Luận văn thạc sĩ sử DỤNG TIẾN TRÌNH TƯƠNG tác để PHÁT TRIỂN kỹ NĂNG NGHE của SINH VIÊN năm THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG sư PHẠM hà nội

This study was intended to investigate the impact of interactive process onfirst-year students’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education.. Morespecifically, the researcher strived

This study was intended to investigate the impact of interactive process onfirst-year students’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education Morespecifically, the researcher strived to (1) investigate problems related tointeractive process the students may have while learning listening, and (2)examine the effects of using interactive process in teaching listening to the first-year students

To achieve the above mentioned objectives, an action research was conductedwith the participation of 60 first-year students from two classes at Hanoi College

of Education The study included: (1) a pre-test and a questionnaire, (2) theinstruction of interactive process, (3) a post-test and a questionnaire, (4) andstudents’ diaries Later, all the data were collected and analysed

The main findings of the research were as follows: (1) Such problems asdifficulties in new vocabulary and structures, background knowledge of thetopics, the unfamiliarity of topics, the inability to catch up with what speakerssaid, the students’ limited ability of pronunciation as well as listening to stressand intonation were what caused the students troubles in listening (2) Afterinteractive process had been applied, the students’ scores in the post-test werehigher than in the pre-test Overall, the instruction of interactive processimproved their listening skills

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS,

L2: Second language

EFL: English as a foreign language

TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Procedures of the Study 26

Table 2: Results of Question 1 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27

Table 3: Results of Question 2 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27

Table 4: Results of Question 3 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27

Table 5: Results of Question 4 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 28

Table 6: Results of Question 5 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 28

Table 7: Results of Question 6 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 29

Table 08: Results of Question 7 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30

Table 9: Results of Question 8 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30

Table 10: Results of Question 9 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30

Table 11: Results of Question 10 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31

Table 12: Results of Question 11 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31

Table 13: Results of Question 12 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31

Table 14: Results of Question 13 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 32

Table 15: Results of Question 14 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 32

Table 16: Results of Question 15 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 33

Table 17: Paired Samples Statistics 35

Table 18: Paired Samples Correlations 35

Table 19: Paired Samples Test 36

Table 20: Students’ Evaluation of the Learning Session 38

Figures Figure 1: Action Research Model 21

Figure 2: Comparison of Students’ Performance in the Pre-test and Post-test

34

Figure 3: Subjects’ Satisfaction with the Course 36

TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the Study 1

1.3 Objectives of the Research 1

1.4 Research Questions 1

1.5 Scope of the Study 1

1.6 Significance of the Study 1

1.7 Methodology 1

1.7.1 Approach 1

1.7.2 Sample 1

1.7.3 Instrumentation 1

PART B DEVELOPMENT 1

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1

1.1 Theoretical Background 1

1.1.1 Definitions of Listening 1

1.1.2 Listening Comprehension 1

1.1.2.1 Characteristics of Spoken Discourse 1

1.1.2.2 Bottom-up Processing and Teaching Bottom-up Processing 1

1.1.2.3 Top-down Processing and Teaching Top-down Processing 1

1.1.2.4 Interactive Processing 1

1.1.2.4.1 A Combination of Bottom-up and Top-down Processing 1

1.1.2.4.2 Teaching Interactive Processing 1

1.1.2.5 Listening Strategies 1

1.2 Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the

Thesis 1

1.3 Summary 1

CHAPTER 2: METHODS 1

2.1 Research Setting 1

2.2 Subjects 1

2.3 Research types 1

2.4 Research Approaches 1

2.5 Data Collection Instruments 1

2.5.1 Pre-test and Post-test 1

2.5.2 Questionnaires 1

2.5.3 Diaries 1

2.6 Intervention: Instruction of Interactive Process in Class 1

2.6.1 Listening Materials 1

2.6.2 The Instruction in Interactive Process 1

2.7 Data Collection Procedures 1

2.8 Data Analysis 1

2.9 Summary 1

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 1

3.1 Preliminary Investigation 1

3.1.1 Findings 1

3.1.2 Discussion 1

3.2 Evaluation 1

3.2.1 Research Question 1 1

3.2.1.1 Results from Questionnaire 1 1

3.2.1.2 Discussion 1

3.2.2 Research Question 2 1

3.2.2.1 Results from the Pre-test and Post-test 1

3.2.2.2 Results from Questionnaire after the Post-test 1

3.2.2.3 Results from Diaries 1

3.2.2.4 Discussion 1

3.3 Summary 1

PART C CONCLUSION 1

4.1 Recapitulation 1

4.2 Limitations of the Study 1

4.3 Suggestions for Further Studies 1

APPENDIX ………I

PART A INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

According to Barker, Edwards, Gaines, Gladney, and Holley (1980),college students spent 52.5% of their time listening More recent studies oftime spent communicating (Emanuel Adams, Baker, Daufin, Ellington, Fitts,

et al., 2008) suggested that people listened for as much as 55% of their day.Nunan (1998, cited in Jonathan Newton, 2009) stated that in fact over 50% ofthe time that students spent functioning in a foreign language would be devoted

to listening Listening plays such an important role that Powell (1969) stated:

It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need humans have to

be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood Listen toall the conversations of our world, between nations as well as thosebetween couples They are for the most part dialogues of the deaf.(p.5)

Despite properly appreciating the value of speaking, Lee Iacocca (1984)said:

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen.After all, a good manager needs to listen at least as much as he needs

to talk Too many people fail to realize that good communication goes

in both directions (p.54)

From some of the above views, it is possible to see that listening is a vitalingredient to success in communication It is a key second-language skillwhich has a significant role in the language acquisition process Itsdevelopment is of primary concern to language teachers It is also believedthat listening is a significant and essential area of development in a nativelanguage as well as in a foreign language

As a teacher at Hanoi College of Education for three years, the researcherhas found that first-year students whose major is English teaching mustencounter a lot of listening problems Although their grammar and vocabularyare quite good, it is still difficult for them to listen to English materials Most

of the students complained that they had few chances to listen to Englishfrequently in class at high school and their listening skills were scarcelydeveloped Consequently, students were at a loss, which might create highlevels of anxiety and stress among students that could interfere with listeningcomprehension

For these reasons, it is essential to help students improve their listeningskills There must be an efficient method with its techniques and characteristicsthat suit the first-year students in learning listening skills Then interactive process

is believed to be able to help students in learning listening

1.2 Aims of the Study

The purpose of the study is to investigate to what extent the first-yearstudents’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education are improved byreceiving instruction in interactive process Then, recommendations on how

to use interactive process to improve students’ listening abilities are given

1.3 Objectives of the Research

The specific objectives of the research are as follows:

- To investigate problems related to interactive process the students mayhave while learning listening

- To examine and study the effects of using interactive process in teachinglistening to the first-year students

1.4 Research Questions

This survey aims at addressing the two following questions:

(1) What problems related to interactive process do the first-year studentshave in listening?

(2) To what extent does interactive process help the students improve theirlistening skills?

1.5 Scope of the Study

Within the frame of this study, the researcher would like to work on usinginteractive process to improve the first-year students’ listening skills at HanoiCollege of Education The research was restricted to the first-year English-majored students from two classes K39A, and K39B at Hanoi College ofEducation

1.6 Significance of the Study

The study is expected to contribute to the development of teaching andlearning listening skills It aims at helping students improve their listeningskills by using interactive process The significance of this study is that it willprovide teaching implications for EFL teachers in dealing with interactiveprocess In other words, this is significant for educators in providingimplications for developing their listening syllabus, methods of teaching andassessment Lastly, this research can be used as a reference source for thosewho have interest in this issue and a supplement to the previous studies ondiscourse processes

The target population of this study was from two classes K39A, and K39Bwith 60 first-year English-majored students at English Department, HanoiCollege of Education.

1.7.3 Instrumentation

To attain the aim of the study, three data collection instruments were used:tests, questionnaires, and students’ diaries

1.8 Structure of the Study

The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development,and Conclusion

Part 1 includes Chapter 1 which states the rationale, aims, objectives,

research questions, scope and significance of the study as well as itsmethodology

Part 2 consists of three chapters, namely theoretical background and

methods

- Chapter 1 provides the background of the study, including an

overview of listening skills, listening as comprehension, and interactiveprocessing

- Chapter 2 demonstrates the research methods applied in the study with

details on how and why these methods were implemented Besides, thedata collection procedure and data analysis methods are also illustrated

in this chapter

- Chapter 3 presents data analysis, the results and discussions

Part 3 summarizes the main ideas covered in the paper, and presents the

limitations of the study and some suggestions for further studies in theresearch area

Following this chapter are the References and Appendixes for the wholeresearch

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Theoretical Background

However, the learner was seen as an active model builder in the alternativeview New information and listeners’ own background knowledge werecombined to reach full comprehension of what had been heard Anderson andLynch (1988) agreed with this view, which emphasized the activeinterpretation and integration of listeners on incoming information.Littlewood (1981) supported this view as well The author remarked thatlistening required active involvement from listeners The nature of listeningcomprehension was that the listeners should be encouraged to be engaged in

an active process of listening for meaning, using not only the linguistic cuesbut non linguistic knowledge as well

Listening was viewed as an active process in which individuals focused onselected aspects of aural input, constructed meaning from passages, and thenrelated what they heard to existing knowledge (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) Inother words, listening was an active process of constructing meaning and thiswas done by applying listeners’ knowledge to the incoming sounds in whichnumerous types of knowledge were involved including linguistic knowledgeand non-linguistic knowledge (Gary Buck, 2001:31) because “comprehensiontakes place when input and knowledge are matched against each other”(Faerch & Kasper, 1986, p 264)

1.1.2 Listening Comprehension

1.1.2.1 Characteristics of Spoken Discourse

To understand the nature of listening processes, it was essential to have agood insight into the characteristics of spoken discourse and the potentialproblems they caused for listeners

According to Halliday (1989, p.31), spoken language had the followingcharacteristics: (1) variation in speed - but it was generally faster than writing;(2) loudness or quietness; (3) gestures - body language; (4) intonation; (5)stress; (6) rhythm; (7) pitch range; and (8) pausing and phrasing Moreover,spoken discourse was usually instantaneous It meant that listeners mustprocess spoken texts immediately and there was no chance to listen again.Often, spoken discourse stroke the second-language listener as being veryfast, although speech rates varied considerably For example, radio monologsmight contain 160 words per minute, while conversation could consist of up

to 220 words per minute The impression of faster or slower speech generallyresulted from the amount of intra-clausal pausing which speakers made use

of Lastly, incoherent, inarticulate, and repetitive in unplanned talks mightoccur in spoken discourse and there were a significant number of false starts,

hesitations, repeated words or phrases, and fillers like “well, y’know, like, sort if” (Cameron, 2001)

From the characteristics of spoken discourse above, it was seen that theycould add a number of dimensions to listeners’ understanding of how toprocess speech That led to two kinds of processes involved in understandingspoken discourse: bottom-up and top-down processing

1.1.2.2 Bottom-up Processing and Teaching Bottom-up Processing

 Bottom-up processing

One of the views of listening dominating language pedagogy since theearly 1980s was bottom-up processing Bottom-up process was proposed byRumelhart and Ortony (1977) and expanded upon by Chaudron and Richards(1986), Richards (1990) and others Nunan (1992) regarded the bottom-up

processing model as a listening process of “decoding the sounds that one

hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) tocomplete texts” In this view, phonemic units were decoded and linkedtogether to form words, words were linked together to form phrases, phraseswere linked together to form utterances, and utterances were linked together

to form complete, meaningful texts Therefore, students needed to know thecode in order to decode sounds The code consisted of how the soundsworked, how they strung together and how the code could change in differentways when it was strung together This process was a linear one in whichmeaning itself was derived as the last step It was called the “listener as taperecorder view” of listening because listeners took in and stored messagesconsecutively, in much the same way as a tape recorder - one sound, oneword, one phrase, and one utterance at a time (Anderson and Lynch, 1988).Moreover, the ways how the linguistic competence of a listener worked to'build' toward comprehension of a message were described by bottom-up

processes According to Peterson (2001), these were the lower level processesthat worked to construct meaning from recognition of sounds and words,which, when identified, were fit into larger phrasal units and then matchedwith related ideas stored in long-term memory Brown (2007, p 312) notedthat bottom-up processing focused on sounds, words, intonation, grammaticalstructures, and other components of spoken language At lower levels oflanguage proficiency, the activation of bottom-up processing was thought toimpose a great strain on conscious attention and working memory.

In bottom-up strategies, listeners relied on the language in the messagewhich was a combination of sounds, words, and grammar that createdmeaning These strategies consisted of: listening for specific details,recognizing cognates, and recognizing word-order patterns Depending onlisteners’ purposes for listening, they needed to learn how to use the process

to their advantage Mendelsohn (2001) pointed out that in real-life listeningpeople listened in different ways, depending on their purpose of listening

 Teaching bottom-up processing

Ur (1985)’s teaching bottom-up processing of was composed of:identifying the antecedents of pronouns; recognising if a sentence was active

or passive; distinguishing between sentences containing causative and causative elements; identifying major components of a sentence; recognisingthe use of intonation; recognising the time reference of a sentence;distinguishing between positive and negative sentences; identifying particles

non-in rapid speech; and identifynon-ing missnon-ing particles non-in colloquial speech

What is more, Richards (1990) concentrated on text-based aspects whenusing bottom-up process A typical exercise was given, for example, hear aword and repeat it: “I will hear a word and I repeat it over and over” Theauthor also presented other ways to make use of the process such as listening

for structure “Students listened for verbs, and then tried to fit them withnouns”; listening for specific details and recognising cognates (1995, p.29).Besides, Rubin (1994) suggested that listeners focused on the meaning ofindividual like:

- Recognising individual phonemes

- Recognising stressed syllables

- Recognising syllable reduction due to weak forms and/ or elision

- Recognising assimilation, this was when a sound changed tobecome more like another sound which followed or preceded it

Peterson (1991) and Brown (2001) shared the same views of using

bottom-up processing in teaching listening which included:

- Discriminating between intonation contours in sentences

- Discriminating between phonemes

- Listening for word endings

- Recognising syllable patterns

- Being aware of sentence fillers in informal speech

- Recognising words, discriminating between word boundaries

- Picking out details

- Differentiating between content and function words by stresspattern

- Finding the stressed syllables

- Recognising words with weak or central vowels

- Recognising when syllables or words are dropped

- Recognising words when they were linked together in streams ofspeech

- Using features of stress, intonation and prominence to helpidentify important information

- Listening for specific details

- Recognising cognates

- Recognising word-order patterns

1.1.2.3 Top-down Processing and Teaching Top-down Processing

Nunan (1992) explained that such things as knowledge of the topic athand, the speaker or speakers, and their relationship to the situation, as well as

to each other and prior events were all related to context and situation.Similarly, Richards (1990) pointed out that the background knowledgerequired for top-down processing might be previous knowledge about thetopic of discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, or knowledge in theform of “schemata” or “scripts” - plans about the overall structure of theevents and relationships between them

The top-down processing referred to how listeners used their worldknowledge to attribute meaning to language input; how their knowledge ofsocial convention helped them understand meaning Listeners applied top-down processing when using their context and prior knowledge like topic,genre, culture, and other schema knowledge in long-term memory to build aconceptual framework for comprehension

Another study made by Buck (1994) considered top-down processing asone in which listening comprehension was achieved through processing thatinvolved prediction and inference on the basis of the hierarchies of facts,propositions, and expectations by using an internal source such as priorknowledge Using this process, listeners could ignore some detailedinformation and researchers could consider the fact that listeningcomprehension might not a unidirectional ability.

 Teaching top-down processing

Ur (1985) highlighted the following steps for using top-down process toteach listening:

- Listening to part of a conversation and inferring the topic

- Looking at the pictures, then listening to conversations about thepictures and matching them to the pictures

- Listening to conversations and identifying the settings

- Reading a list of key points to be covered in a talk, thennumbering them in the sequence heard while listening to the talk

- Reading information about a topic, then listening to talk on thetopic and checking whether the information was mentioned or not

- Reading one side of a telephone conversation and guessing theother speaker´s responses, then listening to the telephoneconversation

- Looking at the pictures of people and guessing what they might

be saying or doing, then listening to how the story really ended

Richards (1990) brought out a top-down learning strategy with someillustration that teachers could apply in class The researcher presented acareful procedure with these steps: (1) listening for topics, then details –students started thinking about what could be electric; (2) putting a series of

pictures or sequence of events in order; (3) listening to conversations andidentifying where they took place; (3) reading information about the topicthen listening to identify whether or not the same points were mentioned, orinferring the relation between the people involved.

Also, Chamot (1994) brought a model up for teaching top-downprocessing In this model, listeners must think about the situation, try tounderstand the speaking purpose, and try to understand the speaking attitude.Then, they predicted what speakers would say The last step was to focus onconversation themes

Rubin (1994) appreciated that listeners might emphasize the gist of thewhole listening instead of the meaning of individual words Picture detailsand global processing details might be included

1.1.2.4 Interactive Processing

1.1.2.4.1 A Combination of Bottom-up and Top-down Processing

 The need for an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down processing

During a long period of time, many studies have been done on using thebottom-up and top-down processing to teach listening As a consequence,diverse results have been drawn

The effects of training in top-down comprehension skills against

bottom-up recognition training were investigated by Polmes (2003) No significantdifferences between the two groups in the final comprehension measure werefound Polmes attributed this finding to a discrepancy between the contentsand exercises of the training and testing conditions, as well as the insufficienttraining

However, Osada (2001) used bottom-up processing on a study andattributed the lack of success in listening Based on the analysis of answers toquestion on idea unit analysis, the researcher found that low-proficiency

Japanese students of English tended to adopt a mental translation approach tolistening Osada was in favour of more emphasis on a top- down approachbecause beginner level listeners could not construct meaning when theyprocessed connected speech on a word-by-word basis only Thus, they usedprevious knowledge in order to contextualize a situation.

Conversely, Hulstijin (2001) suggested that the development of top-downstrategies be inadequate for linguistic input to become an intake for L2learning The researcher also argued that bottom-up skills needed to bedeveloped at the beginner level so that all the components of the acousticsignal became meaningful units for the listener Moreover, the researcherstated that bottom-up and top-down strategies did not act independently.While the relationship between both was not fully understood, it was clearthat there was some sort of compensatory relationship between them In caseone process did not work effectively, the other would assist listeners in order

to have meaningful listening comprehension

From the results of such previous studies above, it was essential to have anappropriate processing to teach and learn listening Consequently, interactiveprocessing, an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down processing, came intobeing The processing was expected to be a good method for teaching andlearning

 The importance of interactive processing

Nunan (2002) clarified that listening comprehension was neither top-downnor bottom-up processing It was an interactive, interpretative process wherelisteners employed both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge to makesense of the incoming message It was necessary that the learner gotawareness of how to use those learning strategies in efficient and effectiveways Learners would need to balance top-down with bottom-up strategies

during the listening comprehension process While a top-down approachwould help learners develop real-life listening skills, bottom-up would helpthem develop word recognition skills

Listening comprehension was an inferential process (Rost, 2002).Linguistic knowledge and world knowledge interacted as listeners created amental representation of what they heard Bottom-up and top-down processeswere applied to get to this mental representation and achieve comprehension.Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of receiving what the speakeractually said, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaningwith the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement,imagination and empathy To listen well, listeners must have the ability todecode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactiveprocesses to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what was said in avariety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication Listeninginvolved listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions To sum up, it waswidely admitted that listening comprehension was not merely the process of aunidirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process(Brown, 2001) In the eight processes of comprehension (Clark & Clark,1977; Brown, 2001) the hearer, after receiving the information, assigned aliteral meaning to the utterance first and then assigned an intended meaning tothe utterance A key to human communication was the ability to matchperceived meaning with intended meaning

The interactive processing overcame the disadvantages of bottom-upprocessing and top-down processing to augment the comprehension It wasmore generally accepted that both top-down and bottom-up listeningprocessing should be combined to enhance listening comprehension

1.1.2.4.2 Teaching Interactive Processing

The degree to which listeners used the one process or the other woulddepend on their knowledge of the language, the familiarity with the topics orthe purpose of listening For example, listening for gist involved primarilytop-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in aweather broadcast, involved primarily bottom-up processing to comprehendall the desired details.

Listening as a process, therefore, required listeners’ conscious use ofstrategies and should involve the parallel interaction between bottom-up andtop down processing This interactive process known as parallel processingrequired the learner to use background knowledge (top-down) to interpretmeaning and linguistic knowledge (bottom-up) in order to discriminatebetween familiar sounds The goal was for the language listeners to useparallel processing in order to perceive, interpret, and respond to theinformation being heard (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2009, p 185)

A typical lesson in current teaching materials involved a three-partsequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening andcontained activities that linked bottom-up and top-down listening (Field,1998) The pre-listening phase prepared students for both top-down andbottom-up processing through activities involving activating prior knowledge,making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary The while-listening phasefocused on comprehension through exercises that required selective listening,gist listening, sequencing, etc The post-listening phase typically involved aresponse to comprehension and might require students to give opinions about

a topic However, it could also include a bottom-up focus if the teacher andthe listeners examined the texts or parts of the text in detail, focusing onsections which students could not follow This might involve a microanalysis

of sections of the text to enable students to recognize such features as blends,

reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken discourse that they wereunable to process or recognize.

1.1.2.5 Listening Strategies

With the purpose of improving learners’ ability to listen, researchersconducted a number of studies on listening strategies It was essential to have

a look at the development of listening strategies through decades

In 1990, O’Malley and Chamot marked a body of language comprehensionlearning strategies, and an accompanying classification scheme grounded

strategies in cognitive theory Listeners used meta-cognitive, cognitive and

socio-affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make theirlearning more effective Meta-cognitive strategies were important becausethey oversaw, regulated or directed the language learning process Thesestrategies, which involved thinking about the learning process, includedplanning, monitoring, and evaluating Cognitive strategies manipulated thematerial to be learned or applied a specific technique to a listening task.Socio-affective strategies described the techniques listeners used tocollaborate with others, to verify understanding or to lower anxiety Studiesshowed that skilled listeners used more meta-cognitive strategies than theirless-skilled counterparts (Vandergrift, 1997a) When listeners knew how to(1) analyse the requirements of a listening task; (2) activate the appropriatelistening processes required; (3) make appropriate predictions; (4) monitortheir comprehension; and (5) evaluate the success of their approach, they wereusing meta-cognitive knowledge for successful listening comprehension Thiswas critical to the development of self-regulated learning (Wenden, 1998) Also, Thompson & Rubin (1996) investigated the effects of meta-cognitive and cognitive strategy instruction on the listening comprehensionperformance of American university students learning Russian They found

that the subjects who received strategy instruction in listening to recorded texts improved significantly over those who had received noinstruction

video-Furthermore, Laviosa (1999) examined the implementation of a cognitiveapprenticeship approach to L2 listening comprehension with intermediatelearners of Italian This model with teacher's and students' interrelatedactivities consisted of such steps as eliciting, modelling, observing, coaching,scaffolding, and fading assistance Vandergrift (1999) had also explained howL2 listeners could use strategies to enhance their learning processes and howteachers could nurture the development of listening strategies

In short, there were a number of listening strategies which could indeed bepracticed in order to improve learners’ listening ability Teachers could usedifferent strategies which should be suitable for the students’ situations toenhance their listening The study would be focused on the cognitivestrategies that linked bottom–up and top-down during the listeningcomprehension task

1.2 Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the Thesis

Al-Qaraghooly & Al-Bermani (2010) conducted a research on the effect ofbottom-up and top-down processing on developing EFL students’ listeningcomprehension The researchers chose 130 second-year students atDepartment of English, College of Education, University of Babylon assamples of the study in order to get better results in conducting theirexperiment The population was divided into two sections Section A, withfifty-three students, was randomly chosen to be in the bottom-up processinggroup, and section B, with fifty-three students, was randomly chosen to be in

the top-down processing group Twenty-four students were randomly chosen

as a pilot sample Two students were excluded because they did not attend thepost-test administration Thus, the total number of the main sample was 104students: 52 students in each group The results of the research indicated thatalthough the two groups achieved success in listening, the similar standing ofboth bottom-up and top-down processing in developing the learners’ listeningcomprehension gave support to the view that advocated utilizing the twotypes of processing at the same time Incorporating both bottom-up and top-down processing interactively yielded better results than handling each ofthem alone It was concluded that listening comprehension was a complex,active and interactive process in which both bottom-up and top-downprocessing operated and contributed to the ultimate aim of understandingauditory stimuli

Villegas (2013) made a study on the use of the inclusion of bottom-up andtop-down processes in listening comprehension tasks for second semesterstudents from an English license program The research was conducted in astate university located in the growing-region of Colombia with sixparticipants from the degree program Such students were exposed to listeningtasks designed by the researcher The exposure took approximately onemonth Each lesson taught to the participants included three phases (pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening) which were made by thecombination of bottom-up and top-down processes After the research, it wasfound that the learning of bottom-up and top-down strategies through theguided implementation of different strategies as inferring, contextualization,and prediction allowed the learners to connect previous knowledge with newinformation which facilitated the understanding of the audio In relation to thestudents perceptions of bottom-up and top-down, a positive perspective in the

listening comprehension task was perceived as most of the participants argued

to feel supported in their understanding of listening activities, something theyconsidered to increase their motivation The participants argued that bottom-

up and top-down strategies were necessary as they raised their listeningcomprehension, and made them become aware of the importance of taking theadvantage of available information to identify specific details

Duong (2012) did an MA thesis about using bottom-up techniques inteaching listening skill to the first-year students at Thai Nguyen University ofTechnology This study was carried out with the participation of 70 first-yearnon-majored English students who are at elementary level The subjects tookpart in the 17-week experimental teaching The research was conducted as aquantitative study, using the pre-test, mid-term test and post-test along with thequestionnaire to collect data After the experimental teaching, it was found thatthe first-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology had shown agood view to bottom-up techniques Bottom-up techniques brought positiveeffects on the students’ listening skills Then, it was concluded that bottom-uptechniques could be used to enhance Thai Nguyen University of Technologyfirst-year English students’ listening comprehension

Apart from these studies, there were a plenty of works conducted related tousing the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing Severalconclusions could be reached from these studies First, although bottom-upand top-down processing positively had different influences on students’listening, they should be combined to get better results in teaching andlearning Second, realizing the benefits of using both bottom-up and top-downprocessing after the instruction, most learners started to learn how to use it toraise their listening comprehension Finally, there were studies on applyingdiscourse processing to teaching listening in Vietnam However, these studies

just focused on either bottom-up process or top-down process Consequently,using interactive process was strongly recommended.

1.3 Summary

The chapter presented the relevant literature, which helped to form thetheoretical and conceptual framework for the study Firstly, a number ofconcepts about listening comprehension were given according to some leadingscholars and listening strategies were presented Secondly, the investigatorshowed some features of discourse processing concluding bottom-up and top-down processes related to teaching listening Lastly, the importance and somefeatures of interactive process were demonstrated Though the demonstration, itwas expected to highlight the necessity of applying interactive process inteaching listening

CHAPTER 2: METHODS 2.1 Research Setting

The study was conducted at Hanoi College of Education There are 9departments, about 150 lecturers, and 9000 students in the college ForeignLanguage Department there has two majors, English language teaching andBusiness and Tourism, focusing on two main languages, English and Chinese.There are 3 classes in each major so the department has 6 classes studyingEnglish and 6 classes studying Chinese

The study just focused on first-year students in English language teachingclasses It is a special point in the college that students majoring in teachinghave to be from Hanoi Thus, their English proficiency is quite equal andmost of them have favourable learning conditions In students’ first year at thecollege, they had two semesters mainly studying four English skills (reading,writing, speaking, and listening) The listening materials used in 30 periods in

semester 1 are in 1 and Let’s talk 1 and those in semester 2 are

Listen-in 2 and Let’s talk 2 After usListen-ing these textbooks to teach class K39A, K39B,

and K39C in semester 1, the researcher received students’ reflections whichshowed that they could not find any good method to study listening well Due

to the students’ confusion about learning listening, the researcher decided toapply a new method in teaching with a high expectation of improving theirlistening skills

2.2 Subjects

Subjects under this investigation are 60 students (2 males and 58 females)from two classes, K39A and K39B, at Hanoi College of Education, of whichthe researcher is in charge Before conducting the study, the subjects took a

test to access their listening proficiency It is found that most of the students

in these classes are at pre-intermediate level

There were three reasons for the researcher to choice the two classes.Firstly, they were the ones the researcher was in charge of Secondly, thestudents took their first steps studying listening skills so they were at a losshow to listen well Finally, most students had little knowledge of the languagethey studied, which made it difficult for them to understand information whilelistening As a result, the two classes were chosen to use interactive process toimprove listening as soon as they started studying listening skills It wasexpected that the students could enhance their listening skills and find asuitable way to study

2.3 Research types

The research was conducted as a quantitative and qualitative study in order

to achieve its goal which is using interactive process to improve the first-yearstudents’ listening skills Quantitative data were collected by using pre-test,post-test, and questionnaires Also, students’ diaries were used to gatherqualitative data

2.4 Research Approaches

The characteristics of action research were stated by Hult and Lennung(1980) and Mckernan (1991), which are as follows:

- Aiming at improving the quality of human actions

- Being in an on-going cycle process, i.e the feedback from datacollected can be used to improve the next steps in the research

- Being formative, i.e the researcher may witness the alteration indefinition, aims and methodology

- Contributing to a science of education

- Being collaborative, i.e the research involves all contribution toimprove the understanding and action

These features were reflected in this study Firstly, the aim of the studywas to improve the current situation of teaching listening skills for first-yearstudents at Hanoi College of Education Secondly, the study would contribute

to the science of language education Thirdly, the study included theresearcher’s intervention on other participants’ listening competence.Fourthly, the study was formed with several uncertainties and suspicions,thus, it needed the alteration and improvement from the research process.Finally, the answers to the research questions needed answering asparticipants reflected on their own improvement, interest and emotion duringthe research In general, action research is a good choice for this study onaccount of the suitability in target, design and characteristics of the study.Nunan (1992, p 19), Nunan, (1993, pp 41-42) and Bailey, Curtis, andNunan, (2001, p 137) put forwards this action research model:

Figure 1: Action Research Model

This study strictly followed the general steps of an action research cyclesuggested by Nunan

2.5 Data Collection Instruments

2.5.1 Pre-test and Post-test

During the research, the students were asked to take two listening tests

The first test (See Appendix 1) was conducted at the first week The other (See Appendix 2) was carried out in week 6 They were designed for students

at pre-intermediate level Both tests had the same form, number of questions,and level of difficulty Each test included two tasks with 10 questions, 4multiple-choice questions in task 1 and 6 True/False questions in task 2 Aftermarking two tests, the researcher compared the results so as to reveal anyimprovement that students had made during the experimental teaching

2.5.2 Questionnaires

Two questionnaires were delivered to students after they had finished thepre-test and post-test

In the former questionnaire (See Appendix 3) conducted after the pre-test,

15 questions were designed in order to find out problems related to interactiveprocess students might get when learning listening The first five questionswere designed to investigate the subject’s English listening situation such astheir listening results last semester, their thought of listening, their self-evaluation of listening skills, their own experience of listening, and thematerials they had used in class The last ten questions were designed based

on Underwood’s seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listeningcomprehension (1989) The first one listed a number of difficulties studentsencountered The next eight questions delved into specific problems studentsoften got: speakers, vocabulary, unfamiliar words and structures,pronunciation, stress and intonation in spoken language, connected speech,and structures in spoken language The last question focused on what studentsexpected the teacher to do so as to help them improve their listening skills

The latter questionnaire (See Appendix 4) consisted of two main parts: The

first part was composed of six questions which are to evaluate students’satisfaction after the experimental teaching The second part asks for students’suggestion for improvement in the next teaching

2.5.3 Diaries

To collect more data, each student was asked to keep a diary during theresearch program Diaries were described as “regular dated accounts ofteaching/learning plans, activities and classroom occurrences, includingpersonal philosophies, feelings, reactions, reflections, observations,explanations” (Burns & Hood, 1995, p.8) Thus, the students’ diaries helped

the researcher accurately detect what the students learnt and how they thoughtand felt about the lessons Because diaries were essentially privatedocuments, students were asked if they agreed with the researcher about usingtheir diaries for the research After receiving their agreement, the researchergave the students some hints based on Sinanu et all (2007) to write in their

diaries (See Appendix 5)

2.6 Intervention: Instruction of Interactive Process in Class

2.6.1 Listening Materials

The textbook used as listening materials for the first-year students in

semester 2 was Let’s talk 2 Besides, Listen-in 2 was used as a supplementary

material, which students would use to practice listening at home There was acourse outline with detailed information about what to teach and study eachweek during the course As the students had finished Listening 1 in semester

1 using Let’s talk 1, the textbook Let’s talk 2 was suitable for them to enhance

their listening skills in semester 2 In the book, there were a plenty ofactivities to help the students develop listening skills Thus, the research stillused this textbook for the research However, in order to make the materialsmore efficient and effective, the research would add some extra materials out

of the textbook

2.6.2 The Instruction in Interactive Process

During a listening lesson, it was necessary to elicit the subjects’knowledge through the use of listening activities Filed (1988) proposed atypical lesson that involved a three-part sequence consisting of pre-listening,while-listening, and post-listening as well as contained activities that linkedbottom-up and top-down listening

- Pre-listening activities: served as preparation for listening in several

ways The teacher set a purpose or decided in advance what to listen

for, decided if more linguistic or background knowledge was neededand also determined whether to enter the text from the top-downprocess (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom-up process(focus on the words and phrases) Thus, this phase made students aware

of the type of text they would be listening to, the role they would play,and the purpose for which they would be listening

- While-listening activities: were directly related to engagement with

text, which students did during or immediately after the time they hadlistened Such activities as deciding what was and was not important tounderstand, used predicting to encourage students to monitor theircomprehension as they listened, used questions to focus students'attention on the elements of the text which was crucial tocomprehension of the whole would be done in this phase

- Post-listening Activities: Teacher wrote questions on the board and

asked students to answer them Students were also stimulated to talkand actively participate in the task; moreover, the teacher needed toencourage students to respond to what they heard For example, teachermight ask questions like “Do you agree?” which encouraged debate.Thus, during listening activities learners could be provided with thegeneral background and key vocabulary in advance

2.7 Data Collection Procedures

The procedures of the study were as follows:

Week 1: The pre-test was administered to the subjects After finishing andsubmitting the pre-test to the researcher, the subjects were introduced to theresearch program They had some background knowledge of interactive process.Then, the subjects were asked to give their opinions on keeping their own diariesduring the research It was assured that their diaries would be secretly kept and

used only for the research After all, the researcher asked the subjects to respond

to the first questionnaire

Week 2 – Week 5: The experimental teaching started The researcher applied

interactive process to teach listening The textbook Let’s talk 2 was used During

this period, the subjects gradually got familiar with interactive process Theprocedures of teaching in a listening lesson suggested by Filed (1998) were asfollows:

Firstly, based on the textbook, the subjects participated in activities involvingactivating prior knowledge, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary

at pre-listening stage The activities might be ready in the textbook or designed

by the researcher in order to be suitable for the subjects and the topic

Secondly, the while-listening stage focused on comprehension throughexercises that required selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, and so on.Also, depending on the difficulty of the record, the subjects could listen againand focus on sections they could not follow This might enable the subjects torecognize such features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features ofspoken discourse

Finally, the subjects were asked to respond to comprehension or giveopinions about the topic

Week 6: The post-test was given to the subjects After the test papers hadbeen finished and collected, the subjects were asked to fill in the secondquestionnaire

All the study procedures are shown in the following table

Week

In-class

1 Introduction and -Subjects were introduced to the research

-Subjects were administered the pre-test.-Subjects were asked to fill inquestionnaire 1

cooking

- Subjects received interactive processinginstruction though the listening lesson

3 Relationships -Subjects received interactive processing

instruction though the listening lesson

4 Earning a living -Subjects received interactive processing

instruction though the listening lesson

5 Leisure time -Subjects received interactive processing

instruction though the listening lesson

6 Consolidation -Subjects were administered the post-test

-Subjects were asked to fill inquestionnaire 2

Table 1: Procedures of the Study

2.8 Data Analysis

Three sets of data obtained from the data collection included:

- Pre-test and post-test: they aimed at exploring any improvement in thesubjects’ listening skills after interactive process had been applied inthe listening class After the tests had been finished, correct answerswere manually counted The data collected from the tests werequantitatively analysed by SPSS tool

- Questionnaires: the data were quantitatively analysed using descriptiveapproach The descriptive analyses were then reported in percentages

so that the results of the preliminary investigation and interventionwere clearly demonstrated

- Diaries: the source of data was analysed using content analysis method.The helped to support the quantitative data to answer the researchquestions addressed

2.9 Summary

This action research was carried out in the researcher’s classes at HanoiCollege of Education with the purpose of investigating whether applyinginteractive process in teaching listening to the first-year students’ listeningskills had a positive influence The data were collected from a pre-test, a post-test, two questionnaires, and students’ diaries, which were analysed by means

of SPSS tool, descriptive statistic devices, and content analysis method It wasexpected that the combination of these instruments would enable to answerthe research questions

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.1 Preliminary Investigation

Question 1: How was your listening result last semester?

Table 2: Results of Question 1 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test

It could be seen that the students’ listening results in semester 1 were notreally optimistic There were only 10% of the students having good results.The percentage of those who got very bad and bad results was 16.7% and38.3%

Question 2: What do you think of English listening?

Table 3: Results of Question 2 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test

From the table, it was clearly shown that 30% of students consideredlistening very difficult and 48.3% of them felt it difficult

Question 3: How are listening skills important to you?

Very important Rather important Little important Not important at all

Table 4: Results of Question 3 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test

The table above revealed that most students saw the importance oflearning listening: 33.3% found it very important, 50% found it ratherimportant, 13.3% found it little important and the rest found it not important