duong high school According to the statistic form Placement Test given by the English Group at Tam Duong high school, most of students in this class were at beginning level

There are some reasons why the researcher chooses these English non-major

10th grade students for this study Firstly, the researcher‟s duty is teaching for 10thgrade students, not 11th grade or 12th grade However, the other classes are mainly natural and social classes so that their ability in learning listening is a little bit better than basic class (10A10) Secondly, 10th grade students lack skills in doing listening exercises and they often feel unconfident in listening lessons Listening skills play

an important part in developing students‟ competence in learning English Thus, teacher realized that it‟s necessary and essential for students to balance their listening skills to improve their English skills Moreover, the students are required

to be more professional in listen the longer and more complicated tape instead of the simple ones as at secondary school As a result, how to improve students‟ listening skills, especially with top-down techniques, would be studied to help students have some experience as well as basic skills and can be more professional

at listening the complicated tape

2.4 Research types

This study was conducted with the aims of finding the students‟ perceptions

in terms of using top-down techniques in listening activities for English non-major

10th grade students and the impact of this application in teaching listening in class

To achieve the research goal, quantitative was applied The researcher would collect quantitative data by using the results of the questionnaires, pretest and posttest

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CHAPTER III: THE STUDY 3.1 Study Stages

3.1.1 Finding out a Problem

After having experienced in teaching English at Tam Duong high school for three years, the researcher realized that most students not only in her class but in the other colleagues‟ class seem not like learning listening skills The results from a survey indicate the reasons why students are not interested in learning listening Because of the boredom in repeated listening exercise or task, the lack of vocabulary led the misunderstanding of the listening content, lack of skills in learning; the laziness of the students after school they didn‟t spend time practicing listening at home and the biggest problem is students just want to learn for testing not for understanding A test called pretest was taken in the investigator‟s class to investigate the students‟ ability in learning listening English before they took part in

a pilot course with top-down techniques The researcher used a standardized test which is defined by Crowl (1996:114) “the test has been designed so that the procedures for administering the test, the materials used in the test, and the way in which the test is scored are constant” It means that both of pre- test and post-test that was given to the students had the same problems There were three listening exercises with 20 questions used in pretest and posttest

Table 1.2: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test

3.1.3 Forming a Pilot Course

A pilot course was formed for the English non-major 10th grade students at Tam Duong high school Top-down process was applied to help students do the exercises given in three listening stages: pre listening, while listening and post listening The aim

of this pilot course is using alternative techniques: top-down to enhance students‟

ability

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3.1.3.1 The Four Letters Ps as a Guideline Analysis for the Study

In order get the purpose of the course, the following four letters Ps Process-Product (according to Hoang.N.H‟s model) were relied on and adhered to observation and analyses:

Project-People-+ Project: the study course was conducted

+ People: those who do the project

+ Process: the arrangement of ways, things, venue and time in which the project is conducted

+ Product: the outcomes of the project

3.1.3.2 The Project

Firstly, there is some general information about the previous course English is taught at high school with 16 units in four themes, each unit includes five lessons: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus Looking at this divide, the role of each English skill is divided equally However, in real life, because of the pressure from the examinations, listening and speaking skills seem to be ignored or received less attention on In addition, the given lessons combine with the repeated exercises make students feel bored with listening ones As a results, students feel gradually unmotivated and bad results or limited ability in learning listening skills cannot be avoided Because of these problems in learning and teaching listening skills happened at the researcher‟s class and in her school, thus an action course was conducted to implement another techniques help students in her class overcome their challenge in listening as well as improve their listening proficiency

3.1.3.3 The people

The people here are the participants involved in this thesis study They are 35 students from class 10A10 at Tam Duong high school The advantage of these participants is they are my students; the researcher had a period of time dealing with them

so the researcher herself has some understanding as well as awareness about their ability,