TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS OF GRADE 9

As a result, students of English often find listening difficult because they do not have appropriate methods to get over the difficulties.. So what difficulties do students in Cam Phong

TABLE OF CONTENT

1 INTRODUCTION

1.4 Method 3

2 DEVELOPMENT

3 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

3.1.Conclude 15

3.2 Request 16

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 RATIONALE

Nowadays English has played an important part in our life and nobody can deny that English is the international medium in the fields of science, technology, culture, education, economy and so on It has been considered as an international language all over the world, it has become a compulsory subject in all secondary schools as well It is the key for anyone who wants to get success in life It is also considered a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Viet Nam and other countries It is widely seen as the key language toll in the integrating process in the world With rapid development and expansion of the informational technologies, there needs

to be a common language for people of all countries to exchange information with each other and it is English that is used as a means of international communication

Listening is ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process Listening is a key to all effective communication Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood As a result, communication breacks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irriated But techniques for improving English listening skill is the topic that has got mucilage concern of expects Many books about this issue have been published Different authors dealt with different aspects of the topic However, the difficulties that leaeners often have in learning listening and solutions for the problems mentioned in some books have not been clearly dealt with in full and somtimes caused confusion to learner of English As a result, students of English often find listening difficult because they do not have appropriate methods to get over the difficulties Therefore ; This research is armed at studying factors relevants to listening comprehension Structure of a listening lesson and conducting a survey for collecting data about the students ‘ difficulties in learning listening Base on the result of the survey, the difficulties have been found Solution to the problems have been suggested One of the urgent requirements for all English teachers is to be able to help students improve four skills well

Among Secondary schools in Thanh Hoa Province, Cam Phong Secondary School has invested for teaching and learning English for many recent years However, the teaching and learning process seems to still focus too much on grammar, structures and vocabularies Our students are very good at doing exercises of written forms; These forms of exercises mostly concern grammar, reading or writing comprehension Meanwhile listening is considered the one of the fundamental language skills, the status of listening in language teaching and learning has undergone substantial changes in recent years

From my teaching context, I find that my students seem to fail in doing listening tasks in textbook because of many reasons The two important reasons are that the content of the tasks is really complicated while students' listening

ability is not good and especially students have few strategies to deal with their listening problems So what difficulties do students in Cam Phong Secondary School face with learning listening, whether the innovation effect on student' listening improvement and their attitude towards the new way of teaching listening if the author changes are the burning questions in the researcher's mind that inspire the author to change the way to teach listening skill in order to help students With the hope of improving listening skill for our students and as a

result, the experience initiative goes as:“Techniques for improving listening skills of grade 9 students at Cam Phong Secondary School.”

1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in listening which the students Cam Phong Secondary School encounter so that some effective techniques can be given to help them improve this skill

These are the specific aims:

- finding out the difficulties encountered by the students

- investigating the students’ attitudes at FLSS towards listening

- suggesting techniques with the hope of helping the students improve the ability of listening

1.3 RESEARCH SUBJECTS

This study addressed the following research questions:

1 What difficulties do nine th grade students face with learning listening to English materials?

2 Does the new way of teaching listening effect on students' listening improvement or not?

3 What are students' attitudes to the new way of teaching listening?

1.4 METHODS

The methods used in the study consisted of classroom observation, small group interviews and teaching dairy The first method was classroom observation Students were observed while they were doing the listening tasks to examine whether students listened to the CD attentively and how they did the tasks The second one was informal small group interviews to define the difficulties and the students' attitude towards listening after carrying out listening innovation Finally, in order to investigate whether this listening innovation was useful for students and whether it could encourage students to listen, what the teacher observed and interviewed were noted down on weekly teaching dairy

Listening challenges for English language learners

There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language) The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties Contributing factors include the speaker talking quickly, background noise, a lack of visual clues (such as on the telephone), the listener’s limited vocabulary, a lack of knowledge of the topic, and an inability to distinguish individual sounds While the challenges posed by the speaker or the

situation may be out of the listener’s hands, there are a few skills or 'strategies' that English learners can use to help them along

1.4.1 Predicting content

Imagine you've just turned on your TV You see a man in a suit standing in front

of a large map with the symbols of a sun, clouds and thunder What do you imagine he is about to tell you? Most likely, this is going to be a weather forecast You can expect to hear words like 'sunny', 'windy' and 'overcast' You'll probably hear the use of the future tense: 'It'll be a cold start to the day'; 'there'll

be showers in the afternoon', etc Depending on the context – a news report, a lecture, an exchange in a supermarket – you can often predict the kind of words and style of language the speaker will use Our knowledge of the world helps us anticipate the kind of information we are likely to hear Moreover, when we predict the topic of a talk or a conversation, all the related vocabulary stored in our brains is 'activated' to help us better understand what we're listening to

Practise predicting content:

Watch or listen to a recorded TV programme or clip from YouTube Pause after every few sentences Try to predict what is going to happen or what the speaker might say next

Tip:

If you are taking a listening test, skim through the questions first and try to predict what kind of information you need to listen out for A question beginning 'How many ?', for example, will probably require you to listen for a specific number or quantity of something

1.4.2 Listening for gist

Imagine you are a superhero flying in the sky From that height, it is possible to see what the entire area is like, how densely populated it is, the kind of houses in each area When listening, it is also possible to get the ‘whole picture’ but with one crucial difference: information comes in a sequence And in that sequence of information, there are content words (the nouns, adjectives and verbs) that can help you form that picture We often call this listening for gist

For example, the words 'food', 'friends', 'fun', 'park' and 'sunny day' have their own meanings, but when you hear the words in sequence, they help form the context of a picnic

Practise listening for gist:

Find a short video with subtitles on a topic that interests you Use the title to help you predict the content and then listen out for the content words Go back, and listen again with the subtitles How much did you understand the first time? Return to the video a week later and try again

Tip:

When you learn new words, try to group them with other words used in a similar context Mind maps are good for this

1.4.3 Detecting signposts

Just like the traffic lights on roads, there are signposts in language that help us follow what we're listening to These words, which link ideas, help us to

understand what the speaker is talking about and where they are taking us They're particularly important in presentations and lectures

For example, if a university lecturer says: 'I am going to talk about three factors affecting global warming…' then later on you might hear the phrases 'first of all', 'moving on to' and 'in summary' to indicate the next part of the talk Other words and phrases can function in a similar way For instance, to clarify ('in other words', 'to put it another way'); to give examples ('to illustrate this', 'for example'), and so on Take a look at this list of phrases for more examples.

Practise detecting signpost language:

Most course books for learners of English come with a CD and audio script Find an example of a business presentation or lecture and see how many signpost phrases you can identify (listen more than once, if necessary) Then check your notes with the audio script

Tip:

In your notebook, group signpost phrases according to their functions, and continue to add new expressions as you come across them

1.4.4 Listening for details

Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier on as a superhero This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's

on your list Similarly, when listening for details, you are interested in a specific kind of information – perhaps a number, name or object You can ignore anything that does not sound relevant In this way, you are able to narrow down your search and get the detail you need In a listening test, if you are asked

to write down the age of a person, listen for the words related to age ('old', 'young', 'years', 'date of birth', etc.) or a number that could represent that person's age If it is a conversation, you might wait to hear someone beginning a question with 'How old…?'

Practise listening for details:

Decide on a type of detailed information you want to practise listening for and watch programmes where you would expect to get that information.For example, you could listen to a weather report to get details about the weather, or you could follow the sports news to find out the latest results

Tip:

If you are taking a test, as soon as you get the question paper, skim through the questions, underline the important words and decide what kind of detail you need to identify in the listening text

1.4.5 Inferring meaning

Imagine you are a tourist in a country whose language you do not speak In a restaurant, you hand over a credit card to pay for the bill, but the server seems to say something apologetic in response Even though you don't understand his words, you can probably conclude that the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, and you need to pay with cash instead This is the technique of inferring meaning: using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to work out the meaning of what we hear Similarly, we can infer the relationship between

people from the words they use, without having to find out directly Take the following conversation:

A: Tom, did you do your homework?

B: I did, sir, but the dog ate it.

A: That's a terrible excuse You'll never pass your exams if you don't

work harder.

We can infer from the use of the words 'homework' and 'exams' that this is a conversation between a student and his teacher By using contextual clues and our knowledge of the world, we can work out what's being said, who is speaking and what's taking place

Practise inferring meaning:

Find a YouTube clip from a popular television show, for example Friends Now,

rather than watch it, just listen to the dialogue How much can you infer about what is taking place, who is talking and what their relationship is? Now listen to the clip a second time but watch it too Were your conclusions correct?

Tip:

The next time you hear a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning using the context or situation to help you But don't worry if you don't get it the first time As with everything in life, the more you practise, the better you will get

Summing up

These strategies are not stand-alone While prediction is mostly a pre-listening skill, others need to be used simultaneously to get the best result when listening

Learners of English, improve your listening skills with our free podcasts for grade 9 at Cam Phong secondary school

1.5 INNOVATION

In this section, I would like to introduce my innovation in my listening periods carried out from October 10 to November 30 at Cam Phong Secondary School There are thirty nine students who are in grade 9 in my class with mixed abilities Each week we had one listening period which lasted during 45 minutes The main material was English 9 book which designed with different topics as well as different tasks for students to practice listening However, most of students in my class are low competence and they seem to have no strategies to listen, therefore the tasks are too difficult for them This is the reason why I decided to innovate and this innovation divided into 2 steps: adapting the listening materials and the tasks, providing students with appropriate listening strategies

a What is innovation?

The word "innovation" has been much mentioned in many language researchers in recent years Miles (1964, p13) found that innovation as organizational behaviors while Nicholls (1983, p4) illustrated innovation as “an idea, object or practice perceived as new by an individual or individuals, which

is intended to bring about improvement in relation to desired objectives, which

is fundamental in nature and which is planned and deliberate White (1998)

realized innovation in differences with change; innovation is defined as involving deliberate alteration-intention is a crucial element

b Context of the previous listening teaching

Before I carried out my innovation, I usually warmed up my students by some activities such as, guessing games, picture description, in order to lead to the topic of the new lesson After that I dealt with each listening task in the textbook by playing the tape three times for each task, then asked them to give their answers Most of them gave the correct answers because they had the teachers' books which contained the answers to the tasks in our textbook that was the reason why they could answer quickly and correctly In spite of the fact that all tasks were completed that meant my duty also completed, my students did not really pay attention the lesson, they did not understand the content of the lesson because the tasks in the textbook were difficult for them to do and they chose the simply way to complete this compulsory part of English subject instead of learning how to listen effectively

c Adapting the listening materials and the tasks.

With the clear purpose to encourage our students in listening, my school headmaster completely supported my innovation providing that the materials had to refer to the topic of the curriculum designed

I redesigned the tasks in the textbook for the familiar topics and find other materials for difficult topic in order to make the listening materials easier and more interesting There were many sources to find the listening materials, however I really found it difficult to choose because the materials had to meet require that it related to the topic in the textbook and the content of it was easier and more interesting than the materials in the textbook After ten days, I believed that I chose appropriate materials, I started designing the exercises I divided the listening tapes into small parts and designed different kind of tasks for each listening part such as, number the pictures, listen and tick the words you hear, filling in the gaps, multiple choice questions, true or false statements, arrange the words they hear to make a complete sentences and so on All materials were printed and given to students in the listening classes

d Providing listening strategies to guide them to listen.

At first, I also warmed up them by some interesting activities such as, crossword, action games, and describing pictures, ect to lead to the topic they were going to listen to Before listening for the first time, I supplied my students with new words and new structures, and then I gave each student a handout which contained the listening exercises for the listening lesson For each exercise, my students were asked to read the instruction and the content of the exercise carefully to make sure that they understood what they had to do If they did not understand what the task meant, I would explain If the topics were familiar with daily life, my students were asked to predict the answers before listening After that I provided them some suitable listening strategies for each task and guide them how to do I played the CD player for the first listening, stopped at the key sentences, and then only played the key sentences contained

the answers for the second and third time My students were allowed to discuss the answers in one minute before I called some students to give the answers

e Problems happened when introducing innovation

When I introduced my innovation in my class, my students were really surprised by what I was doing because they had to use the tasks given by the teacher instead of using the tasks in textbook as usual Some of them may be confused because they could not see the answer keys in teacher's book to answer the questions

When innovation was carried out, many colleagues in my school believed that my innovation would help my students improve their listening skill and made them be more interested in listening Some of them thought that it was not practical and I was wasting my time and my effort because it did not help students to pass the General Certificate of Secondary Education

2 DEVELOPMENT

2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Today the use of English in communication is essential and important English not only helps us to develop economic, society, but also helps us integrate with our friends throughout the world English is useful for many different reasons: We may use English when traveling or working abroad If we know English, we can find a good job easily, we can trade with other countries

in English around the world to do business, economic development Knowing English helps us understand the songs, read books, watch movies, watch TV programs in English But in fact, secondary students in particular and people learning English in general have not learned English boldly and confidently to communicate in practice In order to help the students use English to communicate in everyday life, the teachers need to innovate teaching methods, pay attention to promoting language environment at school However this is not

an easy matter for both the teachers and the students It is important for the teachers to know how to select the specific language games in the appropriate classes of objects, the ability of the students to meet the efficiency The teachers should always encourage the students to participate in learning activities and practice communicating to make the lessons exciting, lively, and attractive They can form the habit of communicating in English

2.2 BASIS OF THEORY

When introducing my own innovation, the author found some similarities with the study of God (2000) In the study of God, he also wanted to find the learner's listening problems and provide them some strategies with the hope to help them deal with their listening problems The result in God proved that listening strategies provided were really useful to students

Sharing the same idea with God (2000), Teng (2003) also helped students

to listen more effectively by instructing them some listening strategies The

results of the study showed that students' perception toward the task of learning listening was changed Most strategies taught were positive effect to students Although some strategies had little effectiveness, the study brought students some useful strategies to improve their listening comprehension

In Wang's study (2007), the researcher also used observation, interview and dairy to collect data; especially the author's changes helped students who were the participants of the study take part in the listening activities more actively and more conscientiously And more importantly both the researcher and students were contented with the author's changes

Sharing the similarities with Cross (2009) about the methods to collect data, the author also collected data by using interview, observation Both the researcher and Cross have attempted to help students to improve their listening skill

2.3 RESEARCH DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS

In this section, I would like to introduce the research data when I carried out my innovation and the results of the study from observations, small group interview and teacher's dairy

The first part of this section was the data analysis of the first observation and interview which were carried out before adapting materials and providing strategies The second part was the results from the observations and interview which were conducted after applying the innovation in the listening lesson

Part 1: Before innovation

* Observation result.

The first observation was done during the first listening lesson with no

change The researcher invited two other English teachers in the English

department at Cam Phong Secondary School to observe Then, the researcher collected their observation schemes to synthesize and analyze Following were some main points of observation results

* The materials that teacher used were only textbook (English 9) and the cassette The teacher only explained the aim of tasks and then asked students to

do by listening two or three times without providing them strategies to do the tasks

* Students seemed to be quiet; they looked at the teacher's books while listening instead of looking the tasks and listening to the tape attentively and did the tasks in silence Students participated in the lesson without volunteer; the teacher had to call them to give their answers and their opinions about the other answers The class atmosphere was boring

* Interview results

Two questions in Vietnamese were asked two small groups students as soon as the lesson had finished and the information was noted down on the teacher's diary From the data collected, the researcher synthesized, analyzed and found that students had many difficulties when learning listening and they

thought that listening was the most difficult skill of four skills Here are two comments transcript from interviewing two small groups:

We find that listening is very difficult, learning listening is a long constant process But we only focused on grammar for a long time ago, therefore when

we realize that listening is really necessary for us, we want to learn it well, we had many difficulties We see that the tasks in the textbook are not interesting and too complicated to us Especially we do not have techniques to do the tasks.

It is listening that take much time to learn, but we do not study it well because

we lack of many things The content of some tasks in our textbook is boring and difficult for us, in addition to the difficulty that we are not guided how to learn listening well Therefore there are many difficulties that we cope with when we have to find our own ways to learn listening.

Part 2: After innovation

* Observation results

The second observation was carried out during the following weeks The researcher observed together with five teachers who were in English Department After that, the researcher collected the observation schemes, noted down the information and analyzed the data The following were some findings from observation:

* The listening class started with some interesting activates that led to the topic of the lesson The teacher provided some new words that appeared in the listening passage before listening and taught students how to pronounce Students are not nervous, they seemed to be motivated

* The tasks in the handouts which the teacher gave students were adapted When received the handout, some of students were confused because it was quite different from their textbook, but when the teacher explained why she had

to do that they nod their head

* Students were asked to read the instruction of each task carefully, the teacher explained the instruction to some students who did not understand what the task meant and then the teacher provided them some strategies to do each task Most students participated in the lesson; sometimes few students seemly ignored their duty However, the class atmosphere was warmed up Students listened attentively and did the task actively They gave the answers voluntarily and gave their comments when there was mistake

* Students' interview results

The second interview was conducted after each listening lesson in the break time The students were asked to answer three main questions The findings from each question were synthesized and analyzed below:

For question 1 of students' feeling about listening after applying the new way to teach, most students realized that listening was necessary for their future life Although it was difficult, it was really interesting If they had good listening materials and appropriate listening strategies, they would study it better This proved that innovation had a good influence on students However, some students admitted that learning listening was not easy and it was difficult for them to overcome their problems in learning listening