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 INTE

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

(NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG VỀ VIỆC ÁP DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TƯƠNGTÁC ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊNTIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI)

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

(NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG VỀ VIỆC ÁP DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TƯƠNGTÁC ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊNTIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG

HANOI - 2017

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 EnglishLanguage Teaching Methodology at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, HanoiUniversity of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, isthe 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

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 aswell 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 thePost Graduate Faculty of University of Languages and International Studies,Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their scholarly knowledge and amazinglectures that have helped to increase my interest for English Methodology and myteaching job

I also wish to show my appreciation to my second-year students of the classE6.1_K9 for their whole-heated participation in the study

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

This study aims at investigating the impact of interactive processing on second-yearstudents’ listening skills at Hanoi University of Industry More specifically, theresearcher strives to (1) investigate problems that the students may encounter whilelearning listening, and (2) examine the effects of applying the interactive process inteaching listening to the second-year students To achieve the above mentionedobjectives, an action research is conducted with the participation of 42 second-yearstudents of class E6.1_K9 within twelve weeks A pre-test, a post-test and twoquestionnaires are used as instruments to collect data for analysis The findingsshow that there are six problems that cause difficulties to students in listening Theyare (i) lacking of vocabulary, (ii) structures of spoken language, (iii) speech rate,(iv) various and unfamiliar accents, (v) stress and intonation, (vi) lacking ofbackground knowledge about the topic After interactive processing has beenapplied, 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 languagelearning In learning English as a foreign language, it is suggested that the mostimportant 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 inthe preparation of foreign language students and can even be considered as a goodpredictor of language achievement Consequently, listening plays a vital role inforeign language learning

At present, listening is incorporated in all English syllabuses used at all levels ofVietnamese education However, there was a long time when most Englishtextbooks in Vietnam paid attention to grammar, translation and reading materials, itwas almost impossible to find anything related to teaching listening skills As aresult, listening is considered to be the most challenging skill in teaching andlearning 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 listeninglessons They are unwilling to do any listening tasks and perform poorly in thelistening tests The question arises here is to find out the suitable approach to helpthe 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 theresearcher intends to use the interactive approach to help second-year non-Englishmajor students at Hanoi University of Industry overcome their difficulties inlearning listening skills This approach is conducted over a 12-week period and isapplied in the three stages of a listening lesson: pre-listening; while-listening andpost-listening The sample populations are 42 second-year non-English majorstudents 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 actionresearch model (1992) She makes use of the quantitative method with the wish toexplore 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' listeningperformance before and after the research The two questionnaires are carried outafter the pre-test and post-test, and their aim is to confirm and supplement theresults of the tests

6 Significance of the study

By bringing out the results of the influence of using the interactive approach todevelop students' listening skills, and providing pedagogical implications in dealingwith 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 ofEnglish to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach Moreover, thepopularization of the findings can possibly help the researcher herself and hercolleagues 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 dataanalysis procedures

Chapter III: “Findings and discussion”, discusses the findings of application of the interactive approach on teaching and learning listening skills for second-year

non-English major student at Hanoi University of Industry

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: DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the writer provides a theoretical background for the study bypresenting the concepts most relevant to the topic Firstly, a number of theories onlistening 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 Newinformation and listeners’ own background knowledge are combined to reach fullcomprehension of what have been heard Anderson and Lynch (1988) agree withthis view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of listeners onincoming information Littlewood (1981) supports this view as well The authorremarks that listening requires active involvement from listeners The nature oflistening 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 butnon-linguistic knowledge as well

Listening is viewed as an active process in which individuals focus on selectedaspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and then relate what theyhave heard to existing knowledge (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) In other words,listening is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applyinglisteners’ knowledge to the incoming sounds in which numerous types of knowledgeare 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 "listeningcomprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all then ignoredwhile other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasinglydifficult 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 ofvariables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and the types of textbeing listened to

1.2.2.1 Real-life listening

Many students see a big gap between listening activities in classroom and actualsituations This is because most listening materials including dialogues in textbooksare very grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakers often speakwith 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, incompletesentences, 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 theinformation we need to know or to study the language In this case, listeners oftenlisten with much attention, but they do not listen to everything with equalconcentration There is an association between listener's expectation and purposeand his comprehension If the listener's expectations and needs are intentional, hislistening is likely accurately perceived and understood than which is not relevant orhelpful

1.1.3 Listening processes

So far, many linguists have carried out studies on listening skills such as Andersonand Lynch (1998), Underwood (1989) or Brown (1990) All of them are of the viewthat listening process is not a simple process of a single activity but a complex oneconsisting of various activities After hearing a process with various stagesinvolving physical processing of the auditory system with the outer ear, the middleear, the inner ear, the nerve impulses and so on, the listening process occurs insidethe brain with a lot of sub-processes

In terms of the nature of those sub-processes, Van Duzer (1997) suggests ninesuccessive 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 ( aconversation, a lecture , a radio advertisement) and the function of the message ( topersuade/ inform/ request); (4) predicting information expected to be included in themessage; (5) recalling background information (schemata) to help interpret themassage; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message hasbeen 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 ofdecoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningfulunits (phonemes) to complete texts In this view, phonemic units are decoded andlinked together to form words, words are linked together to form phrases, phrasesare linked together to form utterances, and utterances are linked together to form

complete, meaningful texts Therefore, students need to know the code in order todecode sounds The code consists of how the sounds work, how they string togetherand how the code can change in different ways when it is strung together Thisprocess 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, oneword, 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 toconstruct the meaning from the recognition of sounds and words, which, whenidentified, are fit into larger phrasal units and then match with related ideas stored inlong-term memory Therefore, at lower levels of language proficiency, the activation

of bottom-up processing is thought to impose a great strain on conscious attentionand 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 activelyconstruct (or more accurately, reconstruct) the original meaning of the speaker usingincoming sounds as clues In the reconstruction process, listeners use their priorknowledge of the context and situation within which the listening process takesplace to make sense of what he or she hears

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

In other words, top-down processing refers to how listeners use their worldknowledge to attribute meaning to language input; how their knowledge of socialconvention helps them understand meaning Listeners apply top-down processingwhen using their context and prior knowledge like topic, genre, culture, and otherschema knowledge in long-term memory to build a conceptual framework forcomprehension.

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 Thecombination is necessary as pointed out by Mendelsohn (2001), bottom-up is notfulfill, in real-life listening we listen in different ways, depending on our purpose forlistening Therefore, learners need to balance top-down with bottom-up strategiesduring the listening comprehension process While a top-down approach helpslearners develop real-life listening skills, bottom-up helps them develop wordrecognition skills

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

On the other hand, Hulstijin (2001), suggests that the development of top-downstrategies is inadequate for linguistic input to become an intake for second languagelearning 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 forthe listener Moreover, he states that bottom-up and top-down strategies do not actindependently; while the relationship between both is not fully understood, it isclear that there is some sort of compensatory relationship between

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

Nunan (2002) clarifies that listening comprehension is neither top-down norbottom-up processing It is an interactive process where listeners employ both priorknowledge and linguistic knowledge to make sense of the incoming message, it isnecessary that learners get an awareness of how to use those learning strategies inefficient and effective ways

From the results of the above studies, it can be concluded that bottom-up processingand top-down processing are two well-integrated parts of the comprehension Inother words, interactive processing, an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-downprocessing 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 listeningcomprehension (1989, p 16)

First, listeners cannot control the speed of what they hear Listeners often feel thatthe 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 inlearning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not to replay arecording is not in the hands of the students Teachers decide what and when torepeat listening passages However, it is hard for the teacher to judge whether or notthe students have understood any particular sections of what they have heard

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

Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker ismoving 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 spontaneousconversations, signals are vaguer such as pauses, gestures, increased loudness, aclear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can be easilymissed, especially by less proficient listeners.

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

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

Seventh, learners may have established certain learning habits such as a wish tounderstand every word In some cases teachers want learners to understand everyword they hear by repeating or speaking slowly Consequently, learners tend tobecome worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and then getdiscouraged by their failure It is thus sometimes necessary for learners to tolerateincompleteness 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 studentsget 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 isimportant for students to be able to relate what they already know to thespeaker'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, theybecome active listeners who listen for something, not to it

These purposes can be achieved by one of the following activities: the teacherintroduces the listening topic, gives background information, gives clearinstructions 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 helpthe students focus on the main points of listening passage by narrowing down thethings 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 thetime they are listening to the text The purpose of while listening activities is to helpstudents develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language Rixon(1986) points out the purposes of while-listening stage are to challenge and guidestudents 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 twofollowing characteristics Firstly, they should be interesting enough to make thestudents want to listen and complete the activities Secondly, they should be thingsthat 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 notdiscourage those who only gain little success.

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

as follows: the possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if needed, theconvenience 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 whichmight be used for post-listening work, immediate feedback on the extent to whichthe 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 iscompleted 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 textitself 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 tocheck how well the students understood and whether they have completed thelistening task The second purpose of the post-listening work is to reflect on whysome students have failed to understand or miss parts of the passage Anotherpurpose of post listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of thelistening text The fourth purpose is to give students the opportunity to consider themanner 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 textand focus on the forms and function, lexis, stress and intonation which havecaused 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’ conscioususe of strategies and should involve the parallel interaction between bottom-up andtop-down processing This interactive process is known as parallel processing whichrequires learners to use background knowledge (top-down) to interpret meaning andlinguistic 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 theirknowledge of the language, the familiarity with the topics or the purpose oflistening For example, listening for gist involves primarily top-down processing,whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, involvesprimarily bottom-up processing to comprehend all the desired details Morespecifically, the teaching of bottom-up processing and top-down processing will bepresented 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 ofsentence structures to process the bottom-up texts

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

- 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

sentence word order

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

Recognize the topic

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-upand 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, israndomly chosen to be in the top-down processing group Twenty-four students arerandomly chosen into a pilot sample The results of the research indicates thatalthough the two groups achieve success in listening, the similar standing of bothbottom-up and top-down processing in developing the learners’ listeningcomprehension gives support to the view that the two types of processing should beutilized at the same time Incorporating both bottom-up and top-down processinginteractively yields better results than handling each of them separately It isconcluded that listening comprehension is a complex, active and interactive process

in which both bottom-up and top-down processing operate and contribute to theultimate 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 studentsfrom an English license program Six participants are requested to do listening tasksdesigned by the researcher for one month The finding shows that the learning ofbottom-up and top-down strategies through the guided implementation of differentstrategies as inferring, contextualization, and prediction allow the learners toconnect previous knowledge with new information which facilitates theunderstanding of the audio In relation to the students' perceptions of bottom-up andtop-down, a positive perspective in the listening comprehension task is perceived asmost of the participants argue that bottom-up and top-down strategies raise theirlistening comprehension and help them get aware of the importance of taking theadvantage of available information to identify specific details

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

non major 10th grade students for two months The research is conducted as aquantitative 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 theintegration of bottom-up and top-down processing Several conclusions can bereached from these studies First, although bottom-up and top-down processingpositively have different influences on students’ listening, they should be combined

to get better results in teaching and learning Second, realizing the benefits of usingboth bottom-up and top-down processing after the instruction, most learners havestarted 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-downprocessing Consequently, using interactive process is strongly recommended

1.4 Concluding remarks

The chapter has presented the relevant literature, which helps to form the theoreticaland conceptual framework for the study Firstly, a number of concepts aboutlistening comprehension are given according to some leading scholars and then thetypes of listening, listening process, factors affecting listening process are presented.Secondly, the teaching of listening is discussed which includes three stages of alistening lesson and interactive process In the listening stage, each stage plays adifferent role and carries certain activities to complete the listening task in aneffective way However, the activities in three stages should not be isolated in anlistening lesson They always have close relationship with one another Lastly, thereview of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis is presented toprovide a general view for the readers

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

This chapter will presents a detailed description of how the research is carried outincluding the rationale of the use of the research, research setting, selection ofparticipants, 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 practicewhen the teacher is in charge to find a solution to that situation or practice Thisstudy is carried out in an attempt to find out solutions to improve students' listeningskills It is carried out by the teacher-researcher with her own students in an intactclass For these reasons, the researcher believes an action research design would fither purpose

Although there exist models which include different steps to carry out the actionresearch, they all share the following basic elements: the process begins withidentifying a problem; then a plan of action is worked out and implemented;afterwards the researcher evaluates the effectiveness of the plan; finally he or sheproposes 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 toNunan (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 4: Intervention

Figure 1: Action research model

This study strictly follows the general steps of an action research cycle suggested byNunan.

More specifically, after realizing that most second-year non-English major studentsare not interested in learning listening, the teacher-researcher have collected andanalyzed information about the target population, which aims to find out theirshared problems Afterward, a study has been conducted with an attempt to improvethe situation Finally, the researcher has evaluated the results to propose possiblenext steps

2.2 Research setting

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

The students come from different provinces, and 70% of them are from farmingfamilies They have learnt English for four years at secondary school, three years athigh 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 lessonswith boredom They have claimed that they benefit very little from them.Apparently, applying suitable teaching approaches should be taken intoconsideration 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 Itcontains 20 short units, 10 exam folders and 5 writing folders within 180 periods intwo 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 E6.1_K9 at Hanoi University of Industry as participants for the research All thesestudents are in the intact class where the researcher is teaching Most of them arenot good at learning English, especially their listening skills, but they are eager tomaster 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 areemployed: 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 thesame They are similar in format, instruction, length, level of difficulty, and allottedtime Each test includes four tasks with 20 questions, 5 picture questions in task 1, 5matching questions in task 2, 5 multiple-choice questions in task 3 and 5 gap fillingquestions in task 4 After marking two tests, the researcher compares the results so

as to reveal any improvement that students have made during the experimentalteaching

2.4.2 Questionnaires

Two questionnaires are used to get student's opinions before and after theapplication 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, incooperation with pre-test results could help the researcher identify possibleproblems 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 theinteractive approach and the demand of a listening lesson with 3 stages Thisquestionnaire 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 intoVietnamese 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 ofteaching at this university, the researcher discovered that her students seemed to beweak at listening skills

Step 2: Preliminary Investigation

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

researcher-Step 3: Intervention

From week 4 to week 11, the interactive aprroach was introduced and applied toteach listening to the students The procedures of teaching lessons were as follows

(see Appendix 5):

Firstly, based on the textbook, the subjects participated in activities involvingactivating prior knowledge, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary atpre-listening stage The activities might be ready in the textbook or designed by theresearcher in order to be suitable for the subjects and the topic.

Secondly, the while-listening stage focused on comprehension through exercisesthat required selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, and so on Also,depending on the difficulty of the record, the subjects could listen again with focus

on sections they could not follow This might enable the subjects to recognize suchfeatures as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken discourse.Finally, the subjects were asked to respond to comprehension or give opinions aboutthe topic

Step 4: Evaluation

In order to see the effects of the interactive approach, post-test and postquestionnaire were conducted to collect the data at week 12 The data results werethen quantitatively analysed using descriptive approach to discuss the researchquestions

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the main stages of this action research will be presented under the

following headings: Preliminary investigation (preliminary questionnaire, pre-test) and Evaluation (post-questionnaire, students’ post-test).

3.1 Preliminary investigation

To investigate the difficulties which the second-year non-English major students atHanoi University of Industry are facing when learning listening, a questionnaire wasdistributed to the participants After that, the responses to the questionnaire werecarefully analyzed Beside the students’ self-evaluation, the teacher provided themwith a pre-test to assess their listening performance before applying a newapproach

3.1.1 Analysis of students’ preliminary questionnaire

3.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes on listening skills

Students’ answers to question 1 and question 2 help the researcher understand theirattitudes towards listening skills

5%

16%

43%

36%

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

From chart 1 above, we can see that a majority of the students hold a positiveattitude towards learning listening skills The results show that most of them believethat learning listening skills is important or rather important (43% and 36%)

25

Chart 2: Students’ interest in learning listening skills

In response to question 2, it is noticeable that none of the respondents likes learninglistening very much The population of the students who likes learning listeningskills a little accounts for the highest proportion (45%) The percentages of studentswho do not like it at all is in second position (33%) 22% of students say that theyare rather interested in listening skills The result is presented in chart 2

It is worth noting that while most of students find listening skills important to learn,which accounts for 79%, none of them likes it very much or only some students arerather interested in listening

3.1.1.2 Students’ self- assessment of their listening competence

0% 5%

21%

45%

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

The data in Chart 3 shows that the listening performance of students is not good.