INTRODUCING AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION LESSON AT NONG CONG II HIGH SCHOOL

AIMS OF THE STUDY This research project is conducted to investigate the fact of teaching and learninglistening skill at Nong Cong 2 High School in Thanh Hoa province as well as toexamine

TABLE OF CONTENT PART A INTRODUCTION

PART A INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, together with the development of economy and technology in Vietnam,foreign language, specially, English has become an important mean of internationalcommunication It has also been considered as a “gold key” to enter the door ofintegrative trend The need of using English fluently is an urgent requirement Thus, inrecent years, English has been taught and become one of the compulsory subjects inschools, colleges and universities There have been many colleges and universitieswhere train English as major purpose to meet the inquiry of society With the demands

of learning English for communication has been increasing; one of the urgentrequirements for all English teachers is to be able to help students improve four skillswell

In recent years, Thanh Hoa province has invested for teaching and learning English.However, the quality of teaching and learning English is not as good as hope Aftergraduating, most students cannot communicate in English fluently, especially speakingand listening skills Due to this reason, the requirement of improving Englishcommunication is an urgent duty in this school This research project will be conductedwith the hope to improve teaching and learning listening skill at Nong Cong 2 HighSchool in Thanh Hoa province

Although Richards (1983) realizes the limitation of direct research on second languagelistening comprehension, language researchers in recent time have focused much time

on this matter Listening comprehension is considered as an essential skill According toMorley (2001), since 1960’s, listening skill has changed from an incidental andperipheral status to a significant and central important status in language education.Thus, it is necessary to improve listening skill for learners One of the biggest problems

is the inadequacy of authentic materials Nowadays, teachers can choose usefulmaterials such as radio, TV, internet, CD, VCD from many resources In other words,audiovisual materials are good choice for teachers to improve their students’ listeningskill As a result, the researcher would like to use audiovisual materials in teachinglistening and see whether audiovisual materials have good effect on students’ listeningskill or not

II AIMS OF THE STUDY

This research project is conducted to investigate the fact of teaching and learninglistening skill at Nong Cong 2 High School in Thanh Hoa province as well as toexamine how audiovisual materials can affect students’ listening skill Hopefully, this

innovation will be useful method for teaching listening not only for the researcherherself but also for her colleagues at Nong Cong 2 High School

III RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This research project was designed so that it would answer the following researchquestions:

1 How do audiovisual materials improve students listening skill?

2 What are students’ attitudes to audiovisual materials?

IV SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The participants of this study were 47 students with different levels who came fromgrade 10A4 and 4 teachers who had many experiences in teaching English in EnglishDepartment at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province The number offemale students in the class is 42 while there are 5 male students Their age is from 14

to 15 years old All students have learnt English for 4 years at Secondary School Theyreally wanted to study English well and took part in this study voluntarily

PART B DEVELOPMENT

I LITERATURE REVIEW

In recent years, language researchers have paid attention to the aspect of listeningskill improvement Audiovisual materials are suggested to apply in teaching four skills,especially listening skill

1 Teaching and learning listening skill.

According to Ralph Nichols (1980), the most basic of all human needs “is theneed to understand and be understood The best way to understand people is to listen tothem” Moreover, Morley (1991, p.82) points out that people can expect to listen twice

as much as they speak, four times more than they read and five times more than theywrite Thus, listening skill is considered as one of the most common communicativeactivities in daily life In second language of foreign language classrooms, listening isvital because it provides input for students (Rost, 1990, p.141-142)

In the past time, with the popular of Grammar translation method, most schools

in Vietnam only focused on teaching reading and writing skill Listening and speakingskills seemed to be ignored Brown (1987) states that twenty-five years ago, listeningcomprehension was not taken seriously in the process of language teaching The focus

in teaching as well as in publishing materials at that time was on reading and writingskill Since 1960, as the development of communication approach, language learningcould not be limited to writing and reading skill Language was taught in an integrativeway where all four skills were focused Then, listening comprehension received moreattention than before (Brown, 1987)

2 Audiovisual materials and language teaching & learning

2.1.Audiovisual materials

In general, audiovisual materials are considered as any device used to help

communicate ideas clearer Talking about audiovisual materials in language teaching, it

is commonly said that it means modern and recently used of teaching method such asfilm, video, radio, television, computer, etc Audiovisual materials are combined fromtwo types of materials The first type is audio material that influences the learners’auditory organ (hearing or listening) The second one is visual material that influencesstudents’ sight sense (seeing or viewing) Thus, audiovisual materials are both oflistening and viewing sense

Today, audiovisual materials are widely used at all degrees and levels of teachingand learning language According to Mueller (1980) in his research, most foreign

language teachers believed that the more visual is used the better English is achieved.Thus, teachers used these visual aids in their daily teaching

Audiovisual materials not only make the learning process effective in general,they also help the weaker students to improve their English level In his pilot study,Masako Sato (2006) hoped to explore the effects of using audiovisual materials on theweaker learners of English Among many sources of audiovisual materials, he mostlyfocused on using film scripts In his opinion, films were often used as authentic materialand helped to motivate students’ learning Sato, M pointed out that films encouragedstudents’ interest and challenge to understand what happen in the films

However, Sato complained that films are also too difficult for weaker students.Because spoken words in films did not wait anyone and it might make the listener find

it difficult to understand many phonetic changes in real utterance Because of thisreason, Sato suggested that to motivate students learning, film as an audiovisualmaterial should be used In addition, students’ listening skill would be improved if theyunderstood the sound variation system

2.2 Effect of audiovisual materials on language teaching and learning

As the discussion talked above, audiovisual materials are helpful and necessary

in the following ways

Firstly, audiovisual materials are considered as the mean of communicating.They help to supplement for what teachers cannot express well For example, when theteacher wants to introduce the meaning of a new word, a picture or a poster will be veryhelpful

Secondly, audiovisual materials are useful in retentive process Students areoften interested in films, video or pictures so these materials make the lessons moreinteresting and enjoyable When seeing and hearing a visual with interest, students willremember it for a longer time

Finally, audiovisual materials are a way of saving time In the limited time of alesson, the teacher cannot speak too much

Mei-Mei Chang and James D Lehman (2002), two professors in Taiwan have thesame interest in studying student’s motivation with multimedia and computer-based Intheir experiment study (2002), they investigated relation between learners’ motivationand interactive multimedia in English as a foreign language (EFL) This research deeplystudied the effects of the relevance component of the ARCS model on learners’motivation ARCS model here means attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.According to them, computer-based interactive multimedia was at the center oflanguage learning technology It provided students a learning environment that cansatisfy their needs and interest Chang and Lehman also concluded the ideas of otherresearchers about the benefit of audiovisual resources found in computer

Also talking about multimedia, Khalid Al-Seghayer (2001) focused on its effect

on second language vocabulary acquisition By briefly summarizing some relevant

research on this area, Khalid Al-Seghayer made clear about the effect and value ofmultimedia annotation, the impact of electronic glossing on second languagevocabulary acquisition and efficaciousness of videos and pictures The result of hisresearch showed that video was an effective way to teach new vocabularies.

Studying the other aspect of audiovisual materials, Gina Mikel Petrie (2003), adoctorial candidate at Washington State University investigated language teachers’views on visual language Specially, the researcher focused on the ways that languageteachers experienced visual language in their classrooms According to her, visualizingtechnology such as video, audio, the World Wide Web became more and more populartoday It not only influenced social lives, it also affected classroom environment Theresult of his research showed that visuals helped to enhance language development.However, some ideas showed that visual language sometimes distracted the text Inconclusion, the researcher suggested that the language teachers should acknowledgesoon the role of visual language such as image, graphics in language classroom

3 Audiovisual materials and listening comprehension

Because audiovisual materials become more popular and useful with bothteachers and learners, they are considered as a helpful tool to teach and learn listeningskill more effectively

Daniel Y Chang (2007) believed that changing learning environment was a goodway to develop students’ listening skill For this purpose, multimedia and interactivemodel were used as the best solution According to him, audiovisual materials havebrought a new environment for teaching and learning language One of the most usefulaudiovisual materials was multimedia with personal computer

In his research, the author realized that interactive model with multimedia wasuseful with the learning process Multimedia was the combination of some media such

as video, audio, sound, text, picture, and computer It helped to enrich processing aswell as recall the target language

Similar to Chang, Jone and Plass (2002) paid attention to multimedia annotation

to support listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition The main purpose oftheir research was to explore how effectively multimedia can assist second languagestudents’ listening skill More specifically, their research focused on the choice ofpictorial or written annotation in listening activities After studying 171 students at theiruniversity, the researchers found that students’ listening skill through the result of testswas highest when they received both written and pictorial annotation However, groups

of students who received pictorial annotation were better at listening than those whoreceived written

Audiovisual materials are helpful for teaching and learning listeningcomprehension However, a new question is that how they affects listeningcomprehension testing? Chan (2008), a lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University inChina conducted a research project to examine the effects of different types of visual

materials on CET-3 listening tests According to him, traditionally, listening tests in hisschool had no visual clues so that the validity of tests was low Because of this reason,the author tried to apply the different types of visual materials and investigated theireffects on CET-3 listening tests After doing the research on 174 students of fourclasses at his university, the author provided evidence that the effect of visuals in thetests were not clear With short conversations as well as with short passages, the effects

of visual clues were nearly nonexistent From this result, the researcher claimed that atleast for the moment, visuals should not be added to the CET-3 listening test

Like the lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University, Londe (2009) in herresearch emphasized the effects of video media in English as a second language (L2)listening comprehension tests Her research aimed to explore the differences in testperformance when learners were given listening tests in different formats of audio andvideo

In her opinion, to assess students’ listening skill, it was simple to find out theevidences that students could respond to question in real life and could answer severalquestions in listening test With the new trend of communicative testing, video mediahelped to change the traditional way of test tasks However, the result of this pilot studyshowed that although video media was more authentic than audio alone, it did not help

to change the performance of listening testing

However, through her study, Londe found that her students felt more interestedand comfortable with video format Progosh (1996) in his research had ever mentionedthat students liked video listening test than audio only It might be that video mediahelped to enhance students’ motivation and attention In conclusion, video media help

to decode meaning in listening comprehension but it had no influence on students inlistening testing (Kellerman, 1992)

In conclusion, the author of this study tries to review and have an overview ofresearch that is related to the topic However, for most research, the effects ofaudiovisual materials in listening comprehension are in general There is nearly noresearch in which listening skill’ improvement is mentioned and explored From thisproblem, the author of this research project should emphasize and deeply study aboutthe effects of audiovisual materials on improvement of students’ listening skill in EFLclassroom

4 Innovation.

4.1.What is innovation?

In recent years, the word ‘innovation’ was much mentioned in many languageresearches While Miles (1964, p.13) saw innovation as organizational behaviors,Rogers and Schoemaker (1971, p.19) emphasized innovation with the aspect of thepersonal perception and interpretation Summarizing from these opinions, Nicholls(1983, p.4) described innovation as a new idea, object or practice of which intention forimprovement in the relation with objectives More specifically, in the research in 1988,

White saw innovation in the differences with change According to him, change was theact of making different between time 1 and time 2 Change occurred without beingplanned or intended whereas innovation was produced with awareness, plan andintention The procedure of carrying out this study was an innovation based on the idea

of White (1988) because the researcher had awareness of her teaching context, hadintention to change, and then made careful plan to do innovation

4.2.The model of innovation:

The researcher followed to both the social interaction and problem-solvingmodels because of following reasons:

4.2.1 The social interaction model:

According to White (1988, pp 125-126), the social interaction model emphasizedthe influent and important factors of social relation in the transmission and adoption ofinnovation In the social relations, communicator and communication were key factorswhereas the change agent played a significant role In this innovation, the researcherand six other English teachers in teaching staff played important roles in the transitionand adoption of the innovation The researcher found the solution for the problems inteaching listening at her school and experiment with new method to know whether itwas successful or not By inviting other colleagues to take part in the study, theresearcher introduced and transmitted the innovation and these colleagues adopted aswell as continued to transmit this innovation It was the social relation in this study

4.2.2 Problem-solving model:

In his opinion, White (1988, pp 123-125) saw problem-solving model as the basis ofaction research where the researcher identified the problems by herself This modelemphasized on a bottom-up rather than top down approach

Markee (1997, pp 66-67) also emphasized that problem-solving model was themost popular approach to promote change in education in which the eventual user of aninnovation identified the need for change and this change was a bottom up not a topdown process In this study, the researcher identified the problems from her teachingcontext by herself and she was aware of the need for change Thus, this study not onlyfollowed to social interaction model but also problem-solving model

4.2.3.The role of stakeholders:

According to Markee (1997, pp 43-44), teachers played a key role while otherindividuals had a stake in the process of an innovation These individuals calledstakeholders Stakeholders were those who involved in an innovation They had theirown opinions about innovation and showed their views in different ways Stakeholdershad relationship to each other as adopters (or resisters), implementers, clients, suppliersand change agents (Markee, N., 1997) Following items were more detail aboutstakeholders and their roles in the innovation process

4.2.4 Adopter:

An adopter is a person who decides to accept the change According to Markee,

N (1997, p 58), there are five different types of adopters that can be listed asinnovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards In thisinnovation, the researcher, the English teachers invited to take part in the innovation,and students in class N5 were adopters

4.2.5 Resister:

A resister is a person who rejects an innovation; refuses to adopt the ideas ofchange agents and does not want to change Some students in class N5, who did notwant to change, were resisters

4.2.6 Implementer:

Implementer is a person who has to make innovation work in the classroom Inthis innovation, the researcher and the English teachers invited to take part in thisinnovation were the implementers

4.3 Culture context.

In his research, Holliday (1994) described the different between BANA- a dominantculture within the profession and TESEP- a very different culture within stateinstitutions Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had some characteristics

of “TESEP” environment because of the following information

Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province was not very good with largeclasses equipped with fans and white boards Besides, the size of the English classeswere from fourty-five to fifty- five students, therefore, these classes were too crowdedand affected by the noise of surrounding classes

English teachers mostly applied the grammar translation approach for all Englishclasses especially in teaching listening comprehension, in which teacher was the center

of classroom Most of them were old teachers who had taught English more than five years Thus, teachers were not familiar with authentic materials in Englishteaching, especially in teaching listening

fifty-The students at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had differentages, levels, backgrounds and purposes to study English Some of them were atintermediate level and some were at low-level English competence

At Nong Cong II High School, although the modern approaches of languageteaching were applied, listening skill was ignored surprisingly Teachers mainly showedtheir students how to read and write, not how to listen or speak Thus, students’listening ability was limited Students hardly could understand what other people speak

in English Many students complained that listening skill was the most difficult skill toimprove It seemed to be the most challenging of the four English skills that studentshave to face

Due to those reasons, it was necessary for teachers to find the useful way forimproving students’ listening skill Beside the need of applying new teaching methods

as well as investing good furniture for learning condition, the suitable inputs should betaken care of Nowadays, together with the development of high technology, thesources of materials for learning and teaching listening comprehension were wide andvarious In this study, the researcher tried to explore the effects of audiovisual materials

on the improvement of students’ listening skill

II INNOVATION

In this section, I would like to introduce my innovation in my listening periodscarried out from October 10 to November 30 at Nong Cong 2 High School There areforty five students who are in grade ten in my class with mixed abilities Each week wehad one listening period which lasted during 45 minutes The main material wasEnglish 10 book which designed with different topics as well as different tasks forstudents to practice listening However, most of students in my class are lowcompetence and they seem to have no strategies to listen, therefore the tasks are toodifficult for them This is the reason why I decided to innovate and this innovationdivided into 2 steps: adapting the listening materials and the tasks, providing studentswith appropriate listening strategies

1 Procedure

At first, the researcher expressed the purpose of the study to all students and thedirector of at Nong Cong 2 High School It was necessary to explain clearly aboutstudents' problems about learning and improving listening skill as well as audiovisualmaterials and possible results of this study to get their agreement to cooperate

After that, one English teacher was invited to teach listening lessons in class10A4 The researcher and four other teachers observed her class during the first week to

understand more about the normal listening lessons with no audiovisual materials (See appendix 1) The observers had to take note what happened in the lessons and filled in

to the observation scheme (See appendix 7) Then, a questionnaire was given to seven students in class 10A4 to get their ideas and attitude to their listening lesson (See appendix 2).

forty-Thirdly, the teacher applied audiovisual materials in class 10A4 to help themlearn listening comprehension lesson In listening lessons, she used authentic materials

such as pictures, CD player and video clips (See appendix 3) During this step, the

researcher observed her students’ behaviors and attitude towards the listening skilllesson with audiovisual materials

Fourthly, another observation (See appendix 4) was conducted after two months

of the research This observation focused on the classroom atmosphere, the students’participation to the lesson and the changes compared with the first observation

Next, the researcher (See appendix 5) interviewed the students in class 10A4

about their thought and difficulties of learning with audiovisual materials

Finally, an English teacher interview was conducted with six teachers whoparticipated in the research to get their views and attitudes to audiovisual materials and

its’ effects on teaching and learning listening comprehension (See appendix 6)

III RESEARCH DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS

This section described the results from observations, the survey and English teacherinterview during the two-month research

The first part of this section was the data analysis of the first observation andsurvey those were conducted before introducing audiovisual materials The second partwas the results from the other observation and survey as well as the teacherinterviewing those were taken place after applying audiovisual materials in the listeninglessons

Part 1: Before change

 Observation result.

The first observation was done during the first week of the study The researcherinvited six other English teachers in her teaching staff to observe Then, the researchercollected the take notes to analyze data Followings were some main points ofobservation results:

 Teacher taught listening skill with grammar translation method She onlyexplained the aim of tasks and then asked students to do the task bylistening to the tape two or three times

 The materials that the teacher used were only textbook and the radio.Sometime, she read the task by herself to help her students listen easier

 Classroom atmosphere was boring with no extra activities Most studentsdid the task in silence When a students gave the answer, most of otherstudents only looked and self corrected if necessary There was littlefeedback or opinion from students Some students did not participate to thelesson They sat and looked only.

 Survey result.

The first survey was carried out as soon as the first observation finished

The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese and delivered to forty-seven students

in class 10a4 From the survey, the researcher put the data in to the table to find themost common ideas of students about their listening skill

Table 1: Students’ attitude to listening skill

1 Which skill do you like most? Respondent (%)

Figure 1: Students’ like with listening skill among four skills.

Figure 2: Students’ attitude to difficult level of listening among four skills.

Question 3 and 4 were for students’ ideas about their listening lessons.

Results of question 3 and question 4 summarized students’ ideas about their

listening lessons Answering for question 3 about the materials that their teacher gave in

their listening lesson, students said that they only used textbook and sometimes theyhad CD player They only had listening lessons with authentic materials one or twice asemester when the lessons were observed

For question 4 of students’ assessment about their listening lesson, most studentscomplained that their listening lessons were boring Only few students commented thattheir listening lessons were interesting and excited

Table2: Students’ hope and suggestion for their listening lessons.

5 What do you hope to change in your