Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching english for grade 10

For all the reasons, I would like to conduct my research on the topic: “Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching English for grade 10” II.. For t

to continue with their tertiary education or labor life There fore,

“listening”, “speaking”, “reading”, “writing” are all dignified with thematicapproaches in series of text books for English secondary level

In fact, “listening” is a very important direct communication skillwhich requires learners with their frequent practice in many dailysituations or circumstances However, this seems to be the most difficultpart in reaching English improments, and it brings challenges to not onlystudents but also teachers of English

Working as a teacher for nearly 16 years I myself understand thenature of the problem and usually find it necessary to look for the ways toimprove the situation I have tried my best to do this research with a view

to getting my students and my colleagues to benefit from it by giving themmore opportunities to practise and to better their English For all the

reasons, I would like to conduct my research on the topic: “Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching English for grade 10”

II Aims of the study.

Each work has its own aims, so does this study The aims of my study are: To help teachers hold a useful and attractive listening lesson

To illustrate typical procedures of an effective listening period

To help students master more and more English knowledge and developecommunication skills

III The object of the study.

+ Teachers and students’s mission in listening periods in Tong DuyTan high school

+ First grade level: class 10A consists of 43 students-the mostbrilliant students of our school’s Natural Science Department anhdclass 10G with 38 poor quality students when entering the school.+ The students’ abilities in getting knowledge and developinglistening skills

IV Method of the study

 Using analytic methods

 Observing and asking colleagues for ideas and experiences

 Practising the application of the study

 Investigating methods: giving questions after lessons to test andassess the students’ attainment

to understand and to apply daily English speaking situationsthoroughly

2 Basic elements determining the effect of a listening period

a For teachers:

- Using new and active teaching methods, teachers play roles assteerers to help students create and self develope listening skills

- In order to have and effective listening periods, the teachers ought toconduct following basic elements:

Choosing and aplying teaching techniques in active and suitableways

Arranging time and steering the class reasonably

Making use of teaching equipment

Being creative, attracive and emotive

b Listening techniques

Good teaching methods of listening periods are ruled by theirconment That means the content can govern the choice, theimplement of teaching techniquies There are many ways to attainthe objectives of the lessons depending on reasonable techniquesthat teachers use

c Teaching equipment and devices

- All the content of listening passages or dialouges is recorded in taperecorders whereas textbooks only contain the tasks Thereforeteachers should use teaching equipment and devices in effective wayswith a view to obtaining the most useful practices In addition to this,teaching aids also motivate and attract students to further studyingactivities

- Equipment and devices needed:

+ Tape recorder ( or tantamount devices)+ Speakers

+ Real objects+ Powerpoint lesson plan+ Projector

d For students

- Prepare lessons before going to school

- Brain storm and search information relating to the topic of the lesson

at home

- Listen carefully to teacher’s introduction

- Follow techer’s guideness

- Be active and creative

- Make use of listening skills

II The Reality

1 Strong points

Although there still are some of objective and subjective conditions thataffect the teaching procedures, we have got over the difficulties andgradually raise the quality of listening lessons in particular and Englishsubject in general by having conducted the following activities:

a For teachers:

- Updating information on Internet or through workshops of English

- Making use of typical techniques

- Getting used to holding pairs work, groups work in active ways

- Creating suitable teaching aids

- Applying information technology in teaching

- Having modern teaching equipment

- Having the support and co-operation from the school, collaegues andstudents

b For students

- Being raised awareness of the importance of English language infurther study and their future

- Being approached to English daily on mass media

- More and more students are encouraged to study English from theirparents

- More and more students have good language skills

2 Weak points

a For some teachers:

- Having difficulties in choosing listening techniques

- Being limited and confused in manipulating and process leading thelessons’ situations

b For some students:

- Having less oppotunities of using modern devices and practisingEnglish at home

- Lack of learning motivation

- Being shy when having mistakes in pronouncing

- Being a little shocked with high speaking speed of native speakers

c Teaching aids:

- Low quality of recorded tapes

- Having few pictures and real objects that should be used in listeninglessons

d Initial investigation result:

In the school year of 2018 - 2019, I have taken on 2 classes of grade

10 One with ralatively high input points and another one with very lowpoints of English when taking the entrance examination for uppersecondary education taken place in June of last year

After 2 units of 10th English text book, I had a small listening test for both

of the classes:

Exercise 1: Listen to the student talking about her life and study in an

international university then mark True(T) or False(F) statements

1. She has classes in Spanish at La Guardia Community College T/

F

2 The teacher of her class is very nice and good. T/F

3 The speaker lives in an apartment with her sisters. T/F

4 It is easy to understand Annie and Marine Kass because

I live in an apartment with two American girls, Annie and Marine Kass They are sisters Annie's twenty years old and a dancer Marine is eighteen and a student They're very friendly, but it isn't easy to understand them They speak very fast!

New York is very big, very exciting but very expensive! The subway isn't difficult to use and it's cheap it's very cold now but Central Park is lovely in the snow I'm very happy here.

Write to me soon.

Love, Dorita

Exercise 2: You will hear a report of Lessons From Shanghai's Top Scores

on International Test Listen carefully and then complete the missingwords

ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: "Asian countries value education more than othercountries They have given (1)……education……… a priority Every child,every teacher, every parent knows that education is the gateway to (2)……

success………."

Mr Schleicher says other education (3)………systems……… can learn fromShanghai For example, he says education spending in the province has (4)

are putting teachers into challenging classroom (5)……situations…….tomake them better at their jobs

Tapescript

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is a two-hour test that compares the performance of fifteen-year-olds In the latest test, the countries with the best readers were South Korea and Finland But students in Shanghai, China, scored the highest of all in reading, mathematics and science.

The next strongest results were in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

In all, around half a million students in more than seventy economies took the test last year The test has been given every three years since 2000 Last year was the first time Shanghai took part.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released the results Andreas Schleicher is director of the Education Indicators and Analysis Division at the OECD.

ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: "Asian countries value education more than other countries They have given education a priority Every child, every teacher, every parent knows that education is the gateway to success."

Mr Schleicher says other education systems can learn from Shanghai For example, he says education spending in the province has increased, including teacher pay and training And administrators are putting teachers into challenging classroom situations to make them better at their jobs.

The specific result:

I have proposed solutions and used following methods to perform

III Solutions

1 Making a careful plan

This duty is concducted constantly and methodical so the teachers haveto:

- Look into the major content of the period from students’ book,teacher’s book and follow standard knowledge of skills This duty isvery essential because it helps teachers organise and control thelesson more easily, intentionally

- Study carefully the objectives of the lesson In a listening period or inthe any others, students are helped to practise and trained all of the 4skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing ( in which Listening is the

centred skill) Generally, after the lesson, students can make out themain ideas of listening passages or dialouges then fulfil all the tasksfrom teachers.

- Use listening devices in active ways This can vary and depend on thetopics of the lessons, the abilities of students and conditional features

of the classrooms To be more specific, for class 10A, with alot of fairstudents and having a projector, I often use powerpoint in teachingand search online update information related to the topics On theother hand, for class 10G, with most of weak students and having nodevices supported, I have to use a cassette player with low speedspeaking disks for each lesson, besides, I also bring real objects orpictures related to the topics

- Choose and co-ordinate listening techniques based on approach tothe lesson’s aim such as:

+ brainstorming about the topic

+ surfing listening skill

+ pausing at key words or phrases

+ guessing the meaning of the text

- Prepare a scientific lesson plan with students’ activities, teacher’squestions, students’ answers

- Give actual contacts: There are 16 topics in the text book of grade 10and all of them are closed to daily life so it is essential for teachers totake examples in reality to illustrate the situations or draw usefullessons for students to follow

- Discuss with colleges about the possibility of the lesson

- Give students open questions about the topics and ask them toprepare at home before the class time

- Distribute the time for each activity reasonally It is not permanentfor all the lessons but we can take following hint:

+ Warm up: about 4 minutes

+ Pre-listening: about 7 minutes

+ While-listening: about 20 minutes

+ Post-listening: about 10 minutes

+ Consolidation and giving homework: about 4 minutes

2 Implementing the process of teaching a listening period

A typical procedure consists of 3 stages: Pre listening, While listening and Post - listening This process not only helps studentscomprehend enough materials to finish the tasks but also assist them

-in lively comunications That means the teacher must be profesionalenough in the role of a “ferry man”

a Pre - listening

In this period, teachers should

- Prepare psychosphere for students before listening by leadingdirectly; asking open questions about the topics; showing pictures,words, phrases or sentences related so as to be predicted about thetopics of the lesson

- Elicit the excitement from students through small games involvingwith the topics

- Help students be out of difficulties in pronoucing or new source ofknowledge by pre teaching some new key words, new structures orintroduce back ground knowledge

This period often helps students thinking or having orientation aboutthemes or situations of listening passages There are lots of ways for

teachers to teach in this part but the best choices for me are: True/ False Prediction; Open Prediction; Ordering and Pre-Questions

b While - listening

It can’t be denied that this part is the main one of the lesson It is thechance for students to practise and develop listening skills

Teachers have to introduce the tasks with a view to being sure that allstudents know about their duties clearly

Basing on the level of students and on how difficult to understand thetapes, teachers can give the tasks easier or not in comparision with thetasks printed in the text book and decide how many times the studentsshoud be heard

For example, the learners in class 10 A need hearing 3 times, whereasthe ones in class 10G need to be heard 4 0r 5 times:

+ The 1st time is for surfing - getting used to the voice of speaker,recognizing the position of words and phrases and getting the mainideas of the text

+ The 2nd time is for students to catch the information to fulfil the tasks.+ The 3rd time is to check the answers and to correct the wrong ones

There are also numerous ways of conducting this part as long as afterlistening students meet the requirements of understanding the contentand getting over all the tasks given In this part, I and my colleges often

use exercises such as: Selecting; Delibrate Mistakes; Grids; Listen and Draw; True/ False Statements; Multiple Choice or Comprehension Questions.

c Post - Listening

This part is a good chance for students to have further practices or wecan call it “free pracice” This is really important because students cancombine information in the “while-listening” part with their backgroundknowledge and language skills in real communicational situationsamong classmates in pairs or groups under the guideness of the teacher

This part should be applied in varied activities: Role play; Recall the story; Write-it-up; Further practice

3 Task redesigning

As mentioned above, my school is situated in a rural and poor area, It

is very hard for students to get a good result in learning English,especially in listening skill development beacause of many reasons

Having concerned about this fact, I intended to make it easier the tasks

in while-listening I myself preciate this work because it has been thekey of success in my listening periods

Most of the tasks in the text book are suitable for my students,however, there are some of them seemed to be beyond their levels If Ikept the original tasks, there would be nothing to be caught afterblistening

From that point of view I have decided to change some of the tasks asfollowed:

- Mutiple choice exercises

It is difficult for the students to listen and fulfil the missing words ofmore than three words or the questions with long answer Therefore Ihave moved these tasks from “fill in the blank” or “answer the questions”

to “ multiple choices Let’s take these changes as good examples:

* Unit 6: An Excursion

Task 2

1 The weekend picnic I enjoyed most _ weeks ago

2 My class decided _ to the Botanical Garden

3 We met on time

A at the school gate C a school gate