IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS FOR THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT HONG DUC UNIVERSITY THROUGH PORTFOLIO

To overcome those difficulties, it is necessary for students to keep on practice overtime, and one of theways to make students practice is by using portfolios to learn at home.This means

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Rationale

In English teaching, the main objective is to prepare students forcommunication in the real world and it is very important for a learner toefficiently equip himself with four skills, together with relativelysufficient background knowledge However, obtaining a good command

of English communication is not easy for all students; it needs a greateffort from them which emphasizes much practice, especially self-study

Of the four language skills-Listening, Speaking, Reading, and that all language learners are supposed to acquire Listening is believed

Writing-to be the most challenging due Writing-to the complex and subtle nature oflistening comprehension in a second or foreign language Teachinglistening is not an easy job at all when we, the English teachers, face thefact that learners have met many difficulties in comprehending theinformation due to unfamiliarity with the pronunciation of the targetlanguage and a lack of listening skills To overcome those difficulties, it

is necessary for students to keep on practice overtime, and one of theways to make students practice is by using portfolios to learn at home.This means of study is rather effective for students to improve theirlistening skills as portfolios are systematic, purposeful, and meaningfulcollections of students' works in one or more subject areas and theyreflect the actual day-to-day learning activities of students

For the third year English major students at Hong Duc University, theycan not avoid common problems related to listening When dealing with

a listening lesson, they often experience a lack of backgroundknowledge and cultural understanding, poor ability to understandspoken language, irrelevant teaching materials etc Besides, two periods(45 minutes each period) of listening every week is not enough forstudents to be good listeners if they do not spend much more time thanthat on their self-study Clearly, portfolios which reflect what has beendone at home are an important element in language teaching andlearning, which on one hand helps the teachers to assess what theirstudents have done at home and on the other hand keeps studentscontinuously learning Hence, they need a lot of modifications for the

sake of perfection To enhance students’ listening skill development, it’sthe teacher’s job to create more opportunities for the students to learnfrom their own strengths and weaknesses as well as their peers'weaknesses and strengths It is, therefore, necessary to bring themopportunities to overcome those difficulties and among the suggestedsolutions, listening portfolios are of great help Good portfolios withcarefully prepared contents are a useful means to help students keep ontheir self-studies effectively

It is obvious that portfolios can improve students’ listening skills as well

as encourage them to work on their own, which is the useful factor fortheir success It is undeniable that exploiting portfolios effectively ischallenging for teachers because they have to take many things intoconsideration, such as the objectives, the instructional skills, thecriteria, the students’ needs, etc when giving out the contents of aportfolio However, for the benefit one can gain from them, it is worthdoing so

For the above reasons, we decided to choose the thesis entitled

“Improving listening skills for third-year students at Hong Duc University through portfolio" The study emphasizes the importance

of portfolios to the students' self- study in general and the listening skills

in particular Pedagogically, the findings of the study are believed to beuseful for teachers to be aware of the essential role of portfolios to thestudents' self- study in the listening skills

Moreover, we would like to investigate the effectiveness of the listeningportfolios currently used and from that finding out the strong and weakpoints of them in order to establish the most relevant one in terms ofthe contents From the results obtained, the suggestions for portfoliocontents, which are based on the theoretical background and thepresent use of them at the Foreign Language Department, HDU, arethoughtfully given, with the hope that they would help students toenhance their listening skills as well as the teachers to improve theirteaching methodologies in relation with the process of renovation forteaching at the Foreign Language Department, HDU currently

1.2 Aims of the study

Our research focuses specifically on the investigation of portfoliocontents used by the teachers at Division of Language skillsDevelopment and give some suggestions for applying the portfolios toenhance the students' self - learning for improvements in their listeningskills The specific aims of the research are as follows:

- To investigate the teachers' and students' attitudes towards theapplication of listening portfolios in self-learning

- To find out the most common portfolio contents exploited by theteachers at Division of Language skills Development

- To examine the students’ preferences for the portfolios

- To give some suggestions for using the portfolios to enhancestudents' self-listening learning

1.4 Methods of the study

To seek answers to the research questions, the data are analyzed frommaterial collection and were collected from survey questionnaires

First of all, for the theoretical basis, a lot of reference materials onlistening skills and portfolios have been collected, analyzed andsynthesized carefully with the due consideration for the teachers’ andstudents’ teaching and learning situations

Secondly, the questionnaires are carried out with the teachers and thestudents to collect the most reliable data for the study

1.5 Design of the study

The thesis is divided into five chapters: Chapter I: Introduction; ChapterII: Literature review; Chapter III: The study; Chapter IV: Major findingsand Discussions and Chapter V: Conclusion

Chapter I: Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the study such as the rationale,the scope, the aims, research questions, significance and methods ofthe study

Chapter II: Literature review

This chapter conceptualizes the nature of the listening comprehension,the importance of listening and the importance of students' self-accesslistening, definitions of the portfolio, portfolio based learning, thecontent of portfolio, principles in using portfolio, portfolio assessment,stages of portfolio implementation and the importance of portfolio inlearning listening

Chapter III: The study

The chapter presents the methodology used in the study including thesetting, sample, instrumentation, data collection and data analysis Italso points out the detailed results of the surveys and covers acomprehensive analysis on the data collected from the questionnaires

Chapter IV: Major findings and Discussions

The chapter shows some major findings, suggestions for using theportfolios

2.2 Theoretical background of listening skills

2.2.1 What is Listening Comprehension?

2.2.1.1 Definitions

Listening is believed to be a key and essential area of the development

in a native language and in a second or foreign language as well; hence,there have been varieties of definitions of listening by Bulletin (1952);Bentley & Bacon (1996); Grey Buck (2001); Scarcella and Oxford (1992)which hold different views towards the concept

According to Bulletin (1952), listening is one of the fundamentallanguage skills It's a medium through which children, young people andadults gain a large portion of their education-their information, theirunderstanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense ofvalues, and their appreciation In the day of mass communication (much

of it oral), "it is of vital importance that our pupils be taught to listen effectively and critically" he says.

Bentley & Bacon (1996) state that listening, an important part of thesecond language learning process has also been defined as an activeprocess during which the listener constructs meaning from oral input

Grey Buck (2001: 31) shares the idea that " listening comprehension is

an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sounds" in which " number of different types

of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguisticknowledge" In another expression, Grey Buck (2001: 31) points out

"comprehension is affected by a wide range of variables, and that potentially any characteristic of the speaker, the situation or the listener can affect the comprehension of the message."

Scarcely and Oxford (1992) also point out that comprehension of aspoken message can either through isolated word recognition within thesound stream, phrase or formulae recognition, clause or sentence, andextended speech comprehension

Woven and Coakley (1985) hold the different idea They see listening as

"the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli" This definition indicates that listening is a complex process

which students have to deal with The task of listening is not onlyperception of sound, but it also requires comprehension of meaning.This definition is the same with second language theory which regardslistening to spoken language as an active and complex process in whichlisteners pay much attention to aspects of aural input, generatemeaning, and link what they hear to existing knowledge (O'Malley &Chabot, 1989; Byrnes, 1984; Richards, 1985; Howard, 1983)

Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demandingand involved process One must be able to deal with different accents orpronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures,competing background noise, and also make a conscious effort to not'switch off' or become distracted while listening All of this must beachieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identifyand understand the meaning in any given message

To sum up, the issue of whether which view is the best is controversial.However, in the final analysis, the definition of Wolvin and Coakley(1985) which considers listening as the process of receiving, attending

to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli; that is, message transmittedthrough the medium of sound is highly appreciated

2.2.1.2 The listening Comprehension process

It can't be denied that listening is the least explicit of the four languageskills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing, making it thehardest skill for English learners It involves physiological and cognitiveprocesses at different levels (Field, 2002; Lynch, 2002; Rost, 2002) alongwith the attention to contextual and "socially coded acoustic clues"(Swaffar & Bacon, 1993)

Listening comprehension is a primary process in understanding thewords of the speaker It is a complex communication process whichrequires instant thought and individual ability to construct the meaning

The development of listening comprehension varies depending on thepersonal, social, and cultural experiences of the student Effectivelisteners are able to recognize the speaker’s main points or ideas andidentify the supporting details and examples Comprehensive listening

is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying Thisinvolves understanding a speaker’s accent, pronunciation, grammar,vocabulary and meaning (Howatt and Dakin 1974) Listeningcomprehension is influenced by the listener’s world knowledge,linguistic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and met cognitiveknowledge

The following figure shows that the listening comprehension process isestablished through the relationship between the two main sources ofinformation which Widowson (1983) refers to as (1) systematic orlinguistic knowledge (knowledge of phonological, syntactic, andsemantic components of the language system) and (2) schematic ornon-linguistic information In fact, it is hard to differentiate betweenwhat was actually said and what we have constructed by integrating thespoken words with students' own knowledge and experience

Background knowledge Systematic

- what has been/ will be said

Figure 2 Performance Checklist for Listening Comprehension

(Adapted from Mendelson (1994: 94, cited by Vandergrift, 1999: 176)

V= Verification (check in this column when your guess has been

verified)

What I found easy: What I found difficult: What I will do the next time:

A number of researches in L2 listening instruction have been done bydifferent authors such as Rost (2002); Lynch (1988, 2002); Rubin (1994);Mendelsohn (1988); Richards (1990) All focus on the critical role of both

bottom-up and down processes in comprehension Listeners use down process when they use context and prior knowledge (topic, genre,background knowledge, and other schema knowledge in long-termmemory) to construct framework for comprehension Listeners usebottom-up process when they build meaning by accretion, graduallycombining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level

top-up to discourse-level features

Richards (1990:50) breaks down the process used in listeningcomprehension into two distinct types, referring to them as 'bottom-up'and 'top-down' processing The former is described in Cook's Discourse

(1989) as: 'Interpreting the lowest-level units first, and then proceeding

to an interpretation of the rank above, and so on upwards.' In other

words, we sometimes need to rely on our knowledge of grammar,syntax, and lexis, and apply that knowledge when confronted with anincoming message in order to achieve comprehension On the otherhand, we might apply a top-down approach to aid comprehension This

Anderson and Lynch (1988:22) argue that research has shown that theassumptions in the 'bottom-up' model are incorrect They state that:

"Listeners would not be able to perceive speech as successfully as they

do if they were in fact engaged in a process of building up therecognition of words solely by attempting to identify their constituentphonemes."

In teaching listening skills, we need to be aware of how these processeswork and guide our students, through the use of different tasks if we are

to aid them in improving their listening comprehension I believe we canhelp advanced learners by drawing attention to these strategies andovertly practicing these listening skills in the classroom

2.2.2 The importance of Listening

Listening is getting more and more important in many foreign languagecontexts, which have until relatively recently focused their efforts on thedevelopment of other language skills such as writing skills This growingimportance is reflected in the proliferation of commercial listeningcourses The importance of listening in second and foreign languagelearning is admirably summarized in a recent publication by Rost (1994):

'Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learners Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin'.

Brett (1997: 39) also states that "listening is a key language skill It has

a vital role in the language acquisition process" In comparison withother language skills, some researches on listening suggests that onaverage people can expect to listen "twice as much as we speak, fourtimes more than what we read and five times more than we usuallywrite" (Morley, 2001) More importantly, there are more and morestudies indicating the sheer importance of listening in communicationand language learning (Anderson and Lynch, 1988; Dunkel, 1991).What's more, Michael Lewis (1993: 32) highlights "Almost all the world'snatural language output is spoken rather written"

Being an essential skill for almost interaction, listening is therefore themost primary medium for input in language learning process and byspeeding up the students' ability to perceive speech, the amount ofinput they get will increase and thus aid students' language acquisition

It is obvious that we listen for many different purposes in and out of theclassroom; this has an effect on the way we listen Yule and Brown(1983) make a useful distinction between interactional and transactionalcommunication McCarthy, (1991) in Discourse, defines transactional

talk (and listening) as communication for getting business done.Interactional communication, on the other hand, has to do withlubricating the social wheels In listening (1988) Anderson and Lynchdescribe them as (transactional) listening when the main purpose is toachieve a successful transfer of information, while interactional listening

is defined as listening for social reasons, and to establish or maintainfriendly relations between interlocutors

In short, listening is essential not only as receptive skill but also to thedevelopment of spoken language prophecy

2.2.3 Teaching listening skills

2.2.3.1 Listening Skills

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others aresaying This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation,his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt andDakin) An able listener is capable of doing these four thingssimultaneously Willis (1981:134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening,

which she calls enabling skills They are: (1) predicting what people are

going to talk about, (2) guessing at unknown words or phrases withoutpanic, (3) using one's own knowledge of the subject to help oneunderstand, (4) identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevantinformation, (5) retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing),(6) recognizing discourse markers, e g., Well; Oh, another thing is; Now,

finally; etc, (7) recognizing cohesive devices, e.g., such as and which,

including linking words, pronouns, references, etc, (8) understandingdifferent intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues tomeaning and social setting, (9) understanding inferred information, e g., speakers' attitude or intentions

Edurne Scott (2008) also points out that the sub-skills that can beemphasized in a listening lesson include: (1) listening for specificinformation, (2) following topic shifts, (3) predicting, (4) recognizingtransitions and sequence markers, (5) recognizing word boundaries, (6)identifying key words, (7) and taking notes

According to Austin Shrope (1970), it is listening on the fourth level thatprimarily concerns us in our teaching Such listening may add anemotional and dramatic quality Radio and recordings highlight theimportance of listening Listening is as active as speaking (the otherproductive skill), and in some ways even more difficult It well requiresattention, thought, interpretation, and imagination To improve ourlearners' listening skills, they should be allowed to: (1) adopt a positiveattitude, (2) be responsive, (3) shut out distractions, (4) listen for thespeaker's purpose, (5) look for the signals of what is to come, (6) lookfor summaries of what has gone before, (7) evaluate the supportingmaterials, (8) and look for non-verbal clues.

Richards, J C (2005) also provides such skills taxonomy for developingstudents' listening skills as presented in Appendix P.xix

To sum up, as the focus of language teaching and learning has movedfrom teacher-centered approaches to more learner-centered ones, thefocus of listening teaching and learning has also changed a lot That'swhy listening is now recognized as an active receptive skill (Andersonand Lynch: 1988) in which the listener activates previous or existingknowledge to integrate new knowledge

2.2.3.2 Running a listening lesson

It is common knowledge that using interesting passages and doing theright sort of exercises in a coherent sequence are necessary to asuccessful lesson, but they are only part of the issue The overallconduct and organization of the lesson are equally important

Shelagh Rixon (1986: 74-80) suggests the following guidelines which thelistening teachers can follow when running a listening lesson:

• Variety of exercises and passages

Shelagh Rixon warns that the teachers should not overuse any one type

of exercise If the students know, for example, that they will always startthe lesson by having to listen to a tape played to them by the teachers,answer multiple-choice questions and then move into pairs to comparetheir answers, this will become too much of a routine, and they will

become bored and stale Another important point is that not everylistening passage is suitable for the same treatment, and the teachersshould vary their activities and exercises to suit the potential of thepassage.

A mixture of live and recorded listening materials is preferable on mostcourses because of the different listening skills they can help to develop.Exposure to different types of the passage and to the possibilities ofinteraction with the speaker is very important in increasing students'experience of handling the spoken word

• Helping students to see the reasons behind exercises

It is obvious that if students see the point of what they are doing, thiswill encourage them to see the approaches to listening that teachers aretrying to promote, even when they find themselves in real situations.Explaining the point of exercises needs to be done with great care,however Teachers should try to be concrete rather than technical orabstract

• Observing students' reactions

Even if teachers are careful in choosing their passages and activities tosuit the idea of students' needs, they cannot guarantee that allstudents' difficulties and interests will be met by teachers' lesson asplanned The most unexpected things can cause problems On the otherhand, difficulties that teachers anticipate can produce no trouble at all.Teachers must be prepared to interrupt their planned sequence to coverpoints that are causing difficulty, or that students themselves bring up,rather than working mechanically from step one to the end of theirlesson plan, with no deviations for student needs

• Allowing students time to reconsider

We all know that a lesson is not a test but a training session It istherefore not cheating to let students hear a passage several times, insmall sections, with pauses, or in any other way that is helpful to them.They should not be expected to find the answers immediately, either.Students often need time to think about their initial answers and

reconsider them It is very useful to give the students the chance to getsome of the answers, and then to listen again The next time they listenthey will already be altered to those parts when they need to pay moreattention This really works in a listening lesson.

- Face to face listening offers the chance to interrupt and ask forclarification or repetition, and students should be trained not to be shyabout this

- It gives the students a sense of autonomy and self-reliance if teachersteach them ways of writing down words or phrases that they do notunderstand So they can read them back later

- The teachers should always try to use listening experiences toillustrate 'reasons to be hopeful about making sense of spoken English

2.2.3.3 Teacher's roles

According to Austin Shrope (1970), a teacher's roles in a listening lessonare to create interest, reasons for listening, and the confidence to listen.For each listening lesson the teacher must bear in mind:

- What kind of listening process is appropriate to the text?

- How the learner will "tune in" to the context, express attitudes towardsthe topic, and emphasize schematic knowledge

- Pictures that could be used to contextualize the talk

- And the forming of the learner's opinion on the topic (i.e makingexplicit opinions in a class discussion, and then comparing them to theopinions of the listening material).

2.2.3.4 Importance of students' self-listening

Obviously, the purpose of effective teaching is to enable students todevelop to a point where they are independent of the teacher'sassistance This is really true with the listening According to ShelaghRison (1986), self-listening is one of the main ways in which a learnercan "tune in" by himself to a foreign society when he visits or goes tolive in it It is also the most private and least tangible of the fourlanguage skills We can do research on a learner's writing or speakingdifficulties to some extent, and observe how he reads, but what goes oninside each student's head is more of a mystery Each student is on hisown in the final analysis, and materials and techniques which canpromote his autonomy rather than his loneliness are needed

* Students ' self-access work

Many a teaching institution is providing learners with more freedom - achoice of materials to work with and space and time to work in instead

of the teacher's instructions Shelagh Rison (1986) points out that thestudents should be given the chance to decide for themselves what will

be interesting or useful and to work by themselves These are bothvaluable steps towards increased autonomy and away from thetraditional dominance of the teacher in the learning process

However, the author also shows some advantages, for instance,providing a facility requires finance, efficient organization, and a wealth

of materials to choose from The timetable also needs to be planned toallow students time to use the facilities, either within or outside officialschool hours

It is clear that classroom listening activities tend to be controlled by theteacher Even when students listen privately for part of the time, this isonly because the teacher has planned it that way In self-accesslistening, the teacher uses no such control, but he does still have aresponsibility to enable students to finds ways of working that suit them

* Autonomy for the students

Is it possible for all students to work well by themselves from the verybeginning? The answer is 'No' because autonomy is often developedfrom having the right amount of support at the right time, with thesupport being gradually lessened as students become more confident.According to Shelagh Rison (1986), a good catalogue, usableworksheets and your guidance will all contribute as follows:

• The teacher's role changes in self-access work He becomes more

of a manager and a counselor than an informant All the students needthe teacher to be available as a source of advice, or just as someone toboast to about an achievement

• Having the right equipment also counts Cassettes are much moreconvenient and tangle-free than reel-to-reel tape for use in a self-accesslibrary

• It's necessary that when a listening task involves searching forcertain information, there is an answer sheet that the students can findeasily for themselves Another loose-leaf binder, with all the answerkeys in it, can be kept next to the main catalogue Students will thenneed to consult the teacher only in cases where they don't understandwhy a certain answer is wrong or right, and will be independent as far aschecking routine answers are concerned

* Listening outside the classroom

Most of the English teachers hope that students will be able to useEnglish learnt at schools, universities or other institutions in real life atsome point It's because that not everyone will have the chance to goabroad, or even to use the language often within his own country, butopportunities do exist to listen to English in a pleasurable or useful way.For teachers working with students within the United Kingdom, or otherEnglish speaking countries, the opportunities to use English outsideschool are huge, but those working abroad need not despair either.There are two ways in which you can encourage students to listen tooutside the school The first is to get students to exercise their listening

outside school and the second is about finding opportunities for listeningfor pleasure Two kinds of listening outside the school have beensuggested as follows:

• Listening assignments outside the classroom

Self-access listening has been discussed as a stepping stone betweenlistening guided by the teacher and greater independence Studentswho have met certain types of listening experiences in the listeninglibrary may feel prepared to try them in their own time Radio programsare an obvious example

• Listening for pleasure outside the classroom

According to the author, opportunities for making contact with thelanguage outside the school will vary, as will the amount of enthusiasmshown by students about non-obligatory, extra-mural listening Studentshave a perfect right not to be keen, but they should be equipped withgood information on what is available should they relent

2.2.4 Summary

In conclusion, the section has so far conceptualized the discussion ofrelevant issues relating to the topic of the study The concepts and ideasconcerning the definitions of listening comprehension, the models oflistening process, importance of listening and teaching listening skillshave been analyzed and discussed

2.3 Theoretical background of Portfolio

2.3.2 Definitions of Portfolio

There is a variety of definitions of portfolio which have been presented

by various scholars with different points of view Some definitions limitand see the portfolio as a summary of a student's accomplishments;others talk about their purposes and characteristics, including themerits of the strategy (Wiener and Cohen, 1997; Richter, 1997; Karoly,1996; Snider Lima and Devito, 1994); their contents and theirimplementation For instance, Patricia L Rieman and Jeanne Okrasinski

(2000) state that " a portfolio is an assessment tool that allows creator

to put his or her best foot forward and document the knowledge and skills mastered through the learning process" Other authors share the

same idea that the portfolio is a part of an alternative assessment

program Arter and Spandell (1996: 210) consider portfolio as "a purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of the student's efforts, progress or achievement" Also Freeman and Lewis (1998: 271) state portfolio as "a collection of materials assembled by students to demonstrate achievement".

The portfolio definition given by Murray (1995) is that the teachershould decide how the portfolio is to be used before deciding on thecontent If the portfolio is to be used for summary evaluation, such astenure decisions, then it should probably only contain the best of astudent's work

Our working definition for our students' listening portfolio is a collection

of materials related to our class interactions and readings You may put them in any appropriately-sized binder or folder' In other words, the students' self-listening portfolio is 'an organized collection of their work

in listening skills that indicates the products of their own learning process' The collection is made up of listening portfolio cover sheet,

declaration and statement of authorship, index of listening files,listening portfolio - File identification, text outline, team work -

collaboration peer assessment, portfolio assessment checklist This

working definition is regarded as a good foundation for the researcher todeal with the portfolio contents as mentioned in the following section

2.3.3 The contents of Portfolios

Each kind of portfolio contents serves its own purpose For instance,showcase portfolios are made up of the best work that illustratesoutcomes; evaluation portfolios include formal and best work sampleswhile most of the portfolio types focus on student self-assessment.

The contents of portfolios are also constructed from class assignments

It is the teacher who knows his students best initiates the portfoliocontents The development of portfolios may focus on a single area such

as reading, writing, literature and science or other portfolio programsthat cover two or more fields such as reading and writing

Subject area and ownership are the main factors to determine thecontent of portfolios Vizyak (1995), for example, evaluates two kinds ofportfolios, a student-managed and a teacher-student portfolio, and letsstudents choose a meaningful piece from the teacher-student portfolio,twice a month, attaching a statement specifying students reasons fortheir choice The choice may include a test, work sample, project oreven parent input from a survey

Freeman and Lewis (1998) discuss a generic portfolio that includescompleted assignments, copies of learning contracts, notes, drawings,diaries, charts, certificates and student self - assessment in their list ofassembled materials However, Bailey and Guskey (2001) state that thecontents of portfolios should be in relation to involving students in theselection of its contents and student self - reflection Also, Arter andSpandell (1992) provide students with questions designed to facilitatethe self-reflection process Their aim is to help students find out thestrengths and weaknesses of their own work, to discover the processthey experienced, recognize the feedback they received, identify thedistinctive qualities of their work

As mentioned before, contents of portfolios depend on its intended usebecause of the extent of student engagement, like the nature of thecontents of portfolios informed by the perception of portfolio purpose.There are many sources which offer a variety of suggestions andcategories for building the portfolio

Crockett (1998) in Nunes (2004) divides portfolio contents into fivecategories as follows:

• Found samples, which refer to pieces done to fulfill the class

assignment;

• Processed samples, or the students' analyses and self-samples of

students' work of a works already graded by the teacher;

• Revisions or samples of student work that have been graded and

then revised, edited and rewritten;

• Reflections, which are related to the processed samples but are

applied to the portfolio as a whole, providing a chance forstudents to think about who they are, what their strengths andweaknesses are;

• And portfolio projects, which cover work designed for the sole

purpose of inclusion in the student portfolios, and that can bearise from a review of portfolios that show a particular interest orchallenge to overcome

For each item, a brief rationale for choosing the item should be covered.This may relate to students' performance, to their feelings consideringtheir progress and themselves as learners

According to Nguyen Thi Huong et al (2007: 11-13), Listening portfolioentails teamwork, exposure to a variety of listening resources, andlistening practice Thus, apart from listening skill building, the task alsoaims at students’ development of information literacy and collaborationskills The contents of portfolios are presented as follows:

A Cover Sheet (See Appendix 3, p.viii)

B Declaration and Statement of Authorship (See Appendix 4 , p ix)

C Index of Listening Files (See Appendix 5 , p x)

D Listening Files

1 File identification (See Appendix 6, p xi)

2 Full script

E Reflection checklist

Students are to write only one reflection for the whole portfolio, and thisshould not exceed 600 words (two pages) The reflection should containthe following components:

1 Reflection on strategies used

- The steps students went through when doing the portfolio

- The strategies students used while transcribing the files, especiallyhow they coped with words that are hard to identify

2 Reflection on the contents of the files

- What (background) knowledge students have gained through flowingthe issues

- What contents students like and dislike most or any information thatmakes a deep impression on them

F Glossary (See Appendix 7, p xii)

G Work distribution (See Appendix 8 , p xiii)

H Collaboration peer assessment sheets (See Appendix 9 , p xiv)

I Portfolio assessment sheet (See Appendix 10 , p xvi)

Do not fill in this page

J Final grades report form (See Appendix 11 , p xviii)

Fill in the team members' names Leave others blank

K Attached disc or/ and tape

To sum up, the portfolio contents play a very important role in verystudy However, a certain design of the portfolio contents should bebased on the purpose of the course in the real context and condition

2.3.4 Principles in Using Portfolios

It is obvious that portfolios are very important in every study, especially

in learning foreign languages This is really true in cases of Kemp andToperoff (1998) and Nuns (2004)

Kemp and Toperoff (1998) conclude that when applying portfolios toforeign language learning and teaching, the teacher should take thefollowing principles into consideration:

• Principle 1: a portfolio is a form of assessment that students do

together with their teachers

• Principle 2: a portfolio is not just a collection of students' work, but

a selection - the student must be involved in choosing andjustifying the pieces to be included

• Principle 3: a portfolio provides samples of students' work that

shows grow over time By self-assessing, students start identifyingthe strengths and weaknesses from their work As a result, theseweaknesses become improvement goals

• Principle 4: the criteria for choosing and evaluating the portfolio

contents must be clear to the teacher and the students at thebeginning of the process The entries in an English as a foreignlanguage classroom can demonstrate learning and improvement

in all language skills, or can focus on a specific skill such aslistening

Nunes's study (2004) indicates that portfolios in English as a foreignlanguage classroom can be a useful tool for speeding up students'active participation Nevertheless, the two following principles should becarefully considered so as to apply its full advantages to practice

Principle 1: a portfolio should be dialogic, and facilitate ongoing

interactions between the teacher and the students To put it in anotherway, it must be developed interaction in order to facilitate focusedintervention, decision-making or joint problem-solving in due time

Principle 2: a portfolio should document the reflective thought of

the learner

2.3.5 Stages of Portfolio implementation

There are various authors whose recommendations for portfolioimplementation emerge in the literature (Wiener and Cohen, 1977; Hill,

Kamber and Norwich, 1994; Valencia and Place, 1994) and includecriteria to be observed for effective implementation and procedures to

be done For instance, Hill et al (1994) recommend a range of stepsincluding defining the portfolio purpose, teaching students self-reflection, structuring portfolio reviews, making time for peer evaluation,and sharing portfolios with parents Also, Wiener and Cohen (1979)support a process relating to a succession of self-reflection and dialogueamong students, teachers and parents

According to Mattew and Shimo (2002), there are five basic stages thatmust exist in the implementation of portfolios They are: collection,selection, reflection, evaluation and celebration These steps makeportfolio implementation better and more thoughtful learning

Stage 3: Reflection

In this stage, students express their thinking about each piece in theportfolios They assess their own growth overt time as well as identifyand gaps in their development It can't be denied that this stage is themost important and it is what enables portfolios to become lifelongtools

Stage 4: Evaluation

In this stage, students compare their reflections to the pre-set goals andother achievement standards and indicators and set learning goals forthe future

Stage 5: Celebration

The celebration or presentation means that students share theirportfolios with their peers This is the stage where appropriate publiccommitments can be made to encourage collaboration and commitment

to professional developments and lifelong learning (Barrett, 2001)

In short, each author applies different stages in carrying portfolios Thus,the researcher should take his or her own context and learning andteaching situation into account before deciding the stages of portfolioimplementation

2.3.6 The importance of Portfolios in learning the

Listening skill

It can’t be denied that portfolio plays a very important role in teachingand learning the L2 as it may affect the students’ success in learning.Consequently, it is essential to find out how important it is to learn thelistening skills It can not only help the teachers diagnose the students'skills and competences, but also make them more aware of thestudents' preferences, styles and learning strategies As the benefits ofthis, more teachers have lately started applying in their teachingbecause portfolios are regarded as a useful support to the newinstructional approaches that highlight the students' role in buildingunderstanding and the teacher's role in speeding up mutualunderstanding

More importantly, portfolios are seen as the ideal exemplification of thetrends They demonstrate students' achievements through worksamples with attached outcomes thereby supplying tangible proofs forthe teachers and students They also concentrate on real work andactual performance in classrooms

Brookfield (1995) lists some benefits of learner reflection in portfolios asfollows:

There are many other authors who suggest using portfolios in teachingand learning foreign languages in general and English in particular Forinstance, Abrami and Sclater (2005); Nunes (2004); Banfi (2003);Matthew and Shimo (2002); Rea (2001); Fenwick and Parsons (1999)and et al point out that portfolios can be a useful tool for evaluating

students' outcomes; and that using portfolios in listening coursesimproves students' autonomy, reflection, teamwork, and self-learning.

What's more, the presently prominent groups of models of the listeningprocess have been discussed as they all have important contributions tothe nature of listening comprehension and the listening process Also,the importance of listening is mentioned including some small pointsrelating to the issue

Last but not least, the concepts and ideas relating to the portfolios such

as definitions of portfolio, stages of portfolios, portfolio contents andimportance of portfolios in learning listening are conceptualized,discussed and analyzed as a base for the study

Chapter 3: The study 3.1 Introduction

There are two parts in this chapter: The first part is the analysis of thesituation of the study with the description of the subjects, the materialsthe teachers use, the listening syllabus and the instruments used togather data Later on is the comprehensive analysis of the datagathered from the survey and the findings.

3.2 Situation analysis

3.2.1 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at the Foreign Language Department, HongDuc University The university is a new provincial one; everything is still

in the process of innovation and development We are on the way tolook for better things The Department offers a four-year B.A, Englishprogram for English major students EFL is taught and learnt officially as

a university major in an academic setting Like many other subjects,English is taught in a formal setting of the classroom The four-yeartraining program is divided into two phases In the first phase, whichlasts for the first two years, the students study the four language skills:Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing In the second one, when thestudents are at the third and four years, besides the four language skills,they will deal with the theoretical subjects such as methodology,literature, lexicology, grammar, etc Each academic year is divided intotwo terms, each lasting 15 weeks and finishing with end-of-semesterexaminations

3.2.2 The subjects

The participants for my study came from my University in Thanh Hoaprovince with two third-year B.A English classes and 10 teachers in theLanguage Skills Division I, to which I had convenient access

• The students

The third- year students of FLD are studying in their fifth term, agedfrom 20 to 22, most of them are female They entered the universityfrom different places of Thanh Hoa province Some of them had learnt

English for 3 years, and not many of them had learnt English for 7 yearsbefore entering the university.

• The teachers of the Language Skills Division

There are 10 teachers of English in Division of Language SkillsDevelopment, four males and six females They have had at least twoyears of experience working as English teachers They graduated fromdifferent universities, some of them have completed MA courses fromDepartment of Post-graduate Studies, University of Language andInternational Studies, HN National University, the rest have BA degrees,however, they are all experienced and dedicated teachers All of the 10respondents have had opportunities to teach different subjects inEnglish and specialized in specific language skills They are good at andinterested in such skills as listening, speaking, reading and writing.Therefore, they have experience in teaching language skills, especiallylistening The table below summarizes the characteristics of the subjects

of the study:

Qualifications/training/teaching No of

respondents

Holding M.A in English teaching or language fields 2/10

Having been to an English speaking country 3/10

Having attended a workshop in English teaching 7/10

Having worked as language teachers for over five

years

5/10

Having taught listening for over 3 years 4/10

Table 1: Summary of information about the staff’s background

3.2.3 Listening course books

Actually, all the materials used for teaching and learning listening forthe third-year students are chosen and prepared under the tendency of

task-based approaches The curriculum for each academic year consists

of two terms, 15 weeks for each During each term, a number ofselected topics together with a wide range of different tasks are coveredwith a view to helping the students to enhance their listening skills.These selections are based on the students’ level of English, theirinterests and the objectives of the term

The third – year students under investigation have just finished theirfirst two years Students have 2 periods of listening skills per week,equal to 90 minutes every week In-class activities are those whichfocus on listening skills Students have lessons on listening skills with P-W-P frame (Pre-listening, While-listening and Post-listening) Teachersplay roles like instructors, monitors, facilitators to help students acquirethe knowledge of each lesson learned

3.2.4 Teaching and learning listening skills

It stands to reason that listening teachers are in charge of improvingstudents’ skills to listen to English In other words, the teachers need tohave knowledge of the skills available to listeners for use while listening.Generally speaking, students are supposed to be familiarized with basiclistening skills, different kinds of listening exercises, and most widelyrecognized English accents The students are also expected to havebeen able to understand clearly and slowly articulated English speechrelated to areas of most immediate priority (e.g very basic personal andfamily information, shopping, local geography, employment, etc.)

In terms of language, to further develop the students’ listening skills,the teachers address all the three developmental levels of listening(literal, interpretive and critical), provides more listening practice withinput of higher difficulty and trains a wider range of listening strategies

so that at the completion of the course, students can achieve theobjectives

In terms of methodology, the students are expected to be active in studying, peer and group cooperating They understand the tasks in