Action research on applying the interactive approach to develop listening skills for second-year non-english major students at Hanoi University of Industry

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************** NGUYỄN THỊ THU HÀ ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

**************

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HÀ

ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH

TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS FOR SECOND-YEAR NON-ENGLISH

MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

TÁC ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

**************

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HÀ

ACTION RESEARCH ON APPLYING THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH

TO DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS FOR SECOND-YEAR NON-ENGLISH

MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

TÁC ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled: “Action research on applying the interactive approach to develop listening skills for second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry”, which is submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Language Teaching Methodology at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, is the result of my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work

of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for any other university

or institution wholly and partially

Hanoi, 2017

Nguyễn Thị Thu Hà

ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Assoc Prof Dr Kieu Thi Thu Huong, my supervisor, for her assistance, encouragement as well as the guidance she gave me while I was doing this research

Second, I would like to express my special thanks to all the lecturers of the Post Graduate Faculty of University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their scholarly knowledge and amazing lectures that have helped to increase my interest for English Methodology and my teaching job

I also wish to show my appreciation to my second-year students of the class E6.1_K9 for their whole-heated participation in the study

Last but not least, I owe my sincere thanks to my parents, my younger sister and my friends who have always inspired and encouraged me to complete this study

This study aims at investigating the impact of interactive processing on second-year students’ listening skills at Hanoi University of Industry More specifically, the researcher strives to (1) investigate problems that the students may encounter while learning listening, and (2) examine the effects of applying the interactive process in teaching listening to the second-year students To achieve the above mentioned objectives, an action research is conducted with the participation of 42 second-year students of class E6.1_K9 within twelve weeks A pre-test, a post-test and two questionnaires are used as instruments to collect data for analysis The findings show that there are six problems that cause difficulties to students in listening They are (i) lacking

of vocabulary, (ii) structures of spoken language, (iii) speech rate, (iv) various and unfamiliar accents, (v) stress and intonation, (vi) lacking of background knowledge about the topic After interactive processing has been applied, the students’ scores

in the post-test are higher than in the pre-test Overall, the instruction of interactive processing improves their listening skills

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LISTS OF FIGURES, CHARTS & TABLES vii

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methodology of the study 3

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Structure of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theory on listening 5

1.1.1 Definitions of listening 5

1.1.2 Types of listening 6

1.1.2.1 Real-life listening 6

1.1.2.2 Classroom listening 7

1.1.3 Listening processes 8

1.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing 8

1.1.3.2 Top-down processing 9

1.1.3.3 Interactive processing_ the inclusion of bottom-up and top-down processing 10

1.1.4 Factors affecting listening processes 11

1.2 Teaching listening skills 12

1.2.1 Stages of a listening lesson 12

1.2.1.1 Pre-listening 12

1.2.1.2 While-listening 13

1.2.1.3 Post-listening 14

1.2.2 Interactive processing in teaching listening skills 15

1.2.2.1 Teaching bottom-up processing 15

1.2.2.2 Teaching top-down processing 16

1.3 Review of previous works 17

1.4 Concluding remarks 19

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 20

2.1 Rationale of the using action research 20

2.2 Research setting 21

2.3 Selection of participants 22

2.4 Data collection instruments 22

2.4.1 Pre-test and post-test 22

2.4.2 Questionnaires 22

2.5 Data analysis procedures 23

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 25

3.1 Preliminary investigation 25

3.1.1 Analysis of students’ preliminary questionnaire 25

3.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes on listening skills 25

3.1.1.2 Students’ self- assessment of their listening competence 26

3.1.1.3 Students' use of strategies in listening 27

3.1.1.4 Student's difficulties in listening 27

3.1.1.5 Students' expectation towards teachers 28

3.1.2 Results of students’ pre-test 29

3.2 Evaluation 30

3.2.1 Comparison of results from students' pre-test and post-test 30

3.2.2 Analysis of the students' post questionnaire 31

3.2.2.1 Activities motivating students in pre-listening stage 31

3.2.2.2 Activities attracting students in while-listening stage 32

3.2.2.3 Useful and effective activities for students after listening 33

3.2.2.4 Students’ opinions about the listening tasks 34

3.2.2.5 Students’ opinions on the teaching methods 35

3.2.2.6 Students’ opinions on learning listening with the interactive approach 36

3.2.2.7 Students’ opinions about their listening skills after the course 36

3.3 Concluding remarks 37

PART C CONCLUSION 37

1 Recapitulation 38

1.1 Difficulties students encounter when studying listening skills 38

1.2 The effects of applying the interactive approach to teach listening skills 38

2 Implications 39

2.1 The neccessity of applying the interactive approach 39

2.2 The neccessity of arousing students' motivation and interest 40

2.3 Changes in conducting three stages of a listening lesson 40

2.3.1 Pre-listening 40

2.3.2 While-listening 42

2.3.3 Post-listening 42

3 Limitations of the study 42

4 Suggestions for further studies 43

REFERENCES 44

APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 III APPENDIX 3 V APPENDIX 4 VII APPENDIX 5 IX

LISTS OF FIGURES, CHARTS & TABLES Figures

Figure 1: Action research model 20

Charts Chart 1: Students’ attitude on the importance of listening skills 25

Chart 2: Students’ interest in learning listening skills 26

Chart 3: Students’ self-assessment of their listening competence 26

Chart 4: Students' use of strategies in listening 27

Chart 5: Comparison of the results from pre-test and post-test 31

Chart 6: Students’ opinions on learning listening with the interactive approach 36

Chart 7: Students’ opinions on their listening skills after the course 37

Tables Table 1:Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners 16

Table 2:Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners 17

Table 3: Students’ difficulties in learning listening 27

Table 4: Students' expectation towards teachers 28

Table 5: The overall results of students’ pre-test 29

Table 6: The overall results of students’ post-test 30

Table 7: Activities motivating students in pre-listening stage 31

Table 8: Activities attracting students in while-listening stage 32

Table 9: Useful activities for students after listening 33

Table 10: Students’ opinions on the listening tasks 34

Table 11: Students’ opinions on the teaching methods 35

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem

Recently, listening has gained more and more attention in foreign language learning In learning English as a foreign language, it is suggested that the most important step should begin with an effort to listen Rubin & Thompson state:

Listening, quite possibly, is the most important of the language skills,

since people spend approximately 60% of their time listening… In

addition, listening will give you an opportunity to get a “feel” for the

language and will have you improve your overall ability in it If you

don’t learn to listen effectively, you will not be able to participate in

conservations in the foreign language

Rubin & Thompson (1994, p 85)

Rost (1994, p 141) emphasizes that listening can be regarded as a necessary skill in the preparation of foreign language students and can even be considered as a good predictor of language achievement Consequently, listening plays a vital role in foreign language learning

At present, listening is incorporated in all English syllabuses used at all levels of Vietnamese education However, there was a long time when most English textbooks in Vietnam paid attention to grammar, translation and reading materials,

it was almost impossible to find anything related to teaching listening skills As a result, listening is considered to be the most challenging skill in teaching and learning compared to the other skills

Being a teacher of English at Hanoi University of Industry for more than two years, the writer has found that the non-English major students are uninterested in listening lessons They are unwilling to do any listening tasks and perform poorly in the listening tests The question arises here is to find out the suitable approach to help the students develop their listening skills

The above reasons have encouraged the writer to carry out the study entitled:

"Action research on applying the interactive approach to develop listening skills for second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry"

2 Aims of the study

This study is designed with the aim to investigate whether applying the interactive approach helps students improve their listening skills in English

In order to achieve this aim, the following objectives are set out for the study:

- To gain the understanding of the difficulties encountered by second-year English major students at Hanoi University of Industry in listening lessons

non To experiment and investigate the effects of using the interactive approach to teaching listening to second-year non-English major students

3 Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives above, two research questions are raised:

1 What difficulties do the second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry encounter in listening lessons?

2 What are the effects of applying the interactive approach to teaching listening for second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry?

4 Scope of the study

There are many methods of teaching listening skills, however, in this study the researcher intends to use the interactive approach to help second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry overcome their difficulties in learning listening skills This approach is conducted over a 12-week period and is applied in the three stages of a listening lesson: pre-listening; while-listening and post-listening The sample populations are 42 second-year non-English major students from class called E6.1_K9 at Hanoi University of Industry

5 Methodology of the study

Conducting the study, the researcher follows the general steps in Nunan's action research model (1992) She makes use of the quantitative method with the wish to explore the matter thoroughly The data are collected from the two following sources:

- Pre-test and post-test

- Two survey questionnaires

Pre-test and post-test are used to assess the quality of the participants' listening performance before and after the research The two questionnaires are carried out after the pre-test and post-test, and their aim is to confirm and supplement the results

of the tests

6 Significance of the study

By bringing out the results of the influence of using the interactive approach to develop students' listening skills, and providing pedagogical implications in dealing with the this approach, the study will somehow make the following contributions First, the findings of the study may be served as references for the teachers of English to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach Moreover, the popularization of the findings can possibly help the researcher herself and her colleagues improve their teaching skills

7 Structure of the study

There are three main parts in this study:

Part A: Introduction, presents the statement of the problem, aims, research questions,

scope, methodology, significance and structure of the study

Part B: Development, which is divided into 3 chapters:

Chapter I: “Literature review”, sets up theoretical background that is relevant to the

purpose of the study

Chapter II: “Methodology”, indicates the rationale of using action research, the

setting, the selection of participants, the data collection instruments and data analysis procedures

Chapter III: “Findings and discussion”, discusses the findings of application of the

interactive approach on teaching and learning listening skills for second-year English major student at Hanoi University of Industry

non-Part C: Conclusion, summarizes the key issues in the study, gives the implications,

points out the limitations and provides some suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the writer provides a theoretical background for the study by presenting the concepts most relevant to the topic Firstly, a number of theories on listening are introduced Secondly, the teaching of listening skills is discussed Finally, the listening difficulties for foreign language learners are referred to

However, learners are seen as active model builders in the alternative view New information and listeners’ own background knowledge are combined to reach full comprehension of what have been heard Anderson and Lynch (1988) agree with this view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of listeners on incoming information Littlewood (1981) supports this view as well The author remarks that listening requires active involvement from listeners The nature of listening comprehension is that the listeners should be encouraged to be engaged in

an active process of listening for meaning, using not only the linguistic cues but non-linguistic knowledge as well

Listening is viewed as an active process in which individuals focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and then relate what they have heard to existing knowledge (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) In other words, listening is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying listeners’ knowledge to the incoming sounds in which numerous types of knowledge are involved including linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge (Buck, 2001) because “comprehension takes place when input and

knowledge are matched against each other” (Faerch & Kasper, 1986, p 264)

In short, in order to be successful in listening, it is advisable that "listening comprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all then ignored while other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult materials" (Wilga, 1986, p 157)

1.2.2 Types of listening

There are many types of listening We can classify these according to a number of variables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and the types of text being listened to

1.2.2.1 Real-life listening

Many students see a big gap between listening activities in classroom and actual situations This is because most listening materials including dialogues in textbooks are very grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakers often speak with perfectly controlled speech, voice, tone, accent and correct grammar Whereas,

in real-life conversations, learners encounter various people with different genders, ages, accents, speeds, voices, tones There may be improper usage, incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap and so forth

There are two ways which people often listen in real-life, they are casual and focus

listening

a) Casual listening

A lot of students have a habit of listening to a radio while studying or the television

is on while they are doing something else They listen with no particular purpose This kind of listening is called casual listening

b) Focus listening

Focus listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the information we need to know or to study the language In this case, listeners often listen with much attention, but they do not listen to everything with equal concentration There is an association between listener's expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener's expectations and needs are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understood than which is not relevant or helpful

1.1.3 Listening processes

So far, many linguists have carried out studies on listening skills such as Anderson and Lynch (1998), Underwood (1989) or Brown (1990) All of them are of the view that listening process is not a simple process of a single activity but a complex one consisting of various activities After hearing a process with various stages involving physical processing of the auditory system with the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, the nerve impulses and so on, the listening process occurs inside the brain with a lot of sub-processes

In terms of the nature of those sub-processes, Van Duzer (1997) suggests nine successive activities in listening process.(1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and deposits a image of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by identify the type of speech event ( a conversation, a lecture , a radio advertisement) and the function of the message ( to persuade/ inform/ request); (4) predicting information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information (schemata) to help interpret the massage; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has been received into short-term memory

Looking at the issue from other perspectives, other scientists assign listening

process to a parallel processing model with bottom-up processing and top-down

processing

1.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing

Nunan (1992) regards the bottom-up processing model as a listening process of

decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts In this view, phonemic units are decoded and linked together to form words, words are linked together to form phrases, phrases are linked together to form utterances, and utterances are linked together to form

complete, meaningful texts Therefore, students need to know the code in order to decode sounds The code consists of how the sounds work, how they string together and how the code can change in different ways when it is strung together This process is a linear one in which meaning itself is derived as the last step It is called

listeners as tape recorder view of listening because listeners take in and store

messages consecutively, in much the same way as a tape recorder: one sound, one word, one phrase, and one utterance at a time (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

Moreover, the ways showing how the linguistic competence of a listener works to 'build' the comprehension of a message are described by bottom-up processes According to Peterson (2001), these are the lower level processes that work to construct the meaning from the recognition of sounds and words, which, when identified, are fit into larger phrasal units and then match with related ideas stored in long-term memory Therefore, at lower levels of language proficiency, the activation of bottom-up processing is thought to impose a great strain on conscious attention and working memory

1.1.3.2 Top-down processing

Top-down processing is another alternative to teaching listening instead of

bottom-up processing According to Nunan (1992), this process allows listeners to actively construct (or more accurately, reconstruct) the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues In the reconstruction process, listeners use their prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening process takes place to make sense of what he or she hears

Nunan (1992) explains that such things as knowledge of the topic, the speaker or speakers, their relationship to the situation, and prior events are all related to the context and situation Similarly, Richards (1990) points out that the background knowledge required for top-down processing may be previous knowledge about the topic of the discourse, situational or contextual knowledge, or knowledge in the form of schemata or scripts - plans about the overall structure of the events and relationships between them

In other words, top-down processing refers to how listeners use their world knowledge to attribute meaning to language input; how their knowledge of social convention helps them understand meaning Listeners apply top-down processing when using their context and prior knowledge like topic, genre, culture, and other schema knowledge in long-term memory to build a conceptual framework for comprehension

1.1.3.3 Interactive processing: the inclusion of bottom-up and top-down

processing

Interactive processing is the inclusion of bottom-up and top-down processing The combination is necessary as pointed out by Mendelsohn (2001), bottom-up is not fulfill, in real-life listening we listen in different ways, depending on our purpose for listening Therefore, learners need to balance top-down with bottom-up strategies during the listening comprehension process While a top-down approach helps learners develop real-life listening skills, bottom-up helps them develop word recognition skills

Osada (2001) attributes the lack of success in listening to an overemphasis on bottom-up skills Basing on his analysis of answers to question on idea unit analysis, he find that low-proficiency Japanese students of English tend to adopt a mental translation approach to listening He argues for more emphasis on a top-down approach because beginner level listeners cannot construct meaning when they process connected speech on a word-by-word basis only, so they use previous knowledge in order to contextualize a situation

On the other hand, Hulstijin (2001), suggests that the development of top-down strategies is inadequate for linguistic input to become an intake for second language learning He also argues that bottom-up skills need to be developed at the beginners’ level, so that all the components of the acoustic signal become meaningful units for the listener Moreover, he states that bottom-up and top-down strategies do not act independently; while the relationship between both is not fully understood, it is clear that there is some sort of compensatory relationship between

them, just in case one process does not work effectively, the other will assist the listeners in order to have a meaningful listening comprehension

Nunan (2002) clarifies that listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up processing It is an interactive process where listeners employ both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge to make sense of the incoming message, it is necessary that learners get an awareness of how to use those learning strategies in efficient and effective ways

From the results of the above studies, it can be concluded that bottom-up processing and top-down processing are two well-integrated parts of the comprehension In other words, interactive processing, an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down processing is a good method for teaching and learning listening

1.1.4 Factors affecting listening processes

Underwood offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension (1989, p 16)

First, listeners cannot control the speed of what they hear Listeners often feel that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out or they can get the message When they fail in sorting out the meaning of one part, the following will be missed This can lead to the ignorance of the whole chunk of discourse

Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated, which is a serious problem in learning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not to replay a recording is not in the hands of the students Teachers decide what and when to repeat listening passages However, it is hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular sections of what they have heard

Third, listeners have limited vocabulary The speaker may choose words listeners does not know Listeners sometimes encounter an unknown word, which may cause them to stop and think about the meaning of that word, so they miss the next part of the speech

Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point

Discourse markers used in formal situations or lectures such as “secondly” or

“then” are comparatively evident to listeners In informal situations or spontaneous conversations, signals are vaguer such as pauses, gestures, increased loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can be easily missed, especially by less proficient listeners

Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing mutual knowledge and common context makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, gestures, or tone of voice, can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures

Sixth, it may be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language In listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension Concentration is easier when students find the topic of the listening passage interesting; however, learners sometimes feel that listening is very tiring even if they are interested as it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning

Seventh, learners may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word In some cases teachers want learners to understand every word they hear by repeating or speaking slowly Consequently, learners tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and then get discouraged by their failure It is thus sometimes necessary for learners to tolerate incompleteness of understanding

1.2 Teaching listening skills

1.2.1 Stages of a listening lesson

1.2.1.1 Pre-listening

According to Davies and Pearse (2000), it is useful to prepare the learners for what

they are going to hear, as it arouses students’ interest and provides students with the

purposes of listening, just as we usually prepare for real-life situations

With the aim is setting-up certain knowledge before listening to help the students get the most of what they are going to hear The main purposes of this stage, therefore, are:

- To motivate students to pay more attention to the listening text

- To activate or build students' prior topical and linguistic knowledge It is important for students to be able to relate what they already know to the speaker's content

- To help the students match what they hear with their stored knowledge by activating their prior knowledge about the coming topics

- To set purposes for listening: When students set purposes for listening, they

become active listeners who listen for something, not to it

These purposes can be achieved by one of the following activities: the teacher introduces the listening topic, gives background information, gives clear instructions for the while-listening activity; or the students are given guidance on

the structure of what they are going to hear, discuss the topic situation, look at

pictures, read through the questions if asked Each of the above activities will help the students focus on the main points of listening passage by narrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating their previous knowledge

1.2.1.2 While-listening

The while-listening stage involves activities that students are asked to do during the time they are listening to the text The purpose of while listening activities is to help students develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language Rixon (1986) points out the purposes of while-listening stage are to challenge and guide students to handle the information and the message from the listening text Therefore, activities of this stage must be interesting and carefully chosen

To be effective activities, these while-listening ones should possess the two following characteristics Firstly, they should be interesting enough to make the students want to listen and complete the activities Secondly, they should be things

that are within the capacity of most students It is advisable to provide

while-listening activities which are a challenge for the more advanced students, but do not

discourage those who only gain little success

Like choosing pre-listening activities, as suggested by Underwood (1989), the teachers must consider a number of factors when choosing while-listening activities

as follows: the possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if needed, the convenience of carrying out activities which need individuals to give oral responses

in the classroom, the possibility for the work to be done with the teacher present or

as self-study and either in a listening center or at home, materials or ideas which might be used for post-listening work, immediate feedback on the extent to which the students have succeeded in the task

1.2.1.3 Post-listening

Post-listening stage relates to the activities which are done after the listening is completed Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages and some relate only loosely to the listening text

itself This stage is also very important, with certain purposes as well as activities

According to Underwood (1989), the first purpose of post-listening activities is to check how well the students understood and whether they have completed the listening task The second purpose of the post-listening work is to reflect on why some students have failed to understand or miss parts of the passage Another purpose of post listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of the listening text The fourth purpose is to give students the opportunity to consider the manner and attitude of the speaker in the listening text

To achieve these above-mentioned purposes, the followings are possible activities:

- Teachers give the answers orally, or show the answers on the black board

- Teachers draw the students' attention to specific parts of the listening text and focus on the forms and function, lexis, stress and intonation which have caused problems to the students

- Students work in pairs to check each other's answer or in groups to discuss any problems related to the listening text

1.2.2 Interactive process in teaching listening skills

Listening is an active and complex process, therefore, it requires listeners’ conscious use of strategies and should involve the parallel interaction between bottom-up and top-down processing This interactive process is known as parallel processing which requires learners to use background knowledge (top-down) to interpret meaning and linguistic knowledge (bottom-up) to discriminate between familiar sounds The goal is for the language listeners to use parallel processing in order to perceive, interpret, and respond to the information being heard (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2009, p 185)

The degree to which listeners use the one process or the other depends on their knowledge of the language, the familiarity with the topics or the purpose of listening For example, listening for gist involves primarily top-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, involves primarily bottom-up processing to comprehend all the desired details More specifically, the teaching of bottom-up processing and top-down processing will be presented in the following sections

1.2.2.1 Teaching bottom-up processing

Brown (2007, p 312) notes that bottom-up processing "focuses on sounds, words,

intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language" Therefore, learners need a large vocabulary and good working knowledge of sentence

structures to process the bottom-up texts

Exercises that require bottom-up processing develop the learner’s ability to do the following:

- Retain input while it is being processed

- Recognize word and clause divisions

- Recognize key words

- Recognize key transitions in a discourse

- Recognize grammatical relationships between key elements in sentences

- Use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence functions

Peterson (1991, p 114-121) suggests several techniques for teaching listening comprehension Below are some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

Discriminating

between phonemes

- Listen to pairs of words Some pairs differ in the final consonant, and some pairs are the same Circle the word "same" or "different", depend on what you hear Selective listening for

- Match a word that you hear with its picture

- Listen to a weather report Look at a list of words and circle the words that you hear

- Listen to a sentence that contains clock time Circle the clock time that you hear, among three choices

- Listen to an advertisement, select the price of an item, and write the amount on a price tag

- Listen to a series of messages from an answering machine Fill in a chart with the following information from each caller: name, number, time and message Listening for normal

sentence word order

- Listen to a short dialogue and fill in the missing words that have been deleted in partial transcript

Table 1: Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

1.2.2.2 Teaching top-down processing

The top-down processing deals with how listeners use their context and prior knowledge (topic, genre, culture, and other schema knowledge in long-term memory) to build a conceptual framework for comprehension

Exercises that require top-down processing develop the learner’s ability to do the following:

- Use key words to construct the schema of a discourse

- Infer the setting for a text

- Infer the role of the participants and their goals

- Infer causes or effects

- Infer unstated details of a situation

- Anticipate questions related to the topic or situation

Peterson (1991, p 114-121) also suggests some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners

Discriminate

emotional reactions

- Listen to statement about a vacation and decide whether

or not the speaker enjoys the vacation Get the gist or main

- Listen to a number of short biographies and for each, write the title that expresses the main idea

Recognize the topic - From a list of possible topics predict the topics that people

will discuss when they don’t know each other well Listen

to conversations and note which are being discussed

- Listen to a series of process descriptions and mark the picture that it tells about

Table 2: Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners

1.3 Review of previous works

Al-Qaraghooly & Al-Bermani (2010) conduct a research on the effect of bottom-up and top-down processing on developing EFL students’ listening comprehension

The researchers chooses 128 second-year students at the Department of English, College of Education, University of Babylon as samples of the study The students

is divided into two sections Section A, with fifty-three students, is randomly chosen to be in the bottom-up processing group, and section B, with fifty-three students, is randomly chosen to be in the top-down processing group Twenty-four students are randomly chosen into a pilot sample The results of the research indicates that although the two groups achieve success in listening, the similar standing of both bottom-up and top-down processing in developing the learners’ listening comprehension gives support to the view that the two types of processing should be utilized at the same time Incorporating both bottom-up and top-down processing interactively yields better results than handling each of them separately

It is concluded that listening comprehension is a complex, active and interactive process in which both bottom-up and top-down processing operate and contribute to the ultimate aim of understanding auditory stimuli

Villegas (2013) carries out a study on the use of the inclusion of bottom-up and down processing in listening comprehension tasks for second-semester students from an English license program Six participants are requested to do listening tasks designed by the researcher for one month The finding shows that the learning of bottom-up and top-down strategies through the guided implementation of different strategies as inferring, contextualization, and prediction allow the learners to connect previous knowledge with new information which facilitates the understanding of the audio In relation to the students' perceptions of bottom-up and top-down, a positive perspective in the listening comprehension task is perceived as most of the participants argue that bottom-up and top-down strategies raise their listening comprehension and help them get aware of the importance of taking the advantage of available information to identify specific details

top-Dao Thi Hong Yen (2014) write an MA thesis on the application of top-down techniques in teaching listening skills to English non major 10th grade students at

non major 10th grade students for two months The research is conducted as a quantitative study, using a pre-test, a post-test and a questionnaire to collect data The findings of the research show that top-down techniques enhance the students’ listening comprehension

Apart from these studies, there are a plenty of works conducted related to using the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing Several conclusions can be reached from these studies First, although bottom-up and top-down processing positively have different influences on students’ listening, they should be combined

to get better results in teaching and learning Second, realizing the benefits of using both bottom-up and top-down processing after the instruction, most learners have started to learn how to use it to improve their listening comprehension Finally, there are studies on applying discourse processing to teaching listening in Vietnam However, these studies just focus on either bottom-up processing or top-down processing Consequently, using interactive process is strongly recommended

1.4 Concluding remarks

The chapter has presented the relevant literature, which helps to form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study Firstly, a number of concepts about listening comprehension are given according to some leading scholars and then the types of listening, listening process, factors affecting listening process are presented Secondly, the teaching of listening is discussed which includes three stages of a listening lesson and interactive process In the listening stage, each stage plays a different role and carries certain activities to complete the listening task in

an effective way However, the activities in three stages should not be isolated in an listening lesson They always have close relationship with one another Lastly, the review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis is presented to provide a general view for the readers

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

This chapter will presents a detailed description of how the research is carried out including the rationale of the use of the research, research setting, selection of participants, data collection instruments and data analysis procedures

2.1 Rationale of the use of action research

Action research is conducted to investigate a specific teaching situation or practice when the teacher is in charge to find a solution to that situation or practice This study is carried out in an attempt to find out solutions to improve students' listening skills It is carried out by the teacher-researcher with her own students in an intact class For these reasons, the researcher believes an action research design would fit her purpose

Although there exist models which include different steps to carry out the action research, they all share the following basic elements: the process begins with identifying a problem; then a plan of action is worked out and implemented; afterwards the researcher evaluates the effectiveness of the plan; finally he or she proposes the next actions to further address the problem

In this study, the teacher-researcher follows the model proposed by Nunan (1992) because it reflects correctly what steps are taken during the study According to Nunan (1992, p 19), the model has seven steps as illustrated in Figure 1:

Step 7: Follow-up

(Revise for the next circle)

Step 1: Problem identification

Step 6: Dissemination Step 2: Preliminary investigation

Step 5: Evaluation Step 3: Hypothesis

Step 4: Intervention

Figure 1: Action research model

This study strictly follows the general steps of an action research cycle suggested by Nunan

More specifically, after realizing that most second-year non-English major students are not interested in learning listening, the teacher-researcher have collected and analyzed information about the target population, which aims to find out their shared problems Afterward, a study has been conducted with an attempt to improve the situation Finally, the researcher has evaluated the results to propose possible next steps

2.2 Research setting

Hanoi University of Industry, where the researcher has been working as a teacher of English, is located in the suburbs of Hanoi capital, a city in the north-east of Vietnam There are about 200 English teachers and about 30.000 non-English major students of different faculties

The students come from different provinces, and 70% of them are from farming families They have learnt English for four years at secondary school, three years at high school with poor equipment in isolated environments Moreover, in their point

of view, English is only regarded as a compulsory subject at school Consequently, their ability to speak and listen to English cannot be improved and motivated One-year experience with modern equipment at this university does not help them much From the writer’s classroom observation, many students have taken listening lessons with boredom They have claimed that they benefit very little from them Apparently, applying suitable teaching approaches should be taken into consideration in order to develop students' listening skills

The non-English major students have used KET as the course book for this year This book is compiled following theme-based and task-based approaches It contains 20 short units, 10 exam folders and 5 writing folders within 180 periods in two terms Each week has 6 periods of English

second-2.3 Selection of participants

The researcher chooses 42 second-year non-English major students of class E 6.1_K9 at Hanoi University of Industry as participants for the research All these students are in the intact class where the researcher is teaching Most of them are not good at learning English, especially their listening skills, but they are eager to master this subject such as communicating fluently, making a good speech etc

2.4 Data collection instruments

In order to collect sufficient data for the study, a number of instruments are

employed: questionnaires, pre-test and post-test

2.4.1 Pre-test and post-test

To measure the quality of the participants’ listening performance before and after

the research, the researcher has designed a pre-test (see Appendix 1) and a post-test (see Appendix 2) on English listening The test types selected for this study are

popular kinds of listening test similar to those which students are instructed Therefore, the students are supposed to be familiar with the test format

Actually, the pre-test and the post-test on English listening are similar but not the same They are similar in format, instruction, length, level of difficulty, and allotted time Each test includes four tasks with 20 questions, 5 picture questions in task 1, 5 matching questions in task 2, 5 multiple-choice questions in task 3 and 5 gap filling questions in task 4 After marking two tests, the researcher compares the results so

as to reveal any improvement that students have made during the experimental teaching

2.4.2 Questionnaires

Two questionnaires are used to get student's opinions before and after the application of the interactive approach to teaching listening

The former questionnaire (see Appendix 3) is conducted after the pre-test It consists

of six questions These questions aim to investigate students’ attitudes towards

listening skills (items 1, 2), their self assessment of their listening performance (item 3), their use of listening strategies (item 4), their difficulties they face (item 5) and their expectation to their teacher (item 6) The results from the questionnaire, in cooperation with pre-test results could help the researcher identify possible problems for students’ listening skills

The latter questionnaire (see Appendix 4) is conducted after the post-test It consists

of eight questions They are designed on the theory of a listening lesson with the interactive approach and the demand of a listening lesson with 3 stages This questionnaire aims to check the accuracy of the improved listening skills of students, and students are interested or not in the lessons that apply the interactive approach Before being delivered to 42 students, the questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese so that students could understand the questions deeply

2.5 Data analysis procedures

The action process was conducted over a period of 12 weeks of the school year

2015-2016 in applying Nunan’s action research cycle (1992, p 19) with four steps as follows:

Step 1: Problem Identification

After two weeks of teaching the class E6.1_K9, along with two-year experience of teaching at this university, the researcher discovered that her students seemed to be weak at listening skills

Step 2: Preliminary Investigation

To illustrate the problem that students had in learning listening skills, the researcher-teacher conducted pre-test and a survey questionnaire at week 3 The collected data was then analyzed to find out how students were not interested in learning listening and to assess students’ listening skills before the new approach to

be adopted

Step 3: Intervention

From week 4 to week 11, the interactive aprroach was introduced and applied to teach

listening to the students The procedures of teaching lessons were as follows (see

Appendix 5):