Effective techniques to motivate students to listen to english (3)

The relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation I.3.The role of motivation in learning listening comprehension II.. Developing listening materials PART THREE: CONCLUSION REFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

I Motivation in language learning

I.1 Definitions of motivation

I.2 Types of motivation

I.2.1 Extrinsic motivation

I.2.2 Intrinsic motivation

I.2.3 The relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

I.3.The role of motivation in learning listening comprehension

II Teaching and learning the listening skill

II.1 An overview of listening

II.1.1 Definition

II.1.2 Classification of listening

II.1.3 The importance of listening

II.2 Learner problems in listening comprehension

II.3 Stages of a listening lesson

III Some effective techniques to motivate students to listen to English

III.1 Improving the teaching process

III.2 Designing suitable tasks

III.3 Developing listening materials

PART THREE: CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

A sample listening lesson

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION The real need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English

teaching and learning around the world Millions of people today want to be able to master English to

a high level of accuracy and fluency For such an important role, teaching and learning English at upper secondary schools is a necessity

Language can be recognized as a media of communication, rather than the simple complex of sound, vocabulary and grammar English language teaching, therefore, has long been conducted through reading, listening as receptive skills and speaking, writing as productive skills in communication Among all the factors, listening is an essential section of language competence and it indicates the comprehension of spoken language

It is clear that one of the main goals of learning English is to use it effectively in communication Listening skill, more or less, is an important that students must acquire in the learning process However, listening is considered to be the most challenging one Most students find it hard to master

this skill and soon feel bored with listening periods Obviously, nobody except the teacher has the

ability to make the lesson interesting enough to attain the highest result in motivating students in listening activities If students are motivated, they will find it easy to listen and therefore they will probably be successful In any case, teachers’ job is to do all they can to arouse their students’ interest and motivation

All the reasons mentioned above encouraged me to carry out the study “Effective techniques to motivate students to listen to English” This study aims at:

• Clarifying the importance of motivation and listening skill in foreign language teaching and learning

• Offering some suggestions on effective techniques to promote students’ listening ability

Hopefully, my study will be helpful in some way for teachers in their teaching work and it also helps students improve their own listening skill

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

I Motivation in language learning

I.1 Definitions of motivation

So far, there have been different definitions of motivation contributed by We should first begin

with the definition of Jeremy Harmer “Motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action” (1991:3)

Brown H.D defined it as “the extent to which you make choices about goals to pursue and the

effort you will devote to that pursuit” (1994:34)

According to Kenneth D Moore, motivation can be defined as “ forces or drives that energize and direct us to act as we do” (1992:172).

The abstract term “motivation” on its own is rather difficult to define, can interpret it in our own

way, but generally, motivation is the energy that directs us toward a given goal It is easier and more

useful to think terms of the “motivated’ learner: one who is willing or even eager to invest effort in

learning activities and to progress

Motivation essentially concerns our own accomplishments We plan for them, work for them and then achieve them If we perceive a goal (that is, something we wish to achieve) and if that goal is

sufficiently attractive, we will be strongly motivated to do whatever necessary to reach that goal Goals can be of different types, we can make a useful distinction between short-term goals and

long- term goals Long-term goals might have something you do with a wish to get a better job at some

future date, or a desire to be able to communicate with members of a target language community Short-term might include such things as wanting to pass an end-of-semester test or ting to finish a unit

in a book

In general, strongly motivated students with long-term goals are probably easier to teach than

those who have no such goals Hence, it is necessary for teachers to encourage their students to seek long-term goals in foreign language study

I.2 Types of motivation

Motivation can be divided into two main categories: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation The

former concerns with factors outside the classroom and the latter concerns with what takes place inside the classroom

I.2.1 Extrinsic motivation

“Extrinsic motivation is that which derives from the influence of some kind of external incentive,

as distinct from the wish to learn for its own sake or interest in tasks ”(Ur, 1996: 227).

As we know, some students study a language because they have an idea of something they wish to

achieve It has been suggested that there are two major of such motivation called integrative and instrumental motivation

• Students of integrative motivation are attracted by the culture of the language community In the strong form of this motivation, they wish to integrate themselves into that culture In the weak one, they desire to know as possible about that culture Thus, students try their best to acquire language so as to reach the culture's integration or at least thorough understanding

• Instrumental motivation describes a situation in which students believe mastery of the target language is an instrument to fulfil their personal such as getting a better job or having a higher position in the society in the future

Many other factors have an impact upon a student's level of extrinsic motivation and most of these have to do with his or her attitude to the language This in turn will be affected by the attitude of those who have on that student such as the parents, members of the student's community and his or her previous success or failure as a language learner

I.2.2 Intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is associated with those who learn for their own self-perceived needs and

goals (intrinsically motivated learners) In other words, it is what learners bring to the learning

environment, that is, their internal attitudes, values, needs and personality factors

Ur (1996:280) states “Global intrinsic motivation -the generalized desire effort in the learning for

its own sake- is largely rooted in the attitudes of the learners: whether they see the learning as worthwhile, whether they like the language and its cultural, political and ethnic associations.”

While it is reasonable that many adult learners have some degree of extrinsic motivation, and while it is clear that the attitude of students can be affected by members of their communities, there can be no doubt that intrinsic motivation plays a vital part in most students’ success or failure as language learners Many students bring no extrinsic motivation to the classroom They even have negative feelings about language learning For them what happens in the classroom will be of vital importance in determining their attitude to the language, and in supplying motivation- a component in successful language learning

We can some factors affecting intrinsic motivation such as physical conditions, the teacher’s methods and success

•Physical conditions have a great effect on learning and can alter a student's motivation either positively or negatively So the teacher should try to make their classroom, as well as the atmosphere, as pleasant as possible

•The method by which students are taught also affects their motivation If students lose

confidence in the method, they will find it boring and become passive recipients

• Success or lack of it is important in the motivational drive of a student Both complete failure and complete success may be de-motivating To assure the success of learning tasks, much of

teacher's work in the classroom should be given the level of challenge right

I.2.3 The relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation originates from external factors whereas intrinsic one roots from internal factors However, they are interrelated Both of them have an important part to play in classroom motivation

There is a fact that intrinsic motivation is more stable than extrinsic motivation Therefore, intrinsic motives are rarely changed and when a change does occur, it usually occurs slowly while encouragement of students' intrinsic desire is every teacher's ultimate goal Moreover, external incentives are effective means to push intrinsic forward, or we can say that rewards students to learn

better Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can be as two parallel processes but integrate with each other

to make the approach to the target language more rapid and more efficient

II Teaching and learning the listening skill

A glance through the past century or so of language teaching will give an interesting picture of how varied approaches and methods applied in language teaching are New methods have appeared, developed and replaced the previous ones for the only purpose: to find out the best way to teach a foreign language Obviously, using a language well is not a simple question of grammar but overall appropriateness and acceptability Thus, what is going to be presented in this paper is in the light of the communicative approach

II.1 An overview of listening

II.1.1 Definition

It seems to be difficult to define what listening is Through years, various definitions of listening have been proposed Listening is more than merely hearing words It is claimed to be a complex and active process

Howatt and Dakin (1974) define listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and vocabulary,

and grasping his meaning An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously

Besides, according to Rost (1991), listening comprises some component skills such as discriminating between sounds, recognizing words, identifying grammatical groupings of words, identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning, connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues, using background knowledge to predict and later to confirm meaning and recalling important words and ideas

II.1.2 Classification of listening

According to Ur (1996: 105), listening can be divided into real-life listening and classroom listening Many learners of English find themselves in a variety of situations where they need or want

to listen to English being used in real - life for different purposes There is, however, a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and actual listening situations in real life This is because listening materials which learners usually listen to (dialogues or conversations for example) are very grammatical and controlled in so many ways as the speakers often speak at perfectly controlled speed, with perfect voice tone, accent and correct grammar Whereas, in real - life conversations, different people speak with different accents, speed and voice tones without or less paying attention to grammar

♦ Real-life listening

In real life, there are two ways in which we often listen:

 Casual listening

Sometimes, we listen with no particular purpose in mind, often without much concentration Usually, we do not listen very closely, unless we hear something that particularly interests us, and afterwards, we may not remember much of what we hear, for example, listening to the radio while chatting to a friend

 Focused listening

Sometimes, we listen for a particular purpose to find out information we need to know or to study the language In this situation, we listen much more closely, trying to get the content as much as we can, for example, listening to your friend explaining how to use a new cassette player

♦ Classroom listening

Listening in the classroom may be divided into intensive listening and extensive listening.

 Intensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for full, detailed comprehension, for example, listening to a dialogue on the tape to study its structures, intonation patterns in an English class

In the classroom context, there are two possible types of intensive listening exercises:

1 Exercises focusing on detailed comprehension of meaning:

This can be done through

+ Comprehension questions which may be:

- Factual (where the answer is clearly stated somewhere in the passage)

- Inferential (where the learner has to make some sort of connection for himself)

- Personal (where the question is related to the learner's own experience or opinion)

+ Summary questions (where the learner listens to a passage and has to summarize it)

+ Logical problems

2 Intensive listening for language

Teachers often do more detailed work on language once the learners can understand what they are listening to

 Extensive listening

Extensive listening is the freer, more general listening to natural language for a general idea, not for a particular detail and not necessarily under the teacher's direct guidance With this type of listening, the learner is not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar point linked to the rest of the course Extensive exercises are those where the learner is primarily concerned with following a story, or finding something out from the passage he is listening to

In summary, to a large extent, however, the division between intensive and extensive listening is somewhat artificial Listening does not lend itself neatly to this type of classification in the way that reading does It is perfectly easy to use the same listening passage for both extensive and intensive

II.1.3 The importance of listening

It is now widely accepted that oral communication cannot take place without listening and listening plays a central and possibly predominant part in the whole process of language learning

As mentioned before, listening is an important, active skill of spoken language as it involves various kinds of the listener’s knowledge: knowledge of phonology, vocabulary, semantics of the language in use, culture of its people, his life experience in the topic, his ability to predict and respond, etc It decides his comprehension, content and attitude in response to the speaker’s speech as well

In learning English as a foreign language, the learner cannot develop speaking skill unless he develops listening skill To have a successful conversation, he must understand what is said to him Later on, the ability to understand the native speaker in direct conversations, on the radio or tape may

be very important for him to further study the language and communicate in it

Besides, listening to spoken English is an important way of acquiring the language – of “picking up” structures, vocabulary In the Vietnamese situation where the learners do not have a chance to hear English spoken around them every day and cannot acquire it easily the teacher needs to give them as much opportunity to listen to spoken English on tape as possible

To conclude, listening provides a foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development It can be said to be not only the end but also the means of teaching, learning languages

in general and English in particular

II.2 Learner problems in listening comprehension

It can’t be denied that listening is considered to be the most difficult among the four skills Many learners have difficulties with different aspects of listening comprehension These difficulties are closely associated with the characteristics of spoken language

Underwood (1990) identifies seven potential problems learners often encounter in their learning listening

• Inability to control the speed of the speaker: Many students of English cannot keep up with the

speed at which a speaker speaks They feel that the utterances disappear before they can elicit the information, while in a written text, in reading comprehension for example, words remain

on the page and they can look back or reexamine them thoroughly They often try to understand everything they hear 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

• Inability to get things repeated: Another difficulty connected with controlling the "input" (what

the speaker says) is that the leaner is not always in a position to get the speaker to repeat an utterance

• Vocabulary limitation: Listeners have to try their best to follow the speakers and sometimes to

guess the meaning of a word or phrase from its content Native listeners can guess the meaning with the help of context clues, but for foreign language learners, a new word can be a barrier which makes them stop and think about the meaning of the word and thus makes them miss the next part of speech The problems often occurs when learners have been taught English with more emphasis on accuracy than on fluency, more stress on the forms of language than its functions

• Failure to recognize the signals: To move from one point to another, or give an example, or

repeat a point, speakers use many different signals For foreign listening, these signals can easily be missed In order to be able to connect the various utterances and ideas in the way the speakers intended them to be connected, students need to be taught to listen to these signals For example, in a formal situation, when giving a new point the speakers can use expression like "Secondly or then ", or they may pause or increase loudness, make use of a different intonation

• Problems of interpretation: Problems of interpretation can also hinder communication.

Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have difficulty in interpreting the words they hear And the listeners from other cultures can easily misinterpret the meaning of non-verbal clues-facial expressions, nods, gestures, tone of voice

• Inability to concentrate: Even the shortest break in listening can seriously affect

comprehension Therefore, lack of concentration is a major problem Students will concentrate easily if they find the topic interesting or familiar But if they make enormous effort to follow what they hear word by word, the listening work will be tiring Such factors as equipment, poor recording, unacoustically suitable rooms for the use of recorded material can also make concentration difficult

• Establish learning habits: Teachers often teach students to understand everything in the

English lesson by repeating and pronouncing words carefully Students can form the habit of listening word by word from this teaching method of teachers So when they fail to understand

a particular word or phrase, they will be worried and become discouraged by their lack of success This habit will cause a lot of difficulties when the learners deal with real-life listening situations

II.3 Stages of a listening lesson

Normally language teachers often facilitate the development of listening skill by creating listening lessons that guide learners through three stages: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening

II.3.1 Pre-listening stage

It is widely accepted that this stage is conducted before learners listen to the text The pre-listening phase is a kind of preparatory work which ought to make the context explicit, clarify purposes and establish roles, procedures and goals for listening” (Rost,1991:232) Thus its main aim is

to contextualize the listening text, providing any information needed to help learners appreciate the setting and the role relationships between participants

Agreeing with that Hedge, T (2000:249) points out “at this stage the teacher will need to decide what kind of listening purpose is appropriate to the text The learners will need to “tune in” to the context and the topic of the text, perhaps express attitudes towards that topic, certainly bring to the front of their minds anything that they already know about the topic and most probably hear and use some of the less familiar language in the text which would otherwise distract or create anxiety during listening”

II.3.2 While-listening stage

While-listening activities can be shortly defined as all tasks that students are asked to do during the time of listening to the text The nature of these activities is to help learners to listen for meaning that is to elicit a message from spoken language Rixon (1986:70-1) points out that, at the while-listening stage students should not worry about interpreting long questions or giving full answers, but they should concentrate on comprehension, whether they have understood important information from the passage

The work at the while-listening stage needs to link in relevant ways to the pre-listening work While they listen, learners will need to be involved in an authentic purpose for listening and encouraged to attend to the next more intensively or more extensively, for gist or for specific information (Hedge, T 2000:252)

II.3.3 Post-listening stage

This is the last stage of a lesson so it is for student’s production Post-listening activities allow the learners to ‘reflect’ on the language from the passage; on sound, grammar and vocabulary as they last longer than while-listening activities so the students have time to think, discuss or write (Rixon 1986:64-97)

Activities for this stage are aimed at helping learners to use what they have learnt from the listening text Therefore teachers should create and vary the activities for learners to do depending on their level of English Hedge, T (2000:252) emphasizes that the work at this stage can also usefully involve integration with other skills through development of the topic into reading, speaking and writing activities

III Some effective techniques to motivate students to listen to English

Success in English teaching and learning comes easily if teachers can use motivational strategies effectively and arouse interest in learning the subject In learning English, listening skill is very

important, therefore, it is worth seeking techniques to make the teaching and learning the listening skill successful

III.1 Improving the teaching process

III.1.1 Techniques for pre-listening

It is commonly recognized that pre-listening is a preparation of the listening class In this stage, teachers tend to arouse learners’ expectation and interest of the language text they are going to listen For teachers, when planning lessons, time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and these activities should not be rushed The techniques before listening are varied and depend on a number of factors: time, material, the ability of the class, the interest of the class, the nature and content of the listening text itself, etc It is, therefore, of great importance to let students know what to expect for the tasks before listening The techniques used at this stage are:

• Using visual aids / games to introduce the topic of the text

• Giving background information

• Using pre-listening questions

• Pre-teaching new vocabulary in the listening text

• Giving listening tasks

In general, pre-listening plays a role of warming-up and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention on the following while-listening stage and decrease the difficulties of the text It is more important in its relating to and being of help to many other aspects which will be represented later

III.1.2 Techniques for while-listening

While-listening is the main procedure of listening information input In this stage, learners are given some audio materials for listening Learners may be requested to deal with some questions with the listening materials, such as:

 Multiple choice

 True/false statements

 Comprehension questions

 Gap-filling

 Information transfer

 Differences or mistake detection

 Pictures or statements sequencing

 Matching

 Note taking

Usually learners need to answer the questions simultaneously or take note of some main points of the listening materials Teachers, as a guide during this process take control of the speed of the materials, start or pause of the machine and raise some questions for discussions or give necessary explanations to help the learner comprehend the materials Depending on the learners’ language level