implementing the flipped classroom approach in developing students listening capacity

The feasibility of using flipped classroom approach in developing students' listening capacity.. Objectives of the study In this paper, we will discuss what we mean by” flipped classroom

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO LÀO CAI TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN TỈNH LÀO CAI

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM NĂM HỌC 2019-2020

MÔN: TIẾNG ANH

*****

“IMPLEMENTING THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM APPROACH IN

DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ LISTENING CAPACITY.”

NGUYEN THI THU THUONG

Lao Cai, 4/2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

1.2 Aim of the study.………

1.3 Scope of the study

1.4 The feasibility of using flipped classroom approach in developing students' listening capacity ………

1.4 1 For teachers

1.4 2 For learners

CHAPTER II DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Literature review

2.1.1 Definition of listening

2.1.2 Challenges in teaching listening skills

2.1.2.1 Challenges for students

2.1.2.2 Challenges for teachers

2.1.3 Definition of flipped learning approach

2.1.4 Advantages of the flipped classroom approach

2.1.5 Limitations of the flipped classroom

2.2 Applications – Flipped classroom model for teaching listening skills

2.2.1 Methodology

2.2.2 Participants

2.2.3 Data collection

2.2.4 Procedure

2.2.5 In-class and out-of-class’s implementation

CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

3.1 Overview of the process

3.2 The result of pretest and posttest

3.5 The results of the interview

CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION

4.1 Major findings

4.2 Implications

4.3 Limitations of the study

4.4 Suggestions for further study

REFERENCES

APPENDIXES ………

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale of the study

Listening skill plays an important role in daily life as well as in teaching and learning languages According to Rubin and Thompson (1994), listening skill

is the most important language skill, because people spend about 60% of their time listening In addition, listening skill gives people the opportunity to feel language and comprehensively improve their ability to use language Without listening skill, participants in communication activities will not receive the message; therefore, they cannot respond quickly and effectively However, this

is the most difficult skill of the four skills that students need to master throughout the learning process

In spite of its obvious importance to language acquisition, multiple obstacles face the teaching and learning process It is commonly assumed that listening skill is naturally acquired so little attention is paid to instruct students how to listen Teaching listening is associated with testing learners’ comprehension rather than promoting it A typical listening lesson often follows the procedure

of pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening in which students listen to a complete audio text and get the correct answers to a set of prescribed questions posed by the teacher Thorn (2009) emphasized that most listening is done for non-listening purposes like introducing grammar or vocabulary, for discussion, for testing comprehension but not actually to learn how to comprehend One minute of listening is normally supported by countless minutes of not listening activities Answering comprehension questions after an audio is mostly a test of memory The focus is on outcome, on product rather than process, and ignores the specific difficulties students may have experienced during the actual listening Besides, students have minimal listening practice time Meanwhile, the more they practise, the more they make progress

1.2 Objectives of the study

In this paper, we will discuss what we mean by” flipped classroom approach”, why we should use the flipped classroom approach in teaching listening skill

to English major students at high school, and the advantages and disadvantages of using flipped classroom approach The paper also addresses

the principles behind using “flipped classroom approach in developing students' listening capacity.” and give some suggestions concerning the

factors to consider when using the approach as well as what to be done to overcome the difficulties facing teachers in this task Finally, an evaluation will be given to see the effect of using the method on teaching and learning listening skills

1.3 Scope of the study

The study is mainly about the difficulties that the English teachers meet when teaching listening skill to English major students at specialized high schools and some suggested techniques relating to using flipped classrooms and ways which help teachers improve the quality of teaching listening skills Bedsides, the paper will indicate that learners may turn the flipped classroom into advantage during the period of self-study time

1.4 The feasibility of using flipped classroom approach in developing students' listening capacity

1.4.1 For teachers

In contrast to the traditional classroom model, in flipped classroom, teachers perform lectures, theory videos and basic exercises, share via the Internet for students to preview at home, while class time is devoted to answering students' questions, doing difficult exercises, or discussing knowledge more deeply

1.4.2 For learners

Setting learning goals: Students determine their own learning tasks based on achieved results; set detailed, specific learning objectives, overcome weak aspects

Planning and implementing learning styles: Students have the ability to evaluate and adjust learning plans; forming your own way of learning; find a suitable source of materials for different purposes and tasks; proficiently using the library, selecting documents and making folders in accordance with each learning topic of different exercises; recording information readable in appropriate forms, being convenient for remembering, using and supplementing when necessary; self-study problem

Assessing and adjusting learning: Students identify and adjust their own mistakes and limitations in the learning process; contemplate how to learn, draw experience to apply to other situations; know how to adjust learning For evaluation purposes, each criterion needs to be divided into different levels to specify the assessment

1.5 Summary of the paper

This paper is divided into five main chapters as follows:

Chapter I: Introduction

This chapter provides the basic information of the paper including the background of the study, the aims, scope and a brief summary

Chapter II: Development

This chapter presents the theoretical background relevant to the research, details how to collect data and analyzes the collected data to evaluate the real situation

of teaching, and learning listening of 10 English class students in Lao Cai high school for gifted students and their perception of using flipped classroom method to improve listening skill

Chapter III: Findings and Discussion

This session analyzes the collected data to evaluate the real situation of teaching and learning listening of 10 English class students in Lao Cai high school for gifted students and their perception of using flipped classroom method to improve listening news broadcast skills

Chapter IV: Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the content of the paper, acknowledges the limitations

and suggestions for further research

CHAPTER II: DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Literature review

2.1.1 Definition of listening

Listening is an essential skill that ESL learners have to develop There are several distinct definitions of listening, and each definition represents a different perspective of listening "Listening means taking a vigorous, human interest

in what is being told us," said poet Alice Duer Miller "You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer."

It is not easy to define listening comprehension but one thing for sure is that listening is to hearing what looking is to seeing as both listening and looking require persons involved to take in relevant information while turning out irrelevant information irrespective of what their zooms are: auditory or visual Howatt and Dakin (1975) pointed out that listening comprehension is “the ability to identify and understand what others are saying including understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning” Listening to and understanding speech, thus, consists of a number of basic processes According to Brown (1994), the hearer first processes “raw speech” and holds an “image” of it in short – term

memory Then, he determines the type of speech event that is being processed and infers the objectives of the speaker Next, background information relevant the subject matter is recalled and utterances’ meaning is assigned Lastly, the hearer determines whether information should be retained in short-term or long-term memory as well as deletes the form in which the massager was originally received

Those processes clearly indicate that listening is not a passive skill in which the listener takes in and stores aural messages in much the same way as a tape recorder (Anderson and Lynch, 1995) On the contrary, when listening to messages, listeners are active model builders who construct interpretation of those messages by making use of schemata or global knowledge

2.1.2 Challenges in Teaching Listening skills

Lack of language knowledge: Students' vocabulary is limited, the biggest obstacle to the process of learning and practicing listening comprehension skills When encountering new words, students often have to stop to think, this will lead to miss the next information Pronunciation is another obstacle for students The syllabic changes in the quick and continuous speech in the lesson compared to the clear pronunciation of each syllable of the teacher in the

classroom confused students In addition, the occurrence of assimilation, elision and liaison in English speech sequences makes it difficult for high school students

Lack of background knowledge is also a challenge for students' listening process Because background knowledge has a great impact on understanding the topic of listening Learners build the meaning of the listening by breaking what they hear (or read) into meaningful units, then re-combining them, based

on their existing social and language knowledge, then use logic guesses to fill

in the blanks Learners with different background knowledge on a topic at different levels will understand and interpret new information in different ways when they decode new information (Rubin, 1994)

2.1.2.2 Challenges to teachers

Even teachers who are professionally trained in those 4 skills have difficulties

in mastering them Frankly speaking, teachers who are not frequently listen to the English news, read English newspaper, or speak to English native speakers; they can’t keep up with the latest information and can’t get familiar with the accent of different regions Additionally, designing a brand new listening task for gifted students isn’t as easy as eat a piece of cake Finding and choosing the suitably authentic material for students as well as the reliable source for designing an interesting listening task presents as a challenge to educators Moreover, adapting the lesson to suit all students is another hassle In fact, majority of trainers have to spend a large amount of time making a seem-to-be-boring listening task become inviting to all students

2.1.3 What is flipped learning?

Before starting to come up with the concept of "flipped learning", the author would like to mention the problems which it will solve and compare to traditional teaching: 90% of the lecture time and 10% of the time to do the

lesson With the traditional teaching method, a class session will begin with the teacher preparing the lecture to the class and the student preparing to do homework the previous day The new lesson will be lectured during class hours and a bit of time will be spent doing class exercises Thus, most lectures are estimated to consume 90% of the time, the remaining 10% is practiced in class

by both teachers and students

Figure 1: Traditional model vs Flipped model Source: Research Gate (Flipped Learning As A New Education Paradigm: An Analytical Critical Study -: Hanaa Ouda (2016))

There is an argument that the "Flipped Learning" method is highly persuasive

as soon as the author is reading the first document It is when listening to lectures that students are assessed to be "low level thinking", and when applying the theory of homework or learning activities, students will be at "high level thinking" This means that when students are passively receiving knowledge, it

is difficult for them to think, imagine into their knowledge while listening to the lecture So every time you listen to a certain knowledge that uses it to solve the problem, or think about other problems right away, it will take the whole teacher afterwards The "Flipped Learning" solution offered is “reverse this process”

The 'flipped classroom' is the term commonly defined as a pedagogical model

in which traditional lecture and homework elements are reversed (Hamden et

al, 2013; Lage et al, 2000) Students engage with interactive content focusing

on key concepts prior to class allowing face-to-face time for collaborative activities that clarify concepts and contextualise knowledge through application, analysis, and planning and problem solving (Anderson et al., 2001; Karanicolas & Snelling, 2010; Snelling et al, 2009) There is limited published evidence on student learning outcomes from flipped learning approaches, particularly in higher education (Hamden et al., 2013; McLaughlin

et al., 2014)

2.1.4 Advantages of the model flipped classroom

About 10 years ago, this method seems difficult, but thanks to the current technological advances, it is extremely suitable As of now, teachers will collect lectures by video, PowerPoint, tools to support lesson preparation or participate

in online training portals Students will use the content of video to learn and prepare questions for lessons

The work in the classroom of teachers and students will only stop at answering the questions about the lesson, the teacher instructs the students to deepen their knowledge, carry out appropriate group activities as well as spend more time in training and thinking to students Students will learn in new classroom models called "flipped classroom" - a way to organize classes that characterize the

"flipped learning" approach (see also: classroom/what-is-fc.html)

http://www.uq.edu.au/tediteach/flipped-The main idea of "Flipped Learning" is to increase the time for high level thinking and to reduce the passive thinking time The acquisition of knowledge will be converted through online learning forms

With the flipped classroom model, educators offer the following four essential factors:

Firstly, it is a flexible learning environment Flipped classroom allows students

to choose the way, place, and learning time that suit their individual conditions Moreover, teachers are also more flexible in assessing students' learning

Secondly, this model creates a new learning culture for students In traditional classes, teachers are the center of information If students discuss questions, they all revolve around the main ideas of teachers In contrast, the model of flipped classroom is forced to take students as a center in the teaching process Class time is devoted to discussing deeper knowledge, creating richer learning opportunities for students

Thirdly, a flipped classroom provides content-oriented learning programs Through this content that optimizes class time Teachers clearly define the content and purpose of lessons for students, from which students actively explore and comprehend

Finally, this model requires teachers to be professional educators The role of a professional educator with layers of flipped classrooms is even more rigorous

in traditional classes During class time, teachers constantly observe their students, provide them with appropriate feedback at the right time, assess students' lessons Teachers think about reality, connect each member of the class to improve their learning Teachers collaborate with each other, think together and take responsibility in transforming their practices

2.1.5 Limitations of flipped classroom

In fact, when implementing the flipped classroom model, educators face many obstacles and challenges, from both teachers and students

The first obstacle for students is that not all families have the infrastructure of equal communication Not all students are easy to access, get lectures from teachers to work; Next is “an increasing number of parents and educators do not believe that we need to steal children's home time with compulsory homework For you, the time spent at home is necessary for your own passions, for connecting with friends and family, for playing or participating in social and sports activities Also, because you do not understand thorough about the flipped classroom, many teachers will come up with "bad pedagogy" measures,

as Nielsen said “When I shared the idea of a flipped classroom for a manager, she immediately told me: it's amazing! We will have more time in class to prepare students to solve exam questions” Not all schools are willing to let students learn at a pace that is consistent with the development of each student

2 2 A case study – Flipped classroom approach

To better enhance teaching and learning listening skills, the researcher employed the flipped classroom approach The reason for choosing this approach is that in this approach, the students will be more active in understanding the knowledge, skills, and can promote their autonomy in learning For the teacher, this approach also reduces the workload in the class and save more time for them to interact and assist students

2.2 1 Research Design

One experimental group was recruited to participate in the study which lasts 8 weeks during the first semester of the academic year 2019-2020 During the experiment, the flipped based model was adapted and employed as a means of teaching some listening comprehension strategies for the students A pretest and posttest were used to evaluate the effect of the experimental model

Moreover, the researcher also interviewed the students before and after the experiment to investigate their attitude towards learning listening skills

2.2.2 Participants

The participants of this study were 35 students who majored in English of grade

10 in Lao Cai high school for gifted students

2.2.3 Data collection

The lessons in eight weeks were conducted under the same instructions and the researchers tried to select the sample of the same level of English based on the pre-test results The pretest was given at the beginning of the experiment and the results were recorded for further discussions The test includes 4 sections After the whole treatment had been conducted, the posttest was administered to the students Actually, the form and level of the posttest was similar to the pretest

so the evaluation of the students’ progress of listening skill would be more objective The posttest was carried out after 8 weeks of implementing the flipped classroom model in teaching listening The procedure for the lessons remained the same for each week with specific themes and topics The contents of the news

in each week were based primarily on the chosen topic so that students’ listening competences would be enhanced

Figure 2: The topics for experimental teaching

Eight pre-recorded video lectures were designed by the researcher to teach the intended listening excerpts to students before the lesson Thanks to the developments of technology, there are a variety of websites and apps so that the teachers can create their own video lectures or online classes

During the first week of the experiment, teacher instructed students to the flipped classroom model; Edmodo websites - https://new.edmodo.com (a free and useful place for the teacher to create the online lessons and follow-up assignments as well); and the procedure of each lesson

A lab-computer lesson was carried out in which the teacher introduced the flipped classroom model and instructed students how to create their student’s account on Edmodo website Once every student understood the course objectives and procedure, they were required to log on their account on Edmodo and followed the instructions and task requirements every week

https://new.edmodo.com/groups/10-english-30197096

The requirements and tasks of the lesson were posted on this website each week during the experiment The teacher combined two listening approaches (Bottom-up processing and Top-down processing) in designing the tasks for students so that the learning outcomes will be better achieved

2.2.4 Procedure

This experiment included a suggested instructional model in teaching listening

to news broadcast based on flipped learning approach to teach listening to the experimental group The procedure of preparing and delivering the lessons was designed based on the flipped classroom model in Hanaa Ouda (2016) and presented as below:

Step One: Choosing

the lesson, planning

outcomes

The lesson to be flipped is chosen The teacher starts determining the learning outcomes of the lesson

Step two: Designing

the content and

before class session

The teacher designs the content and materials of the lesson and delivers it to the students before the next class The content of the listening tasks were chosen based on the intended topics

At home, students watch the instructional videos, listens to the audios or watch the videos and the other materials assigned by the teacher They are required

to do some tasks to check their understanding of the information provided, understand the lesson ideas and analyze the content provided

Step three: In-class

session

During the classroom, students participate in active learning activities such as: discussions, collaborative

learning, critical thinking skills Moreover, pair and group work are applied to optimize students’ participation and engagement in the lesson Most of the class time focuses on student-centered learning The role of teacher is a supporter and facilitator of learning

Step four: follow-up

session

Students are required to carry out projects, prepare and make presentations and other kinds of assignments related to the lesson through searching the webs for more resources The teacher then will evaluate students’ performances to make sure that the learning outcomes are achieved

2.2.5 In-class and out-of-class’s implementation

It is clear from the table that there are two main components in any flipped classroom model: out-of-class and in-class activities

2.2.5.1 Out-of-class activity:

In before class practices, the students primarily work at home and make use of computer technologies in accessing to the learning contents and materials During this stage, learning materials, recorded lectures and listening records are the central components Students are required to watch or listen at home to teacher-created videos and follow the teacher’s instruction to complete some designed activities so that they are ready to work with the concepts they studied Students are also required to prepare the questions for discussion in the class

To design the content of the lesson, teachers should consider the following factors Firstly, it is of great importance to improve students’ appropriate background knowledge so that they can identify the purpose of the listening

activity Long (1989) claims that in the process of learning a foreign language, learners' scripts or schemata in an appropriate situation can enhance greatly the learning outcomes Chiang and Dunkel (1992) shed light on the definitions of scripts or schemata as the written text or spoken discourse does not carry meaning in and of itself but meaning occurs as a result of the interaction between the reader's or listener's prior knowledge about the world and the text

or speech Therefore, in preparing the learning materials, the teacher should give students clear instructions even with authentic visual aids which are related

to the situation, characters, and events of the topic If necessary, the teacher may provide students with essential vocabulary Secondly, guided questions for students of different levels should be provided after they have finished the listening materials In a traditional classroom, all the students are asked the same questions which may seem too difficult for the slow learners or too easy for the advanced students In the flipped classroom, even though all students are required to listen to the same material, they can choose to answer questions suitable for their own English proficiency Questions can be divided into beginning, intermediate and advanced level The questions can be included from the most general to the most detailed By doing so, students are encouraged

to do more listening to answer the questions within their own capacity and understand more of the listening material before they attend the authentic classroom This can promote the teacher-student interaction in class which is really difficult in the traditional lecture setting

Below are some example illustrating both teacher’s instructions and students’ responses for the requirements of before class activities:

EXAMPLE 1: TOPIC – FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A Objectives:

- Get some specific vocabulary and information about the issue

- Learn vocabulary related to food issues

- Develop listening skills: listening comprehension, listening for specific information

- Explore whether the demands of agriculture and the philosophy of environmentalism conflict with each other, or whether they can work in harmony to produce food that is good for us and good for the planet

Teacher’s instructions

Note: Teacher distributed the instructions and learning on the website in

advance Students were required to learn and prepare for the lesson at least one day before the in-class lesson

Here are some example of students’ preparations:

Submitted by Vu Thuy Linh (10English) – week 6

Presentation

Submitted by Thai Thi Xuan Huong -(10English) – week 6

Submitted by Pham Hai Nam (10 English) – week 6 (File word)

Student’s name: Pham Hai Nam

UNIT 6: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I DEFINITIONS

First of all, food crisis is understood as a long-lasted and extraordinary lack

of nourishment, which brings about fatalities There’re many contributors to this catastrophe, here are the most common ones For starters, poverty is what makes people unable to provide themselves food In famine-stricken countries, residents mostly can’t make ends meet and afford the food that they desperately need to sustain lives Poverty also has a negative impact on crop production For instance, in Africa, many farmers can’t afford proper irrigation and fertilizer because they don’t have enough money Additionally, the population of the world has grown considerably since the 21st decade More people means increasing demand for food and greater competition for resources Next, there’re are natural forces such as: drought, desertification Drought causes well-irrigated, fertile, arable areas to become arid and barren landscapes, making it impossible to grow crops In addition, increased oil and transportation costs make the food harder to sell because it costs more to grow International conflicts between rival countries will generate restriction

or ban on importation Therefore reducing the amount of food available to the general population The last possible cause is disease Deadly diseases can kill farmers who are responsible for food production People also panic buy, start hoarding a lot of food Hence making food more and scarcer Without food, people’s immune system can’t operate properly, drugs become less effective, more people die It perpetuates a vicious circle: panic – hungry – more deaths There is no panacea for this perennial problem, but I can give you some potential ones

First, we should educate the citizens and apply family planning to curb the relentless growth of the population Secondly, improving distribution and optimizing the supply chain is also a key factor More international aids should be established in aid of areas in need of food such as in Africa Lastly,

we should take enhancing crop yields, land and water management into account These could help ameliorate the efficiency which many poor countries lack These are reasons of food crisis and solutions for it

II VOCABULARY

 Filter (v): remove something that is unwanted from a liquid or gas

 Niche (adj): related to products or services that are for a limited market

 Skeptical (adj): doubtful or disbelieving

 Neutral (adj): not supporting any position or side in an argument

 Edible nutrient (n): substances in food, like vitamins, that are necessary for life

 Aquaponics (n): a system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment

 Aquaculture (n): the raising of water animals such as fish for food, or the growing of plants in the water for food

 At best (adj): taking the most optimistic or favorable view

 Ingredients (n): the foods and substances that are used to make a particular dish

 Conventional (adj): usual or traditional

- The female student: f, a, b

+ One technology that fascinates me is 3D printing, however my opinion changed during my research

+ I’m not sure it’ll become an important technology It can add nutrients to food in the future, but now it’s slow, costly and mostly produce non-

essential foods

+ Aquaponics combine growing plants and farming fish into one single

system

+ Normal fish farm has a problem: farmers have to filter and discard the

waste that fishes produce Now they use it as nutrients for the plants

+ Aquaponics has some benefits over traditional agriculture

+It produces vegetables and fish proteins for people to eat It looks like it needs a lot of water, the water can be recycled Aquaponics use 90-98% less water than conventional agriculture

+ Aquaponics doesn’t require a large area of land It requires far less energy than conventional farming

F Listen for details

- What does that technology involve ? What method does it use ?

+ Take cells from the muscle of an animal, add a special enzyme to the cells

to make them divide Over time, they grow into a sheet of edible meat

- What are its advantages over conventional farming ? or disadvantages? + Its flavor and cost used to be not really good

+ Growing cells is basic technology so the cost is decreasing gradually

+ According to his research, the same burger now costs 10$ and tastes much better The process of growing cells can be easily scaled, meaning it would

be possible to produce meat cheaply and in enough quantity for everyone + The process doesn’t need huge amount of agricultural land, water or

energy so it’s sustainable

+ It doesn’t harm animals

- Is it accessible to everyone =?

+ It’s becoming increasingly accessible to everyone

2 Questions while listening

- What’s his stance on this technology?

+ First, he was skeptical

+ After researching, he thought it could be a potential solution to the food crisis

- How does the meat taste?

+ It used to be not really good, but now it tastes much better

3 Questions after listening

H Communicate

1 I think the most effect time to write questions is after listening You’ll

have to memorize and write down what you’ve just heard This helps

enhance your memory and general understanding of the topic

2 Right away after listening, because that’s when you are still able to

remember

what you’ve just listened to, therefore having many ideas or questions to ask yourself

- radio announcer: radio anncer

- female presenter: F presnter

- fish farming expert: fish frming exp

- second male speaker: 2nd M speaker

- office manager: off mang

- third employee: 3rd employee

2 I think growing cells is the most potential solution It’s really good as

being seen from different aspects: morality, price, accessibility, flavor,

sustainability

3 Integrating weather forecasts into the farming process may have an

impact on the food crisis

- 3 QUESTIONS ABOUT AQUAPONICS:

+ What does aquaponics consist of?

+ What is the fish’s waste used for?

+ How much less water does it use than conventional agriculture?