Some applications to teaching listening skill for the 12th form students

From my experience in teaching English at Yen Dinh 1 school I realized that the well – prepared lesson plans in which teacher simplify the tasks and use strategies helps the students hav

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

The more our society develops, the more quickly the process of integration and globalization takes place It can’t be denied that today English is the most widely used language in the world It has been used in all spheres such as external activities, world trade, and science, etc In 2007 Vietnam became the 150th member of Workld Trade Organization (WTO), it creates both good opportunities and challenges to our country English plays an important role in developing economy, politics, science and technology, etc It is therefore necessary to learn English language However, to master a language is not easy at all Of the four language skills -Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing-that all language learners are supposed to acquire, listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in L2 or foreign language It takes much time and effort to make progress in this skill

At my school, Yen Dinh 1 upper- secondary school, students are often afraid

of learning listening lessons for some reasons such as the dull lectures, the unsuitable level lessons, irrelevant strategy listening, unclear sounds in tapes…This leads to their nervousness during listening lessons and they can hardly listen to anything which causes the bad result in learning the listening skill From my experience in teaching English at Yen Dinh 1 school I realized that the well – prepared lesson plans in which teacher simplify the tasks and use strategies helps the students have better results in listening lessons

For above-mentioned reasons, I have decided to choose the topic “Some applications to teaching listening skill for the 12 th form students” I hope this will

help both teachers and Sts to realize the factors obstacling the students in learning the English listening skill, then find out solutions to this problem

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The objectives of this research is to simplify the tasks and use activites in listening lessons in English textbook 12 to have effective lectures, more interested

in learning them and develop student’s listening skills

3 The scope of the study

In this paper, beacause of our limited time and knowledge, I mention to the theoretical background of listening skill and suggest some applications to teaching listening skills for upper- secondary school students This study is conducted among the 12th form students at Yen Dinh 1 high school during the school year 2018- 2019

4 Method of the study

I use a combination of different methods

- Collecting materials: Data are taken from various reference books, which related

to listening skill Information sources are also accessed from Internet

- Analyzing and synthesizing:

Data are analyzed to choose important information about listening skill After that, synthesize them

- Consulting our supervisor and other experienced teachers

5 Significance of the study

This study may provide insights into the process of learning the listening skill for the students It motivates the students’ desire for learning English, and make them more confident and active in listening activities It also gives some suggestions for other teachers for teaching listening lessons

PART B: CONTENTS Chapter I Theoretical background of the listening skill

1.1 What is the listening skill?

So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dakin (1974); Wolvin and Coakley (1982); Pearson (1983);

Howatt and Dakin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker's accent

or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning

Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening "the process of receiving,

attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli".

Pearson (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous organization and combination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of the text structure, all of which seem to be controlled by the cognitive process Thus it can

be said that though not fully realized, the listening skill is essential in acquiring language proficiency”

1.2 The importance of listening

Language skills are often integrated with each other in language use This is true with listening and speaking, so in conversations, two or more people alternate speaking and listening Like reading, listening is a receptive skill where the purpose is to comprehend or understand what someone might be saying or writing

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

In learning English as a foreign language, students cannot develop speaking

listening skills unless they develop listening skills To have a successful conversation, they must understand what is said to them Later on, the ability to understand the native speaker in direct conversations, on the radio or tape may be very important for them to further study the language and communicate in it Finally, listening to spoken language is an important way of acquiring the language

or "picking up" vocabulary and structures

1.3 Phases in the listening learning process

A listening text may be a short story, dialogue, piece of news, etc Teaching a listening text can be divided into three main stages: pre-listening, while listening, and post-listening Each stage has its own aims and activities

1.3.1 Pre-listening

This stage is aimed at preparing students with everything necessary for listening and understanding the listening text Some activities are:

Warming up the class: The teacher may motivate the class, gradually setting up

a context for the listening text to be presented by asking questions to elicit students' experience, or ideas concerning the coming text or by using some sort of visual aids

or their imagination

Introducing the topic of the listening text Tile teacher briefly introduces the

topic of the listening text so that the students may get their mind ready for it

Presenting key words The teacher only presents any word that is necessary

for students to understand the text

Giving guiding questions: These guiding questions will help focus the students'

attention on the main points of the text They will guide the students to the better understanding of the text Students should be allowed to make guesses at the answer to the questions before listening

1.3.2 While-listening

The aim of this stage is to facilitate students' listening and check their

comprehension While the students are listening to the text for the first time, they can check their guess at and give the correct answer to the guiding questions The teacher then gives the students some tasks to do while they are listening for the second time They can do some of the activities such as: gap-filling, true or false statements, answering comprehension questions, matching, multiple choice, reordering, etc The students may need to listen to the text more than once so that they can finish their while-listening activities After checking the students' answers, the teacher should emphasize the key points of the text and explain the difficulties in vocabulary or structures that the students encounter while listening

Be sure while listening, students are not allowed to look at the tape script of the listening text

1.3.3 Post-listening

At this stage, students can have opportunities to practise using what they have got from the listening text Students can do such activities as: '

 Summarizing the text orally or in written form

 Re-telling the content of the listening text

 Role play: Students play the roles of the characters in the text

 Discussion: Students can discuss the points in the listening text or giving their comments about the information in the text

The teacher should make up and vary the activities for students to do at this stage depending on their level of English

Chapter II Applications to teaching listening skill for the 12 th form students

Listening skills play an important role in using English to communicate Listening skilss are one of the most difficult skills that an EST/EFT teacher will have to deal with Moreover, the studying of these skills is not of learner’s interests

In this chapter, I suggest some activities to make teaching and learning Listening skills more attractive I mention to the use of pictures, games in teaching and learning Listening skills

2.1 Pictures

Pictures are illustrations that are cut from magazines, newspapers or other sources They’re mostly photographs, but drawings, collages, maps, or other illustrations can be used for certain activities

We can use pictures in three stages of the lesson: presentation, practice, and production They make the lesson more meaningful and interesting When students learn with pictures, they are more creative

2.2 Games

Games are highly motivating and competitive because they are amusing and interesting They can be used to give practice in all language skills and be used to practice many types of communication

2.3 Applying suggestions in teaching for 12 th form sts

I myself have applied these suggestions in teaching Below is one of my lessons in which I have applied some ways to improve the listening ability

In the English 12 textbook, most of the listening lessons have pictures to exploit the related contents, some tasks in“ While you listen” are quite relevant, however, there are some lessons have no pictures but have quite difficult tasks, For the limit of my theme I only focus on unit 6, unit 8 as examples and give some suggestions which I find them effective

2.3.1 WARM UP ( 5 minutes)

Besides using the pictures, handouts, I prepare some games for this parts (Hangman, brainstorming, who am I …) to save time to lead students to new lessons easily from the start

- For example:

Unit 6: FUTURE JOBS PERIOD 33: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

The purposes of this lesson is to provide listening comprehension about the American work force, the distribution and change of chosen jobs from the past to the future, the topic of this lesson is not easy because the vocabulary is difficult So

I do “Warm up” as following

Game: Puzzles

-T divides the class into two groups

-T sticks 8 leaves (prepared in advance) on the board

-Ss from each group take turns to pick a leaf on the board at random There is a puzzle at the back of each leaf

-T lets Ss read out the puzzle to their groups and they have to guess what the job is

If the group can’t give the correct answer, the chance is given to the other group -The group with more points is the winner of the game

* Expected puzzles:

1 I play music Who am I (musician)

2 I direct traffic at the crossroads (policeman / traffic warden)

3 I fly a plane (pilot)

4 I protect the country (soldier)

5 I travel a lot and show tourists around interesting places (tour guide)

6 I help people when they are sick (doctor)

7 I advise people about the law (lawyer)

8 I keep or check financial accounts (accountants)

Lead-in:

-Teacher ask students to list some more

1 Beside these jobs, Can you make a list of some other jobs?

- Teacher lead students to 2 group jobs

+ Manufacturing jobs : tailors/ car makers ….

+ Service jobs : seller/ accounting/ transportation ….

2 In your opinion, Which is the most popular job in Vietnam?

From the answers of students Teacher lead in the topic ►listening lesson today is about the job market in the US

Unit 8: LIFE IN THE FUTURE PERIOD 45: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

The purposes of this lesson is to provide the listening comprehension about people’s life expectancy in the future The topic is very popular however, students will have difficulties in listening because the vocabulary is unfamiliar and two voices in tapes are similar So I combine pictures and some open questions to lead

to the topic

-Teacher ask students to answer the question and show some pictures

Which of the following factors do you think might help people have a long and healthy life?

1) eat vegetables & fruits

2) drink enough water

3) do exercises

4) do not drink beer or wine

5) do not smoke

- From the answers of students, teacher lead in the topic ►listening lesson today

is about people’s life expectancy in the future.

2.3.2 BEFORE YOU LISTEN ( 10 minutes )

This is an important step so as to provide students with some vocabulary and related background and I do as follow

Unit 6: FUTURE JOBS PERIOD 33: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

- From “Warm up” part I have introduced:

+ Manufacturing jobs : tailors/ car makers …

+ Service jobs : seller/ accounting/ transportation …

I lead students to understanding that manufacturing and service jobs make “ workforce”

- I provide the vocabulary vendor/ seller (n) from here I lead students to the words “wholesale” and “retail”

Unit 8: LIFE IN THE FUTURE PERIOD 45: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

- Activity 1: Pre-teaching vocabulary

-T elicits some new words that Ss will hear in the listening exercise

+ incredible (a) (synonym): fantastic, unbelievable, surprising

+centenarian (n) (definition)

+ fatal (a) (context) Many cures for fatal diseases have been found.

+ eradicate (v) (synonym): eliminate, get rid of

+ life expectancy (n) (synonym): life span

+ eternal (a) (synonym): everlasting, never-ending

+ mushroom (v): (translation)

- Activity 2: Checking – Matching

-T asks Ss to match the words/phrases with their Vietnamese meaning

2.3.3 WHILE YOU LISTEN ( 25 minutes )

Unit 6: FUTURE JOBS

PERIOD 33: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

Task 2: Listen again and decide

whether the statements are true (T)

or false (F).

1 American workers have

Task 2: Listen again and choose the best answer

1 American worker have changed

A from manufacturing jobs to service

changed from

manufacturing jobs to

service jobs

2 Manufacturing jobs are

jobs in which workers make

something

3 Personal services are one

of the five service jobs

4 70% of workers produced

goods one hundred years

ago

5 80% of workers will

work in the service sector

by the year 2020

jobs

B from service jobs to manufacturing jobs

C Into manufacturing jobs

2 are jobs in which people make something or produce things

A Service jobs

B Manufacturing jobs

C personal services

3 Generally, service jobs are grouped into categories

A four B three C five

4 One hundred years ago, _ of workers produced goods

A 18 % B 80% C 30%

5 By the year 2020, workers will work in service jobs

A Five out of every ten

B Eight out of every ten

C Nine out of every ten

Expected answers:

1A 2B 3C 4B 5D

Unit 8: LIFE IN THE FUTURE PERIOD 45: LESSON 3 – LISTENING

Task 2 - Listen again answer the Task 2 - Listen again and choose the best