SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILL

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILLSÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM: STEPS TO TEACH SLOW STUDENTS LISTENING SKILL

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO HÀ NỘI

-*** -ĐỀ TÀI SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

“CÁC BƯỚC DẠY KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO

HỌC SINH YẾU KÉM”

Năm học: 2014- 2015

MÃ SKKN: _

Hanoi Department of Education and Training

in English, which is a major constraint in inventory integration There are anumber of possible reasons for this.

As a matter of fact, Vietnamese students, particularly, schoolboys andschoolgirls studying in high schools, cannot speak as well as listen to Englishwell by a simple reason they are not very good at both utilizing vocabularies andpronouncing the sounds in English Besides, the problem is that if the studentsreally are excellent, but they are more unlikely to prove to others know theirtrue ability, then perhaps they will hardly succeed in economic integration

As far as is known, the Vietnamese are industrious and hard, all of whichused to be viewed as their greatness Nevertheless, this concept must be changedwhen Vietnam join ASEAN Communities As a result, the young ought tomaster the language to have the ability to work or fully compete with othercountries in the region

It is essential for teachers to find out the most effective way of teachinginasmuch as I believe that being good at listening to English will help learnersimprove speaking skill, which means that they find it easier and more confident

to gain work as expected

All in all, the above has given the writer of the thesis encouragement to

conduct the study entitled “ Steps to teach slow students listening skill”.

Within the scope of this study, the implementer hopes that students willhave a passion for learning about English

II SCOPE OF THE STUDY

In this study, the investigator has intention of helping students who arebad at English overcome listening difficulties These techniques wereexperimented over a period of a term

Due to the restricted time, the implementer cannot do the research for along time and study on a larger population The research is done with theparticipation of 96 students from two classes that have the same proficiencylevel, that is, students in 12A7, 12A8 in 2014-2015 school year

III AIMS OF THE STUDY

With the successful research topic, the teacher is sure to get the followingexperiences:

+ Assisting pupils in understanding the content of each unit

+ Having the ability to listen to simple lessons

+ Being more and more interested in studying English

IV METHODS OF THE STUDY

1 Methods of observation

The teacher did research after attending both the intensive course ofmodern methods of teaching English held in the University of Languages andInternational Studies( ULIS) and the Dyned course organized in Thai Thuyprimary school, Gia Lam, Ha Noi a year ago

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

I RATIONALE

In reality, English is not only a compulsory subject in the nationalcurriculum but also a means of daily communication of a number of people.What’s more, it is believable that English is the language which can not bereplaced in every field worldwide as well as opens the new world and helpslearners using it as their mother tongue be more and more successful in theirlife

Theorically, the teacher needs to be in charge of building the mosteffective learning environtment to give students a hand with practising listening

to English as much as possible Also, the trainer has to know how to coordinatethe different methods and exploits media with a view of attracting the students’attention as well as making the students active and creative

As you know, listening skill is difficult for most pupils in rural areasbecause of numerous reasons However, if the instructor can guide them step bystep, then the students will be far more interested in each lesson and make muchprogress

II PRACTICAL BASIS

Most of the students studying in high schools come from small villages

As a result, they do not have a good knowledge of English for a number ofreasons

To begin with, they can be a bit timid whenever they have to speakEnglish in front of the crowd since they think that they will be made fun of ifthey make mistakes

Next, listening skill is so difficult that they cannot understand what thespeaker is saying Gradually, they are not fond of studying English any more.That’s the reason why they do not focus on the teacher’s any longer

Besides, they have to do such a variety of things at home that they do notfind time to study English More importantly, they cannot know how topronounce each sound and use intonation in English correctly, which hindersthem from listening to English

Last but not least, the native speaker speaks English quickly Furthermore,the pupils’s source of vocabularies is limited Hence, it is essential that theteacher had better devote her time to each lesson

In a nutshell, the instructor’s responsibilty is that help the students

overcome these problems

At the turn of the school year, I always concentrate on investigating mystudents’ ability through tests so I have noticed that most of them are lacking inlistening skill although some of them are excellent at English grammar Theresults of the survey of the early school year of 12A7 and 12A8 as follows:

Class

Number

of students

Good Quite good Average Bad Very bad

12A7 49 4 8.2 8 16,3 11 22,4 16 32,6 10 20.5 12A8 47 3 6.1 8 17.0 14 29.8 12 24.5 10 22.6

In point of fact, thanks to National Foreign Languages 2020 Project,teaching as well as studying English is changed dramatically The first reason isthat the teachers have to deepen their professional knowledge daily Moreover,they get used to using English to teach their pupils, which makes them as well astheir students improve speaking skill and listening one better and better Also,the teachers must help learners take English lessons actively to get the bestresult

According to this point of view, the teachers must have a good

knowledge of their speciality and know how to use innovative methods of

foreign language teaching and learning usefully in order to enable students to speak and improve their English listening skill more effectively

III OVERVIEW OF LISTENING SKILL

1 Introduction

In the process of studying English, listening skill plays the most importantpart as this skill makes learners enhance the ability to pronounce as well ascommunicate in English

As far as the investigator is concerned, there are several factors affectinglistening skill The first one is that the students do not have enough vocabularies.Next, they lack concentration while listening In addition, native speakersproduce spontaneous connected speech, etc

Surely, a number of students were not good enough to comprehend whatthey were listening to As a result, the implementer requires to use a variety ofmethods to help students overcome difficulties in listening comprehension

2 Definition of listening

Brown (3, 2006) pointed out that listening is an activity which is carriedout once and there is no a second chance unless the listeners ask to repeat Itmeans that students need to pay attention to listening to the text and can play thetapes several times to improve their listening skill Brown indicated thatlistening activities in the class include three following stages such as before-listening, while- listening and after- listening So when students practiselistening to English at home had better do these activities as well

3 Methods of teaching listening skill

a Studying the way of pronunciation, stress and intonation

Grasping the method of pronunciation, stress and intonation is vital toenable students to listen to English better, particularly in case learners listen tothe native speakers’

Focus on the pronunciation of each new word and learn how to lay stress

on the important words in each sentence by making use of one of the most

reliable dictionaries namely, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary

English, Longman Advanced American Dictionary

Therefore, make great effort to pronounce words in English perfectly toachieve a great breakthrough in studying English, peculiarly listening skill

b Enriching a source of vocabularies

It is unavoidable that students should memorize vocabularies as much as

possible For instance, learning new words by heart by recording them in a smallnotebook, using suitable images and sounds

Furthermore, pupils are compelled to review new words as well as studythe way of making sentences including these words regularly

c Knowing how to guess the meaning of new words in each situation

It is effortful to figure out the whole content while listening to the text.Thus, students have to guess the meaning of new words through the dialoguecontent, stress and intonation of that word By predicting these, pupils can createtheir own interesting topic by inferring participants, places, words that appear inthe test are based on the number of words heard or available, to conjecture thesequence of events happening in the listening passage

d Arranging a suitable studying time

Listening skill requires pupils to work out everyday and for a long time For this reason, students need to spend their time practising listening to English

at home daily to gain the best achievement

4 Planning an effective listening lesson

+ For teachers:

Think of the aim of the lesson carefully to help students with practisingand developing not only listening skill but also the other ones After the section,students understand the main content of the listening and made some requests orexercise certain language exercises

Looking into the content and requirement of each lesson from thetextbook to prepare for the most interesting syllabus Be always active in everyteaching unit Also, adjust time to teach each part appropriately andscientifically

Choosing listening techniques in a lofty way by relying on the content ofthe lesson, characteristics as well as qualities of students in order for teachers tohave the different listening methods in 3 parts such as Pre-listening, While-listening, Post- listening

Studying to know how to use visual aids, namely, a smart board, a radio,pictures related to the lesson

Using English songs, video clips at the beginning or at the end of thelesson with activities about this song as an extra activity

Take students’ expectations into consideration in order to help themimprove their listening ability

+ For students:

The teacher asks students to prepare for the next lesson by giving themopen questions related to the next unit and encouraging them to be creative,confident to raise questions referred to the lesson

and while listening for the order of questions can be completely different fromthat of the listening passage

Secondly, pay attention to connectors “ However, Unfortunately, Well…”because these words are used as a sign of moving to the next sentence In case,you are unable to hear anything, guess and choose the best answer

B True/ False Predictions

This form is used for listening to a passage, a text or a conversation Sostudents only give predictions based on existing knowledge

C Ordering Statements/ Pictures

Normally, in this exercise, students will listen to a story or a process bylooking at pictures or sentences to rearrange the order of the story or the process

D Open Predictions

By and large, this form asks students to fill in the gap or predict the dataand information It is possible that students will fill the missing information inthe tables with columns of data Sometimes, Networks / Brainstorm can be usedinstead

E Pre-Questions.

The teacher gives some questions including the main meaning of the text

to attact students’ attention while they are listening Students don’t have to guessthe answer Nevertheless, the teacher plays the tape only once and asks students

to answer the question immediately

6 Stages of a listening lesson

The listening lesson can be divided into 3 stages, for example,

Pre-listening, While- Pre-listening, Post- listening Therefore, the teacher is more likely

to plan the most suitable method of teaching

a Pre-Listening

The pre- listening stage is of great significant which leads learners to thelistening passage they are listening to, exites them and provides them with thepurposes of listening so the teacher gives the interesting ways to attract thestudents’ attention through setting up the context by asking them to depict thepictures, answer some questions or read some new words aloud Nevertheless,the teacher ought to teach a few new words ( from three to five new words) toprovide an opportunity for students to guess the meaning of other ones

Thus, the teacher also arouse students’ interest to make them far morecreative and self- confident In the end, explain the number of listening times ( atmost three times) and the objective of this stage to students clearly Also, the

teacher ought to choose the best methods to apply to this stage such as True/False Statements, Predictions, Open Prediction, Ordering Statements/ Pictures,Pre-Questions These activities may support students to gain the commonknowledge that assists them in following the listening text.

Thence, the instructor needs to utilize appropriate kinds of activities

b While- Listening

The while- listening stage is composed of the main content students have

to be clear about as well as activities learners are asked to do during the timethey are listening to the text This stage requires a great deal more challengingand exciting activities than those of the pre- listening

The content of the listening text can catch students’ fondness is thatdepend on the instructor’s effort Consequently, the teacher had better try to givepractice in predicting and matching to give educatees a hand with accomplishingtheir listening task less perplexedly

Methods of teaching and pupils’ interest decide the achievement of thewhile- listening activities For this reason, it is crucial that the teacher plan thesyllabus, including appealling activities or games based on the textbook Inaddtion, ask students to open the book to read the questions carefully for a whilebefore the teacher plays the tape On the contrary, if the teacher does not takeadvantage of the textbook, give handouts to pupils and ask them to look into thequestions to guess the correct answer Through this activity, students are certain

to perceive the lesson easilier

As you know, in the process of listening, students are going to make somemistakes so the teacher requires to observe and help them with correcting theseerrors

Methods like Listening and Numbering Pictures, Multiple Choice, Filling, Comprehension Questions, Selecting, Delibrate Mistakes, Grids, Listenand Draw, etc… need making use of properly to encourage students toremember the content

Gap-Likewise, the major goal of this part is that understanding the maininformation or details As a consequence, it is advisable that the teacher allowsstudents to listen to the text to understand the whole content and do exercises,and then maybe get them to replay the segment or difficult sentences to confirmthe answer Make sure that students should be set strict limits on listening toevery word in order to get used to listening to longer and more complexpassages

Activities of this stage are supposed to be in line with students’potentiality, which means that almost all movements in the while- listeningperiod should be carried out by learners at different levels

c Post- listening

In this phase, activities are done just as the listening is finished This is thelast step to enable students to consolidate their understanding First of all,students are required to work in pairs Next, they are asked to work in groups tosort out problems that are more or less general language learning activities

Unlike the previous periods, other than listening skill, the post- listeningwork includes further skills such as speaking, reading and writing

Additionally, the post listening stage requests students to complete a lottrickier activities compared with those of the pre- listening in conjunction withthe while- listening In that event, activities should be chosen to make studentsmotivated

The teacher can single out one of the following forms, namely, Write- it–

up, Roleplay, Further Practice, Recall the story, Gap- filling, TransformationWriting and so forth Moreover, it can be seen that time should be permitted to

do the post- listening

At last, information as well as mistakes from students ought to becollected and checked or corrected

In brief, when the teacher concentrates on this element properly, theactivity chosen for students will be more specific and effective