Challenges perceived by teachers in how to teach and motivate ethnic minority students to learn listening comprehension skill at langson teachers training college and solutions

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIESTRUONG THI THANH HUYEN CHALLENGES PERCEIVED BY TEACHERS IN HOW TO TEACH AND MOTIVATE ETHNIC MINORITY STUDENTS TO LEARN LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL AT LA

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRUONG THI THANH HUYEN

CHALLENGES PERCEIVED BY TEACHERS IN HOW TO TEACH AND MOTIVATE ETHNIC MINORITY STUDENTS TO LEARN LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL AT LANG SON TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE AND SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA GIÁO VIÊN TRONG VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY VÀ KHÍCH LỆ SINH VIÊN NGƯỜI DÂN TỘC THIỂU SỐ HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE HIỂU TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ

PHẠM LẠNG SƠN VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP)

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410

SUPERVISOR: LE THE NGHIEP, M.A

LANGSON, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

DECLARATION ii

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and significance of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Organization of the thesis

3 PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

I.1 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 4

I.1.1.What is listening? 4

I.1.2 Nature of listening 5

I.1.3 Significance of listening 5

I.2 Teaching listening skills 5

I.2.1.The process of listening 5

I.2.2 Strategies of listening 6

I.2.3 Stages of a listening lesson 7

I.2.3.1 Pre-listening stage 7

I.2.3.2 While-listening stage 7

I.2.3.4 Post-listening stage 8

I.2.4 Potential problems in teaching and learning to listen to English 8

I.2.5 Teacher’s roles in teaching listening comprehension 9

I.3 Motivation 10

I.3.1.What is motivation? 10

I.3.2.The importance of motivation in listening classes 10

I.4 Current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension 11

1.4.1 Students’ psychological obstacles influence their listening capacity 11

1.4.2 Grammar knowledge affects listening comprehension 12

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 14

II.1 General description of the current course-book and participants’ background information 14

II.1.1 General description of the current course-book 14

II.1.2 Participants’ background information 14

II.1.2.1 English Major Students

14 II.1.2.2 The teachers 15

II.2 Methods of data collection 16

II.2.1 Questionnaires 16

II.2.2 Class observation 16

CHAPTER III: DICUSSIONS AND FINDINGS 18

III.1 Questionnaires 18

III.1.1 Questionnaire for the Teachers 18

III.1.2 Questionnaire for the Students 24

III 2 Class observations 28

III.3 Findings……….30

III.3.1 Teachers’ challenges when dealing with listening techniques and some suggested solutions to those techniques……… 30

III.3.2.Students’ preferences for listening techniques…….……….33

III.3.3 Teachers’ and students opinions about listening activities in the course-book ‘Listen in 1’ by David Nunan they are using………34

CHAPTER IV: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO THE TEACHING PROCEDURES 35

IV.1 For the teachers 35

IV.2 Some useful activities used for students during the class -time 38

PART III: CONCLUSION 41

I Summary of the study 41

II Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 42

REFERENCES 43

APPENDIXE II VII APPENDIXE III X

APPENDIX IV XVI

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS

- LSTTC: Langson Teachers’ Training College

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

Page

Table 1: Teachers’ pre-listening techniques……… … 21

Table 2: Teachers’ while- listening techniques……… ………22

Table 3: Teachers’ post-listening techniques……….….24

Table 4: Teachers’ difficulties in pre-listening techniques……….…25

Table 5: Teachers’ difficulties in while- listening techniques……… 26

Table 6: Teachers’ difficulties in post-listening techniques……… 27

Table 7: Students’ preferences for pre-listening techniques……… 30

Table 8: Students’ preferences for while-listening techniques……… 31

Chart 1: Teachers’ comments on the listening activities in the coursebook……… 27

Chart 2: Causes that make students uninterested in listening……… 28

Chart 3: Students’ preferences for post-listening techniques……… 32

Chart 4: Students’ comments on the listening activities in the coursebook………33

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

English is, nowadays, needed in every field of our lives and for a long time it has been notonly a compulsory subject in schools in Vietnam but one of three major subjects in theentrance exam to some Universities and Colleges as well

Among the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is alwaysconsidered to be the most difficult for teachers to teach and for students to learn This leads tothe fact that learners are afraid of learning listening skills There are various reasons for this:students‟ poor background knowledge, their limited reservoir of vocabulary and structures,their lack of motivation and preparations for the task, etc.(Boyle, 1984) Many students haveassociated listening courses with pain and boredom and usually complain that they benefitlittle from listening lessons This is also true to students at Lang Son Teachers‟ TrainingCollege Therefore, it is necessary for teachers of English language to realize the importance

of how to make listening classes more interesting and know how to motivate students so thatthey can make progress and feel interested in listening comprehension courses

In fact, in the process of teaching and learning English, listening plays an important rolesince it involves various kinds of the listener‟s knowledge and it is closely related to otherskills, especially the speaking skill While, G (1998) pointed out that being a good listenerinvolves collaborating with speakers and taking an active role in asking for clarification whenyou do not understand However, in the process of teaching listening of teachers at LSTTC,the students‟ motivation in learning this skill is sometimes low and the listening lesson is said

to be boring despite the teacher‟s much effort in their teaching time Consequently, thesestudents‟ listening skills are poor since they are not interested in the subject, and they find itdifficult to focus on listening if there are many distractions They do not know much about thetasks of the lesson Thus, creating a motivating learning environment for ethnic minoritystudents in a listening class is a challenging task for teachers

This fact has encouraged the author to investigate into the challenges perceived byteachers in how to teach and motivate ethnic minority students to learn ListeningComprehension Skill at LSTTC, to find out more reasons for those problems, and then, togive some suggestions for mostly meeting and solving those challenges Hopefully, the studywill be helpful in some way for the author and other teachers to find out most suitabletechniques to stimulate their students in listening lessons

2 Aims and significance of the study

The purpose of this study is to find out the most suitable teaching techniques and solutions

to the challenges perceived by the teachers, in order to teach and motivate ethnic minoritystudents at LSTTC to learn listening comprehension skill effectively To be specific, themajor aims of the study are as follows:

- to find out current challenges faced by teachers and ethnic minority students at LSTTC

in their process of teaching and learning English listening comprehension skill

- to study teaching techniques used by these teachers to teach their students listening comprehension skill

- to investigate students‟ attitudes and their feedbacks on the teaching techniques used bytheir teachers

- to provide some suggestions and practical recommendations to help in the process ofteaching and learning listening comprehension skills of ethnic minority students and teachers atthis college

The study hopes to give an insight into the ways used and problems faced by teachers inhow to teach listening comprehension skill for ethnic minority students at LSTTC The result

of the study is also useful for teachers at this college in reviewing their teaching practices,thus paying more attention to the issue of teaching listening skills

The scope of this thesis is limited to the teachers‟ challenges in how to teach and motivateethnic minority students to learn listening comprehension skill and the recommendations toovercome these challenges at Lang Son Teachers‟ Training College The result from thisthesis could also be used to inform concerned educational administrators in Lang Son inparticular and in various regions throughout the country in general

With that intention, this study is designed to cover the following issues:

- Description of the course-book used for students in listening and its teaching and

learning context

- Challenges teachers often face in teaching and motivating their students to learn

listening

- Recommendations on how to support teachers so that they can teach more effectively

The study was carried out on the basis of quantities research method including

questionnaire and class observation

Questionnaires are designed as a means to make the researcher‟s evaluation moreobjective The questionnaires are given to first-year ethnic minority students and teachers ofEnglish Department at LSTTC with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their currentlearning and teaching listening comprehension as well as their comments and suggestions forthe problems they often face.

In addition, more information needed for the findings of the study will be gatheredfrom class observation

5 Organization of the thesis

The study consists of three parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion The introduction provides the basis information such as rationale, aims, significance,scope and methods of the study

The development consists of 4 chapters Chapter I, Literature Review, conceptualizes thenature of listening and listening comprehension skills, teaching listening skills, motivation,and current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension Chapter II presentsthe general description of the course-book, participants‟ background information, and themethodology used in the study Chapter III shows the detailed results of the surveys andcovers a comprehensive analysis on the data collected from the questionnaires and classobservations The last chapter offers some suggested solutions to the teaching procedures thatcan help motivate students to learn the listening comprehension skill

The conclusion is a review of the study, future directions for further research and limitations

of the study

PART II.THE DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1.LITERATURE REVIEW

I.1 Theoretical background of listening comprehension

In language teaching, the phrase „listening skills‟ is often used to mean „listening andunderstanding skills‟ or „listening comprehension skills‟ And this is the sense in which

„listening skill‟ is used in this thesis, where „listening‟ is taken as meaning trying tounderstand the oral messages people are conveying

I.1.1.What is listening?

There are different definitions of listening

“Listening is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear To listen

successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use

particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, and not simply to understand the words themselves.”

(Mary Underwood, 1989)The quotation above suggests that listening can be done in a narrow and limited way

or it can be done in a way that enriches communication

Thomlison‟s (1984) definition of listening includes “active listening,” which goes

beyond comprehending as understanding the message content, to comprehension as an act ofempathetic understanding of the speaker According to Ronald and Roskelly (1985), listening

is an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising,and generalizing that writing and reading demand

“Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe Listeners mustdiscriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance ” (Field, 1998:38)

All in all, listening involves a multiplicity of skills It is a complex, active process ofinterpretation, in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know

I.1.2 Nature of listening

Since listening is, according to Wang Shouyuan (2003), the most importantcomponent in the five aspects of overall English competence he suggests as listening,speaking, reading, writing and translation, it deserves particular attention Educators mustactively explore the nature and process of listening comprehension and study the theory andmethodology of listening comprehension in order to improve listening teaching outcomes and

make students recognize that listening comprehension is the crucial part of English learning.From the point of view of constructivist linguistics, foreign language teaching should focus onlanguage form and structure, thus, listening teaching is undertaken in each of the four aspects

of language form (including sounds, words, sentences and discourses) When students aretaught to understand a passage of text, teachers first let them discriminate between thepronunciation of vowels and consonants, then understand vocabulary, sentences anddiscourses The goals of this listening teaching model from the “bottom-up” is to helpstudents understand the meaning of vocabulary by discriminating sounds, to understandsentence meaning, and to monitor and control the meaning of discourses by understandingsentence meaning

Since the 1970s, with the development of functional language theory, there has been

an emphasis on the research of language function in society Functional linguistic expertsrecognize language as a communicative tool, but not an isolated structure system.Consequently the teaching of listening is not simply intended to make students hear a sound, aword or a sentence, rather, the goal is to cultivate students‟ abilities to understand speakers‟intentions accurately and communicate with each other effectively

I.1.3 Significance of listening

According to Robin Wills (2005), language learning depends on listening since itprovides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners

to interact in spoken communication Listening is the first language mode that childrenacquire It provides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and

it plays a life-long role in the process of communication Thus language acquisition isachieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the criticalcomponent in achieving understandable language input Therefore, it is of vital importancethat students are taught to listen effectively and critically

Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential forlanguage teachers to help students become effective listeners In the communicative approach

to language teaching, this means building model listening strategies and providing listeningpractice in authentic situations: precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when theyuse the language outside classroom

I.2 Teaching listening skills

I.2.1 The process of listening

With a greater understanding of language quality and the development of teachingtheory, there has been a recognition of the process of listening comprehension as needinggreater emphasis Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe.However, it is recognized by Wipf (1984) that listeners must discriminate between sounds,understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, understandintention and retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-culturalcontext of the utterance.

Rost (2002) defines listening, in its broadest sense, as a process of receiving what thespeaker actually says (receptive orientation); constructing and representing meaning(constructive orientation); negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding(collaborative orientation); and, creating meaning through involvement, imagination andempathy (transformative orientation) Listening, then, is a complex, active processes ofinterpretation in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know

I.2.2 Strategies of listening

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to thecomprehension and recall of listening input According to Peterson (1991) and Brown (2001),listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input

(1) Top-down strategies are listener-based: The listener taps into background knowledge of

the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language This backgroundknowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard andanticipate what will come next Top-down strategies include: (getting the gist, recognizing thetopic, using discourse structure to enhance listening strategies, identifying the speaker, findingthe main ideas (listening for the main idea),finding supporting details, predicting, makinginferences (drawing inferences),understanding organizing principles of extended speech,summarizing)

(2) Bottom-up strategies are text-based, in which the listener relies on the language in the

message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning

Bottom-up strategies include:(discriminating between intonation contours in sentences, recognizingsyllable patterns, being aware of sentence fillers in informal speech, picking out details (listeningfor specific details),differentiating between content and function words by stress patterns,recognizing words with weak or central vowels)

Listening comprehension tends to be an interactive, interpretive process in whichlisteners use prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages Moreover,

O‟Malley et al also showed that the use of these strategies types differed according to adivision of the students into effective and ineffective listeners The more effective listenersused a more “top-down” approach, the less effective concentrated on a word-by-wordapproach, “bottom-up”.

According to Noonan D (1999:218) “Key strategies that can be taught in the listeningclassroom include selective listening, listening for different purposes, predicting, progressivestructuring, inferencing and personalizing” Noonan D (1999) also introduces a list ofimportant strategies, along with examples

Listening for tone pitch to identify Did the speaker enjoy the wedding or not?

speaker‟s attitude

the watch or when?

I.2.3 Stages of a listening lesson

The teaching of a listening text can be divided into three main stages: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening Each stage has its own aims, activities and time location

I.2.3.1 Pre-listening stage

This stage is carried out before students begin listening to the listening text It plays anessential part in the whole process of a listening lesson The pre-listening activities are aimed

at preparing learners with everything necessary for listening and understanding the listeningtext Normally, pre-listening stage often lasts from five to twelve minutes depending on eachlesson Hedge, T(2000) argues that “At the pre-listening stage, the teacher will need to decidewhat kind of listening purpose is appropriate to the text The learners will need to tune into thecontext and the topic of the text, perhaps express attitudes towards that topic, certainly bring

to the front of their minds anything that they already know about the topic and most probablyhear and use some of the less familiar language in the text which would otherwise distract orcreate anxiety during listening”

I.2.3.2 While-listening stage

This stage is the main part of a listening lesson aiming at facilitating learners‟listening and checking their comprehension Time allocation for this stage is nearly two-thirds

of the whole lesson The work at the while-listening stage needs to link in relevant ways to thepre-listening work While they listen, learners will need to be involved in an authentic purposefor listening and encouraged to attend to the text more intensively or extensively, for gist orfor specific information (Hedge.T, 2000)

I.2.3.4 Post-listening stage

It is the last step of a listening lesson so it is the time for students‟ production Theactivities at this stage are aimed at helping learners to use what they have had from thelistening text The teacher should make up and vary the activities for learners to do depending

on their level of English This stage often occupies ten or fifteen minutes Post-listeningactivities can take the students into a more intensive phase of study in which aspects ofbottom-up listening are practised (Hedge, T 2000) It is important to note that post-listeningwork can also usefully involve integration with other skills through development of the topicinto reading, speaking or writing activities

I.2.4 Potential problems in teaching and learning to listen to English

Language learners often feel worried about problems when they first attempt to listen

to a new language Although the problems are many and various, they are not all experienced

by all students from different backgrounds So that in this part, I just focus on some of themost common problems that listeners may encounter in learning to listen

- Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak.

Many English language learners believe the greatest difficulty of listeningcomprehension is that the listener can not control how quickly a speaker speaks They feelthat the utterances disappear before they can sort them out This frequently means thatstudents who are learning to listen can not keep up They are so busy working out the meaning

of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part Or they simply ignore a wholechunk because they fail to sort it all out quickly enough Either way, they fail

- The listener‟s limited vocabulary

We know that choice of vocabulary is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener Thelistener has to do the best he/she can to follow For people listening to a foreign language, anunknown word can be likely a suddenly dropped barrier causing them to stop and think aboutthe meaning of the word and thus making them miss the next part of the speech It is believedthat this tendency to stop listening and concentrate on the immediate problem often results

when learners have been taught their English in a way which has given more emphasis toaccuracy than fluency and which has been more concerned with mastery of the forms oflanguage rather than with how it is used This style of teaching leads students to focus on thelanguage word by word, to work out its structure, and then to decide on its meaning.

- Failure to recognize the „signals‟

There are many ways in which a speaker can indicate that he/she is moving from onepoint to another, or giving an example, or repeating a point, or whatever These signals are notimmediately self-evident to a person listening to a foreign language and can easily be missed.And when speakers show clearly that they are about to begin a new point, they may pause ormake a gesture or move slightly They may mark a change to a new point by increasedloudness or a clear change of pitch In spontaneous conversation, a speaker will make use ofdifferent intonation to indicate whether he/she is introducing a new idea or saying somethingthe listener already knows

- Problems of interpretation

Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have considerable difficulty ininterpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their „surface‟ meaning.Problems of interpretation can even occur when the speaker and the listener are from the samebackground and use the same language For example, if you have an appointment withsomebody you do not know and then that person phones you and says „I‟ll be a bit late‟, youwill not know what „a bit‟ means, but if an old friend with whom you have an appointmentphones and says the same thing, you will probably know how long you will have to waitbecause the friend in question is always about half an hour late

- Inability to concentrate

Inability to concentrate can be caused a number of things, but in listening work it is amajor problem, because even the shortest break in attention can seriously impaircomprehension If the students find the topic interesting, they will find the concentrationeasier But sometimes, even when the topic is interesting, students simply find listening workvery tiring, because they make enormous effort to follow what they hear word by word Inaddition, outside factors may well make concentration difficult, too If recorded material isbeing used, an inferior machine or poor recording can make it very hard for the students.Some rooms are acoustically unsuitable for the use of recorded materials

I.2.5 Teacher’s roles in teaching listening comprehension

As many students feel afraid of listening, teachers should be a guide to help them, toencourage them Rost, M (1994) states that language teachers need to provide various types ofsupport to their learners to help them to develop listening skills This includes talking tolearners in the target language, raising learners‟ awareness of their listening styles andstrategies and introducing a range of materials, speaking styles and listening situations.Another important part of teacher‟s role is to ensure that the lesson proceeds in an orderly andproductive way so that the students feel secure and relaxed and unthreatened by the listeningtasks Thus, it is very essential for the teachers to plan and conduct listening sessions in asuitable way which can help their students grow in confidence and soon begin to experiencethe pleasure that listening successfully can bring them.

I.3 Motivation

I.3.1.What is motivation?

However simple and easy the word "motivation" might appear, it is in fact verydifficult to define It seems to have been impossible for theorists to reach consensus on asingle definition but I personally pay most attention to the followings

Motivation is a desire to achieve a goal, combined with the energy to work towards

that goal Sometimes a distinction is made between positive and negative motivation: Positive

motivation is a response which includes enjoyment and optimism about the tasks that you are

involved in Negative motivation involves undertaking tasks for fear that there should be

undesirable outcomes, eg, failing a subject, if tasks are not completed (Ngeow, Karen Hwa, 1998) Motivation is also defined as the impetus to create and sustain intentions andgoal-seeking acts (Ames & Ames, 1989) It is important because it determines the extent ofthe learner's active involvement and attitude toward learning

Yeok-I.3.2.The importance of motivation in listening classes

Many researchers consider motivation as one of the main elements that determinesuccess in developing a second or foreign language; it determines the extent of active,personal involvement in L2 learning (Oxford & Shearin, 1994) Listening to English isregarded to be hard for students who are either English majors or not From the researcher‟sobservation and discussion with students, she has realized that many students have associatedlistening courses with pain and boredom and often complain that they become tired oflistening to the tape from the beginning to the end and benefit little from listening lessons.Therefore, it is necessary for English teachers to realize the importance of how to makelistening classes more interesting and to know how to motivate students so that they can

develop their listening comprehension It can be seen that the traditional way of teaching, such

as listening to the tape again and again and then giving correct answers, still remains Such anapproach to „teaching‟ listening is more like „testing‟ listening as listeners are simplyexposed to a succession of listening texts on a tape, and then are tested how much they haveunderstood in terms of a lot of comprehension exercises rather than being taught how to listenand how to cope with their listening problems in the class (Brown, 1990; Anderson andLynch, 1988) So, how to keep students interest in learning must be focused Without interest,motivation and variation in teaching and learning, students certainly feel bored with listening

To sum up, it is known that motivation is difficult to be measured, but teachers cannotice when their students are motivated by their facial expressions, attitudes and also by theirparticipation in class Motivation is an important factor that contribute to the success inteaching and learning foreign languages in general and in teaching and learning listeningskills in particular

I.4 Current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟understanding language by sense of hearing (Robin Wills:2004) It is an interactive process oflanguage knowledge and psychological activities However, this process is not simplydecoding the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message processwith its reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002) Although teachers of English at LangSon Teachers‟ Training College have attempted to teach listening and listeningcomprehensive competence, all too often, the teaching outcomes have proved less thanadequate The results have shown that even when teachers have doubled their efforts theresults have been consistently disappointing And the reasons for these outcomes are explored

as follows

1.4.1 Students’ psychological obstacles influence their listening capacity

Psychological factors refer to those non-mental factors not directly involving cognitiveprocess, such as students‟ interests, attention, learning emotion, attitudes, and willpower.These non-mental factors are directly influential in the students‟ learning process, they,therefore, play a part in promoting and controlling learning effectiveness For example, twostudents‟ listening levels might be similar, and, while their test results may be quite different,the explanation for their difference is seen to lie in their different psychological states

The cultural attitude of students is particularly influential in the way that studentsaddress their studies There is, in Vietnam, a long history of reverence for written text, and

this attitude has influenced the official assessment processes Thus students generally pay lessattention to developing listening comprehension because they recognize it gains a lowerpercentage of marks in examinations, while reading and writing are highly rewarded Studentsunderstand they will gain high scores only if they master the prescribed knowledge ofgrammar and writing.

As a direct consequence of the factors mentioned above, many students in this collegelack confidence in their oral English language capability and they frequently have a self-defeating and defensive attitude to their engagement in it In the listening classroom, teachersexpect students‟ active participation but, having so many students who lack confidence andwho feel nervous and anxious, makes the task of generating discussion and conversationparticularly difficult Thus, it is unsurprising that college students, who are under pressure for

a considerable period of time, are often stressed and depressed in their efforts to improve theirEnglish proficiency

1.4.2 Grammar knowledge affects listening comprehension

Language knowledge is the foundation of learning English If students‟ knowledge ofpronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is insufficient, it is probable that their Englishlistening comprehension will be negatively affected by lack of language knowledge.However, the most basic outward shell of language is pronunciation Therefore, the first step

of listening comprehension is learning how to identify and select sound signals according topronunciation, and pronunciation knowledge must be developed When students‟pronunciation knowledge is inadequate, their capacity to discriminate will be weak and willaffect listening comprehension

For the students of English in this college, the challenge of listening poses particulardemands because there are many sentence types that are complex and very different from thenative language For example, if the student is unable to distinguish the main clause from asubordinate clause and is unable to understand their relationships, despite understanding themeaning of every word in the sentences, he/she becomes confused about relationships in asentence and connections between sentences and this student is often unsure of relationshipwithin sentences To conclude, lack of grammatical knowledge can reduce English listeninglevels

1.4.3 Cultural background knowledge and thinking affect listening comprehension

According to Trudgill (1983), language is rather like a mirror that reflects the nationalculture of its speakers The American linguist Sapir (1921: 60-90) maintains that language

cannot exist without culture…Culture can be explained as what the society thinks and does,and the language is the expression of the ideas of the society Thus, the marriage betweenlanguage and culture is inseparable: language is the carrier of culture and the capsule thatholds a way of thinking.

Language carries knowledge and cultural information and it reflects the substantialand particular ways of thinking of that person And, culture is embedded in even the simplestact of language (Liddicoat, 2000), it is an inseparable part of the way in which we live ourlives and the way we use language As found by O‟Malley and Chamot (1989), the effectivelistener was the one who was able to draw on a knowledge of the world, on personalexperiences and by asking questions of themselves

Therefore, the student with no background knowledge of culture in English speakingcountries, he/she is unlikely to understand Anglophone modes of thinking as expressed inEnglish language Kramsch (1993) maintains that every time we speak we perform a culturalact An important requirement, then, for learning spoken English, is the acquisition of culturalknowledge And, if students‟ pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and cultural knowledge are

to prosper, they must be grounded in a sound knowledge of the society in which the language

is based

CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY

II.1 General description of the current course-book and participants’

background information

II.1.1 General description of the current course-book

The course-book mainly used for first-year students of English-major to practice their

listening comprehension skill at LSTTC is the one named Listen in 1 This book is the first volume of the three books Listen in 1,2,3 by David Nunan, which are used for developing

listening skill ranging from basic to advanced level Each book covers 20 topics, which arearranged from very easier to more complex ones There is a Review Unit which is designedafter every five units with the aim of revising vocabularies and skills of the previous ones.Objectively, this book is a good one for students to practice and improve their listening skill

in general, but some parts of the book‟s contents in each unit are rather long and difficult formost of the first year students in LSTTC The reasons for this problem are the students‟ poorbackground knowledge, their limited reservoir of vocabulary and structures, their lack ofmotivation and preparations for the task, etc Beside the main course-book, teachers at DFL,

LSTTC sometimes use the book Tactics for Listening by Jack C Richards in their teaching

process The teachers often apply some parts of this book in every Review Unit of the main

course-book Listen in 1 They regard the exercises in this book as extra activities aiming at

improving the students‟ listening skill In short, this book is also a good reference source forstudents to make new progress in their listening skill, but it is not used regularly in theirlessons

II.1.2 Participants’ background information

The study was carried out with the participation of 9 teachers and 90 students whosemajor is English from the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL), LSTTC

II.1.2.1 English - Major Students

As the author mentioned earlier, there were ninety English-major students who tookpart in the research All of them are first year students and come from three different classes(K13D1, K13D2, and K13D3) at DFL Among them, the ethnic minority students account for95% These ethnic minority students mostly come from remote areas whose currentdifficulties are low incomes, poor economic conditions, badly-built- roads, etc Thesedifficulties may be the factors which can make these students have some limitations in theirbackground knowledge and competence for foreign languages acquisition All of the selectedstudents in the study are aged from 18-25, and the rate of female students is 90%, while that

of male ones is only 10%.Of ninety students, seventy spent only three years at their secondaryschools learning English with the old text books Ten students had learned English for 5 yearswith the old text-books and 2 years with the new ones These students were also focused ongrammar translation method before they started this course of English The last students arechosen from some of the most difficult areas of Langson, where there is a big shortage ofJunior High School teachers Besides, their secondary years were mostly spent with the oldtext books and the grammar translation method This may be the reason why only somestudents are good at grammar, and most of them are bad at listening and speaking the targetlanguage due to some of their difficulties introduced earlier Even some can do writtenexercises on English grammar they can hardly listen and communicate in English.

As the researcher has just introduced earlier, most of the students at DFL, LSTTCwere mainly affected by the grammar translation method when they were at secondary school.This best explains why they always try to listen to every word or sentence of the utteranceswhen they are asked to listen to any listening text In addition to that, they are so busyworking out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part As aresult, they usually find it very difficult to catch up with the speed of recorded speech orlistening text, and they often fail to finish the listening task Like any foreign languagelearners, most of the first year students of English at DFL, LSTTC often feel worried aboutproblems when they first attempt to listen to a new language Although the problems arevarious, they are not all experienced by all students from different backgrounds Thus, duringtheir process of practicing listening, most of these students often find the followings the mostdifficult:(Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak, Limited vocabulary andgrammar structure, Inability to concentrate, Failure to recognize the „signals‟.)

II.1.2.2.The teachers

There are twelve teachers of English at LSTTC but only nine teachers participated inthe study The reason is that three of them are doing their post-graduate at present Amongthese three teachers, one is doing her PhD degree in Australia and two others are doing theirM.A in the CFL, VNU Of nine teachers, four of them graduated from CFL,VNU; three fromThai Nguyen Teachers‟ Training College, and two from in-serviced courses in some otheruniversities Three teachers are in their late forties with more than 15 years of teachingexperience, two others in their late thirties with 10 years of teaching experience, two others intheir early thirties with 6 years of teaching experience, the last two aged 24 and 27 with only 3years of teaching experience

The researcher selected all these teachers as the subjects of the first questionnaire withthe hope of finding out what listening techniques are currently applied, their problems ofusing listening techniques in teaching listening skill, and their suggested solutions to theirexisting problems.

II.2 Methods of data collection

This research is conducted by using survey questionnaires and classroom observation.The procedure of collecting data is the survey method employing self-administeredquestionnaire for both teachers and students In addition to the questionnaire, classobservations are also carried out to support the findings

II.2.1 Questionnaire

There are two types of questionnaire: closed and opened-ended questions for bothteachers and students Questionnaire for teacher is written in English while the one forstudents is in Vietnamese so that students understand the questions without extra explanation.The survey method allows the researcher to collect the data needed in “quantitative form”.Questionnaire designed for the teachers aimed at finding out the challenges perceived by theseteachers when they use listening techniques to teach and motivate their students to listeningskills, and their suggestions to improve the listening activities in the course-book they areusing Whereas, questionnaire designed for the students tends to explore students‟unwillingness to take part in listening activities, their preferences for listening techniques, andtheir comments on the listening techniques in the course-book they are using with the hopethat the researcher can suggest some ways to improve the material to increase studentsmotivation for listening comprehension

Totally 9 copies of the questionnaire are delivered to the teachers and 90 to thestudents

II.2.2 Class observation

The researcher attended 3 different classes, to which the researcher distributed thequestionnaire, in order to observe some important points such as the teachers‟ use of teachingtechniques, the problems in teaching and learning listening, and their students‟ attitudestowards the teaching techniques currently used by the teachers, etc The observation also aims

at checking the reliability of the data collected from the questionnaire and clarifies what hasnot been done through the questionnaire The reason for choosing these classes is also thesame as for the subjects of the study Three observation sessions were carried out 3 times in

these three classes with 3 different units of “Listen in 1” course-book For each class, the

researcher observed a 90-minute period The checklist for listening class observation made bythe researcher includes the teachers‟ pre, while and post-listening activities, the students‟participation in the teachers‟ activities The three teachers under observation are different interms of their ages and teaching experience One is 49 years old, the second 42 and the last32.

The following chapter of the thesis is the treatment of all the data collected from thesurvey questionnaire conducted on 9 teachers and 90 students of the English Department atLSTTC and from the author‟s observation in 3 classes The collected data will be presented intables and charts The scheme and coding tables and charts emerged from an examination ofthe data rather than being determined beforehand and imposed on the data

The questionnaires and class observations are represented in Appendix I and II,respectively at the end of the study

CHAPTER III DICUSSIONS AND FINDINGS

III.1 Questionnaires

III.1.1 Questionnaire for the Teachers

III.1.1.1 Teacher’s opinions about the necessity of motivating students to listen before a listening lesson

According to the survey, 100% of the teachers report that they never go straight to alistening lesson without preparing something interesting for their students to do All of themhighly appreciate the necessity of doing lead-in activities to motivate their students to activelytake part in each listening lesson

As Lewis and Hill (1992) suggested, when teachers organize some lead-in activitiesbefore listening, they themselves create an active and relaxing teaching and learningenvironment That should be one of the first and foremost things foreign language teachersneed to remember Actually, several listening techniques, which include brainstorming,prediction, gap-filling, summarizing, etc, have been used for some activities which theteachers do in the listening lessons That explains why the next questions of the survey areraised to find out which techniques the nine teachers use to motivate and teach their studentslistening comprehension skill at the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL)- LSTTC

III.1.1.2 The situation of employing listening techniques at

DFL a Teacher‟s pre-listening techniques

of users

b Making students discuss in pairs or group the topic, the title or the 6pictures about the item they are going to listen

c Asking students some questions about the topic before they listen 9

f Give students time to read and understand the listening tasks 3

Table 1: Teacher’s pre -listening techniques

It can be seen from Table 1 that nine teachers apply the techniques of brainstormingwords, structures or ideas; and asking students some questions about the topic before theylisten These techniques are clearly their most popular ones Seven out of nine teachers

respond that before listening, they pre-teach new words or difficult key words so that studentswould better understand the topic of the listening text and find it easier to listen 6 out of 9teachers confirm that they make their students discuss in pairs or groups the topic they are

going to listen After doing this task, their students would be able to both know more aboutwhat they will listen and improve their speaking skill Making students predict the content ofthe text and studying the listening task appears to be used by only 3 teachers.

According to Boyle (1984), Baker and Westrupt (2000), each pre-listening techniqueshas its own advantages and benefits‟ to students motivation, which can lead to the success oflistening comprehension If the students lack motivation right from the beginning of thelesson, their listening process may be negatively affected For example, if the students feelbored with the listening text, they will probably take no participation in it, or the teacher cannot make them pay attention to the lesson and so on However, different teachers applydifferent pre-listening techniques to motivate their students

b Teacher‟s while -listening techniques

of users

Table 2: Teacher’s while -listening techniques

Table 2 shows the author a very surprising fact of the teachers‟ uses of while-listeningtechniques Most respondents (8,7,7 out of 9 teachers) choose to use true/false activities,multiple-choice questions and ordering pictures exercises respectively during the while-listening stage time The reason is very simple, the listening tasks are available in the coursebook so that they do not need to prepare It, therefore, does not take time for the teachers todesign the tasks for the students Text completion (gap-filling) exercises are used by 5 out of 9teachers in this stage They explain it very confidently This type of exercise would not bevery difficult for their students as they have been provided with important or key wordsrelated before listening Only 1 or 2 out of 9 teachers apply the rest activities, includingmarking/ checking items in pictures, storyline picture sets, completing pictures and others.They think these activities are very difficult because they are unfamiliar with their students

They also require the students to have a great deal of background knowledge about the topic,whereas these students do not satisfy that requirement The researcher agrees with the ideas

made by Mary Underwood (1989) in “Teaching Listening”, there are a number of things

which can make while-listening work frustrating and demotivating, and these should certainly

be avoided More importantly, it is extremely difficult to listen and write at the same time,particularly in a foreign language It is impossible to expect students with limited listeningexperience or knowledge of English to write anything more than a two- or three-wordresponse during a while listening activity For this reason, we clearly understand why mostteachers at DFL focus on true/false, multiple-choice and ordering pictures exercises in thisstage

c Teacher‟s post -listening techniques

Table 3 illustrates clearly the teachers‟ uses of techniques in the post-listening stage.Summarizing and answering multiple-choice questions after listening to the text are mostlyused by 6 out of 9 teachers 5 out of all teachers answer that they often ask their students tocomplete charts/forms, match words or phrases from the listening text, and use informationfrom the listening text for problem-solving, decision-making activities or role-play Theyexplain that these activities would encourage the students to try out some newly heardlanguage rather than simply using language they have already mastered in other contexts.There are only 2 teachers who apply extending notes into written responses, and dictation isoften used by only 1 of 9 teachers

users

e Using information from the listening text for problem-solving and

Table 3: Teacher’s post -listening techniques

As some researchers comment that the most important purpose of post-listeningactivities is to check whether the students have understood what they need to understand Thiscan be done by the teacher giving the answers orally, by pairs checking each other‟s answers,

by the teacher showing the answer on the overhead projector/ blackboard, by groupdiscussion, by asking the students to check against answers given in a book, and so on.Importantly, every teacher of English should bear in mind that success at the post-listeningstage is greatly enhanced if the activity has some purpose of its own.

III.1.1.3 Challenges that teachers have to confront with when using listening techniques

The problem, which the teachers in the study always have to cope with, is theapplication of some listening techniques in teaching and motivating their students to learnlistening skill So, the researcher only focuses on their difficulties in using these techniques inthe three stages of a listening lesson

a Difficulties in pre-listening techniques

From the description of Table 4, 7 out of 9 teachers answer that brainstorming words,structures or ideas is always the most difficult for them to make a successful lead-in beforeasking students to listen to the text The main reasons for this difficulty are their students‟poor background knowledge of English words and phrases and limited experience of learning

a foreign language Since, when they apply this technique, most students just sit in silence As

a result, it often takes time for the teacher to finish this part

b Making students discuss in pairs or groups the topic, the title or 5

the pictures about the item they are going to listen

c Asking students some questions about the topic before they 0

listen

f Give students time to read and understand the listening tasks 0

Table 4: Teacher’s difficulties in pre -listening techniques

Similarly, 5 teachers consider making students discuss in pairs or groups the topicrather difficult since controlling a class of 40 students is sometimes not easy Making studentspredict the content of the text seems to be less mentioned than brainstorming and discussion

as only 3 teachers comment on its difficulty

b Difficulties in while-listening techniques

Table 5 indicates that 5 out of 9 teachers find the technique of spotting mistakes verydifficult for their students to follow successfully Since this technique requires goodvocabulary and grammar structures, but most of their students have a big shortage of them.Next, the situation of completing pictures is the same as the early one To explain for this, 4teachers state that their students‟ concentration on the listening text is not good enough , so

that they can not listen to the text and draw at the same time, if they focus on one, they willlose another Besides, seeking specific items of information and checking items in picturesseem to be applied more conveniently because only 3 teachers comment on the difficulty ofthese techniques Text completion seems to be the least one which causes them obstacle toteach in this stage of listening.

Table 5: Teacher’s difficulties in while -listening techniques

c Difficulties in post-listening techniques

According to some researchers, summarizing can be done by extending notes made atthe while-listening stage or by simply depending on memory This is also a big problem forthe teachers at DFL to apply it This fact is best described in Table 6 Clearly, 6 out of 9teachers respond that their students usually fail to get enough information from the listeningtext in the while-listening stage, so that they can not succeed in summarizing what has beenheard

In addition, extending notes into written responses, identifying relationships betweenspeakers, and establishing the attitude/ behavior of the speaker also cause the teachers manyobstacles to finish their listening lesson in time That is the reason why 5 out of all teachers atDFL comment on the difficulties of these activities They agree with some the ideas that briefnotes made at the while-listening stage can be extended into written texts This activity is adifficult one It can only be done by students at a fairly advanced level Besides, identifyingthe relationship between speakers and establishing the attitude of the speaker require students

to be aware of how language is used in particular social settings and in what ways In fact,their students can not satisfy the criteria of these three techniques Therefore, the researcheralso shares the same idea of these teachers about the difficulty of applying these post-listeningtechniques

Activities Number of

ideas

e Using information from the listening text for problem-solving and

Table 6: Teacher’s difficulties in post -listening techniques

Beside what has been mentioned above, these teachers also have to confront someother problems when they apply listening techniques It is always time-consuming to designthese techniques for their students, and sometimes the techniques they use in class time arenot of students‟ interests Therefore, the quality of their teaching is not good as they oftenexpect

III.1.1.4 Teachers’ comments and suggestions on the listening activities in the course book

‘Listen in 1’ by David Nunan they are teaching

It is possible to say that no course-book is completely perfect and no course-book can satisfyevery learner‟s need and interest When being asked about the listening activities available inthe course-book, 89% of the respondents confirm that they are useful to stimulate thestudents‟ motivation and interest, and suitable for their background knowledge and level ofEnglish Actually, most of the units provide different kinds of activities through the wholelistening lesson such as answering pre-questions, group discussions, true/false information,multiple-choice questions, role play, summarizing, and so on Nevertheless, some of thelistening activities in several units are not interesting and motivating enough (agreed by 11%

a useful to stimulate students and interest.

b suitable for students‟ background and levels.

Although most of the teachers agree that the listening activities in the book are useful to stimulate students‟ motivation and suitable for students‟ level of English,all of them suggest that there should be more activities that need to be added in each unit.These activities must be relevant to students‟ interest and background knowledge If this isdone well, the teachers do not have to spend much time finding more materials to designlistening activities for the whole listening text to suit their students‟ needs In addition, whenstudents have opportunities to join in a diversity of activities, their motivation for listeningwill be surely increased.

course-III.1.2 Questionnaire for the Students

III.1.2.1 Students’ personal views of causes of their unwillingness to listen

Similar to Dunkel‟s point of view (1991), not having large enough vocabulary nor sufficientgrasp of English structures causes students problems in their listening Chart 2 shows thehighest percentage of responses to what makes students uninterested in listening It is the lack

of vocabulary and grammatical structures 49% of the students affirm that when newvocabulary hinders their concentration and listening comprehension, they would easily feeldiscouraged 28% of them admit that the lack of preparation before listening discourages theirlistening If they are asked to listen without any preparation, they will find it not only difficultbut unwilling to listen

Chart 2: Causes that make students uninterested in listening 2%

b Lack of background knowledge

III.1.2.2 Students’ preferences for listening techniques

a Students‟ reaction to their involvement in activities before listening

It is important for teachers to note that pre-listening activities are beneficial tostudents, especially for their motivation and interest They will be more motivated and eager

to listen if there are some interesting things, which are often done at the early minutes of alesson such as listening to some sort of music or playing some games, etc This constitutesenjoyment and recreation It is a fact that 92% of the students, who were surveyed for theirattitudes toward activities before listening, reveal their enjoyment in doing such activities.However, a certain number of students (8%) do not like participating in lead-in activities due

to the fact that the activities employed by their teacher beyond their interest or unsuitable fortheir ability of English

Support for the above result is also found from the researcher‟s observation andstudents‟ real performance When attending some classes, the observer realized that manystudents positively participate in the lead-in activities while some others just sat still, chattedwith their friends or did their own things

b The students‟ preferences for listening techniques used in the listening lessons

With the aim of finding out what listening techniques really interest and motivatestudents, the next parts of the survey questions tend to see the students‟ preferences forlistening techniques used in three stages of a listening lesson: pre, while, and post listening

b1 Students‟ preferences for pre-listening techniques

Pre-listening techniques

a Brainstorming words, structures or ideas

b Making students discuss in pairs or group the topic, the title or the

pictures about the item they are going to listen

c Asking students some questions about the topic before they listen

d Pre-teaching new words or difficult key words

e Making students predict the content of the text

f Give students time to read and understand the listening tasks

Table 7: Students’ preferences for pre-listening techniques

All the listening techniques such as discussion(or working in pairs/groups), questioning, pre-teaching new vocabulary, etc, are believed to be effective to motivatestudents because these can be clearly seen from Table 7 Firstly, though working inpairs/groups is considered the most difficult technique, the majority of the students prefer itthan brainstorming words, structures or ideas For students, this activity is suitable andmotivational as it helps them to have far more chance to speak English about the topic withtheir partners before listening This may give them a chance to activate their words or

pre-484540100

Number of students prefer 10

structures for the text In contrast, brainstorming words seems to be less enjoyable for them,because they lack background knowledge, vocabulary, and grammar structures.

Secondly, pre-questioning technique appears to be interesting to half of the studentsdespite the fact that this technique is sometimes used in their listening lesson The studentsexplain they have opportunities to get more information about the topic from the questionsmade by the teacher This eases them in the listening tasks and their comprehension will bebetter Thirdly, pre-teaching new words is the choice for both the teachers and students.Finally, predicting the content of the text is thought to be not interesting enough (11%) though

it is the most important skill in listening comprehension It is due to the fact that students inLSTTC are often reluctant to guess and their imagination is poor, so they find predictionineffective for their listening comprehension process

b2 Students‟ preferences for while-listening techniques

While-listening techniques Number of students prefer

Table 8: Students’ preferences for while-listening techniques

Table 8 clearly describes the students‟ preferences for while-listening techniques 63out of 90 students enjoy true/false information exercises They explain this type of exercisehelps them feel more confident to decide the right answers than the others However, morestudents like to do the task of ordering pictures It may be due to the fact that students aremore interested in working with pictures, and these pictures may help the students feel morerelaxed to finish the task Whereas, form/ chart completion, multiple-choice questions, textcompletion, and spotting mistakes appear to be difficult They are not much paid attention to

by the students These tasks are not easy for them to do well because those tasks requirestudents to have a good background knowledge and experience of learning English while theycan not meet such requirements at present

b3 Students‟ preferences for post-listening techniques

It can be drawn from the survey that students‟ most preferred post-listening technique

is role play as role play offers them a chance to improve their interaction and other skills such