An investigation of demotivators in english listening lessons of the 10th form non english majors at cao bang upper secondary school for the gifted

1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning 1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 1.2.1 Definitions of listening 1.2.2.. LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTSChart 3.1: Stud

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES 

HOÀNG NGỌC LINH

AN INVESTIGATION OF DEMOTIVATORS IN ENGLISH LISTENING LESSONS OF THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH MAJORS AT CAO BANG UPPER SECONDARY

SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED (Nghiên cứu các yếu tố gây nên sự mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe tiếng Anh của học sinh một số lớp 10 không chuyên Anh tại trường THPT Chuyên Cao Bằng)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi – 2011

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES 

HOÀNG NGỌC LINH

AN INVESTIGATION OF DEMOTIVATORS IN ENGLISH LISTENING LESSONS OF THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH MAJORS AT CAO BANG UPPER SECONDARY

SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED (Nghiên cứu các yếu tố gây nên sự mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe tiếng Anh của học sinh một số lớp 10 không chuyên Anh tại trường THPT Chuyên Cao Bằng)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Phạm Minh Hiền, M.A

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation

1.1.1 What is demotivation?

1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning

1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension

1.2.1 Definitions of listening

1.2.2 Significance of listening

1.2.3 The process of listening comprehension

1.2.4 Potential problems in learning listening comprehension

Summary

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 The setting of the study

2.1.1 The school

2.1.2 The teachers and the students

2.1.3 The English textbook 10

Summary

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS

3.4 Recommendations

Summary

PART C: CONCLUSION

1 Summary of the study

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study

REFERENCES

APPENDICE

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Chart 3.1: Students’ attitudes towards the learning of listening English

Chart 3.2: Students’ opinions on what motivates them to learn listening English

Chart 3.3: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ thought over of listening skillsTable 3.1: Students’ motivation in learning listening English

Table 3.2: Students’ demotivation in class

Table 3.3: Students’ opinions on kinds of tasks in listening lessons

Table 3.4: Students’ expectations towards teachers of listening skills

Table 3.5: Students’ expectations towards learning environment of listening skillsTable 3.6: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ demotivation in listening skillsTable 3.7: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids

Table 3.8: Activities adopted by teachers in listening lessons

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CBUSSG Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted

Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many secondlanguage (L2) learners This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate thedemotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang UpperSecondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG) Specifically, the study has been conducted inthe form of survey research with the informants of 102 students in the 10th form of non-English Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG The main instruments employedfor the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews Four factorsincluding teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learningenvironment were extracted through the analysis of data collected The research alsoreveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominantdemotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG It is interesting to find that textbookand curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation Based on the findings,recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided tosolve the problems At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of muchbenefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

With Vietnam‟s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world,the demand for English speaking proficiency among people especially students is on therise than ever before In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn itthrough compulsory programs in schools and universities Therefore, the teaching andlearning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of specialattention in recent years Since the introduction of the new English textbook 10 whichemphasizes the need for the development of students‟ communicative competence throughthe four skills including speaking, listening, reading and writing, there has been shift fromthe traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching However, mostEnglish language classrooms continue to be places to memorize textbooks rather thanpractise communication and English is still to be treated as a school subject that needs to

be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication The current teaching andlearning English at CBUSSG has shown that in spite of the great efforts exerted to teachEnglish, weakness in listening and speaking skills is a matter of great concerns becauseteachers tend to educate students in a manner which is directed to meet the requirements ofthe exams which mainly focus on extensive vocabulary and grammatical rules Because theGeneral Secondary Exam is not directed toward the speaking and listening skills, non-English major students find themselves uninterested in learning the skills which will not beexamined As a result of my experience in the teaching field, I found out that most studentshave passive attitudes toward learning listening English due to the previous experiencesthat listening skill is hard to learn and they fail to take listenig input That is the reason whymany of them get bored and become demotivated when listening classes start For thesereasons, it is necessary to have a study on factors causing demotivation in listening lessonsfor students in general and for non- English majors at CBUSSG in particular

In literature so far, there have been so few studies on demotivation because it isconsidered a relatively new issue in the field of L2 However, most of the researchers havecome to an agreement to a list of common demotivating factors facing students in learningEnglish generally and learning listening particularly These factors involve learningenvironment, teachers‟ teaching methods and personality

2 Aims of the study

The main purpose of the study is:

- to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th form non- English majors at CBUSSG

- to give some suggestions to eliminate demotivation factors in listening lessons in order to improve students‟ listening skills

(2) What can teachers do to motivate students in their listening lessons?

4 Significance of the study

This study points out factors causing demotivations in listening lessons of the 10thform non- English majors at CBUSSG More importantly, it can be used as additionalevidence for demotivation factors that Vietnamese Upper Secondary School students havewhen listening in English The findings and recommendations of this study will be of greatuse to the improvement of the teaching and learning of listening of Upper SecondarySchool students in general and of the 10th form non- English majors at CBUSSG inparticular The study may guide teachers to help their students eliminate demotivators inlistening lessons and better their listening skills The results of the study may also behelpful for the students themselves and those who are interested in this field

5 Scope of the study

This study mainly focuses on the demotivation factors that the 10th form English majors at CBUSSG have in their listening lessons The study of demotivators inother skills would be beyond of the scope It involves the participants of 6 teachers ofEnglish and 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG To goahead, the thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to better the current context

non-6 Method of the study

In order to achieve its aims, the research is carried out by both quantitative andqualitative methods: Firstly, the data were collected with the use of the surveyquestionnaire which was conducted with informants of 6 teachers of English and 102

students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG Then, interviews wereemployed with students randomly selected from non- English Section for furtherinformation.

7 Design of the study

The study is organized as follows:

Part A, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, the aims, and research questions,significance of study, method and design of the study

Part B, DEVELOPMENT, consists of the following chapters

Chapter 1, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents the theoretical background related todemotivation including the definition of demotivation, factors demotivating foreignlanguage learning In addition, this chapter also covers the followings: the definitions oflistening, the significance of listening, the listening comprehension process and potentialproblems in learning listening comprehension

Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, provides general information about the currentsituation of teaching and learning listening at CBUSSG as well as study subjects and datacollection instruments

Chapter 3, ANALYSIS OF DATA, gives a detailed analysis of data collected.Besides, the chapter also presents some explanations and interpretations of the findings ofthe study

Part C, CONCLUSION, summmarizes the major findings and points out thelimitations of the study Furthermore, some suggestions for further studies are also given inthis part

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

This chapter presents theoretical background of demotivation, nature of listeningcomprehension and discussion of issues and aspects concerning the topic of the study

1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation

1.1.1 What is demotivation?

Motivation plays an important role in the process of English learning – teaching,research shows that motivation is one of the main determining factors in an individual‟ssuccess in developing a L2, it is crucial for L2 learning (Dornyei,1994;Oxford&Shearin,1996) because it directly influences how much effort students make, howoften students use L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers,how much input they receive in the language being learned, how well they do oncurriculum related achievement tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes,and how long they preserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over In recentdecades, there have been studies carried out on motivation, however, motivation researchalone cannot explained all the faucets of motivation, it is necessary to investigate othervariables, one of which is demotivation (Hamada & Kito, 2007) Demotivation as aconcept is relatively new in the field of L2 motivation and therefore not many definitionscan be found for it

In light of Dornyei‟s considerations, “demotivation” concerns “specific external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action” Furthermore, a demotivated learner is defined as someone who is

originately motivated and lost his/her interest or motivation in learning because of negativeexternal factors According to him, there are two sources of demotivators: external andinternal, external factors include grading and assignment, learning facilities etc and internalfactors include reduced confidence (Dornyei, 2001a) and negative attitude toward the

foreign language In his study, Dornyei identifies the three negative factors that cannot beconsidered as instances of demotivation Firstly, powerful distractions, such as watching

TV instead of doing one‟s homework, are not demotives because they do not carry anegative value in the same way as demotives Secondly, the gradual loss of interest in along-lasting, ongoing activity cannot be seen as a demotive because it does not result

from a particular incident Thirdly, sudden recognitions of the costs of an activity, forexample, realizing that how demanding it is to attend an evening course while workingduring the day, cannot be regarded as demotives because these types of recognitions do nothave any specific external trigger but result from internal processes of deliberation.

Dornyei also makes the distinction between „demotivation‟and „amotivation‟ Forhim, „amotivation‟ refers to a lack of motivation brought about by the realisation that

„there is no point…‟ or „it’s beyond my ken…‟ Thus, „amotivation‟ is inextricably related

to general outcome expectations that are deemed to be unrealistic, whereas „demotivation‟

is related to specific external causes Dornyei also pointed out that some demotives canlead to amotivation (e.g a series of horrendous classroom experiences can put paid to thelearner‟s self-efficacy), but with some other demotives, as soon as the detrimental externalinfluence ceases to exist, other positive motives may again surface (e.g if it turns out thatsomeone who dissuaded the individual from doing something was not telling the truth.Researchers have taken an interest in demotivation, as it is considered to be a frequentphenomenon related to the teacher‟s interaction with the students In L2 studies, inparticular, the interest in demotivation has been aroused by a different reason The L2domain is most often characterised by learning failure, in the sense that merely everyonehas failed in the study of at least one foreign language So, language learning failure isdirectly related to demotivation

1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning

Much research has been conducted on language learning motivation but less onthe demotivating factors in learning L2 The studies by such authors as Gorham andChristophel (1992), Chambers (1993), Keblawi (2005), Rebecca Oxford (1998), Sakai andKikuchi (2007), Ushioda (1998), Tran and Baldauf (2007) discussed in the followingillustrate that demotivation in learning a L2 is a matter of concern worldwide Therefore,much more information is needed on the nature of the phenomenon

Gorham and Christophel (1992) tried to determine what factors were perceived

as demotives by college students taking introductory communication classes Demotivatorswere collected from students‟ responses to the open-ended question: “ What thingsdecrease your motivation to try hard to do your best in that class?” the research findingsrevealed three main categories of demotives, i.e., context demotives (factors likely to beregarded as antecedent to the teacher‟s influence), structure/format demotives (factors over

which the teacher is likely to have some degree of influence, if not complete control), theteacher behaviour (factors likely to be perceived as under the teacher‟s direct control.Teacher-related factors, which consist of class structure or format-related demotives andthe demotives resulting from teacher behavior, accounted for 79% of all responses In afollow-up study to ascertain whether the perceived sources of demotivation could bereplicated, Christophel and Gorham (1995), using the same question to detect demotiveswith another group of college students studying communication, obtained findings thatwere consistent with those from the first study However, in both studies, no attempt wasmade to examine the cases of the students who might have already been demotivatedbefore entering the class or was it clear whether the responses were not real or hypotheticalsources of demotivation.

To examine the degree to which teachers‟ perceptions of what affects studentmotivation were similar to those found in student reports, Gorham and Millette (1997)conducted a further study based on Gorham‟s previous research in which teacherparticipants were asked, with reference a specific class, to respond to the open-endedquestion, “What do you perceive decreases students‟ motivation to try to do their best inthis class and to achieve your instructional goals?” The results indicated that teachers andstudents agreed on a set of central factors that are relevant to demotivation teachers weremore likely to attribute student demotivation to performance-related factors such as thestudents‟ lack of success on graded work, the students‟ lack of prerequisite skills orknowledge and the students‟ heavy workload In contrast, students attributed more of theirdemotivation to teacher behavior, in particular poor presentational skills, lack ofenthusiasm and organization of course material

In contrast to the findings of the Gorham and Millette‟s study (1997), Chambers (1993)investigated demotivation in language learning in four schools in the UK The study wasconducted on the school students and their teachers Students placed most blame onteachers and learning materials While the teachers claimed that the students' motivationcaused by psychological, social and attitudinal reasons

Keblawi (2005) conducted a study to explore the factors affecting negativelylearning English in Palestine high schools The data revealed that English teachers werereferred to directly or indirectly-as demotivators- by almost half of the respondents.Interestingly, the study revealed that about half of the respondents referred to aspects of

English (grammar, vocabulary) as main demotivators Furthermore, depending on theresults of a study conducted on secondary students in Budapest who were identified as

demotivated, Dornyei (2001) categorized nine demotivating factors including: the teacher personality, commitment, competence, teaching method; inadequate school facilities - group is too big or not the right level; frequent change of teachers; reduced self-confidence

experience of failure or lack of success; negative attitude towards the L2; compulsory nature of L2 study; coursebook.

Rebecca Oxford (1998) carried out a content analysis of essays written by 250American students (in high schools and universities) about their learning experiences over

a period of five years In this analysis, four demotivating factors were extracted, they are:

The teacher’s personal relationship with the students, including hypercriticism, belligerence, a lack of caring, and favouritism; the teacher’s attitude towards the course or the material, including lack of enthusiasm, sloppy management and close-mindedness; style conflicts between teachers and students, including multiple style conflicts, conflicts

about the amount of structure or detail, and conflicts about the degree of closure or

„seriousness‟ of the class; the nature of the classroom activities, including overload,

repetitiveness, and irrelevance

Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) explored Japanese high school students‟ demotivation bycollecting data from 656 students through a 35-item questionnaire The questionnaire weredesigned to measure six constructs derived from previous studies: teachers, characteristics

of classes, experiences of failure, class environment, class materials, and lack of interest

Five demotivational factors found were learning contents and materials, teacher’s competence and teaching styles, inadequate school facilities, lack of intrinsic motivation, and test scores Contrary to most of the previous studies presented so far, factors related to

teacher were not found to have very strong demotivating influence compared to learningcontents and materials or test scores which were found to be the two most dominantdemotives among participants In addition, lack of intrinsic motivation was found to be assalient as a teacher‟s competence and teaching styles which suggests that internal forceshave to also be taken into account when discussing demotivation Inadequate schoolfacilities were not found as demotivating although it was mentioned by some participants

Ushioda (1998) asked the participants to identify what they found to be

demotivating in their L2-related learning experience Her findings were not unlike theconclusions arrived at in the previous studies, that is, the demotives were related tonegative aspects of the institutionalized learning context such as particular teachingmethods and learning tasks.

Reviewing above - discussed studies discussed above, Tran and Baldauf (2007)conducted a case study project with Vietnamese students by using stimulated recall essaysfrom 100 students of their foreign language learning experiences The results of the studyrevealed that there are two groups of demotives: including internal attributions and externalattributions The internal attributions includes students‟ attitudes towards English, theirexperiences of failure or lack of success and the incidents related to their self- esteem,meanwhile the external attributions contain teacher-related factors, the learningenvironment and other external factors The researchers have given a specific andcomparatively full description of the issue in Vietnamese condition

Generally, most studies conducted in the field of motivation and demotivationfound out that the personality of the teacher, teaching methods, learning context in addition

to the learner's attitudes toward L2 could play a vital role in the students' motivation ordemotivation toward learning

1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension

1.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension

There are many different approaches to the definition of listening comprehension.

However, most researchers agree that all listening comprehension involves the use bothlinguistics and non-linguistics knowledge Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis,semantics and discourse structure as well as the ability to interact with the input in realtime (Buck, 2001:3) Meanwile non- linguistic is concerned with contextual knowledge(Buck, 2001:2; Lynch, 1998: 3)

According to Buck, listening comprehension is a process whereby listeners extractmeaning based on their own knowledge and experience He believes that sincecomprehension takes place in the listener‟s mind, the setting or context for interpretation isthe cognitive environment of the listener

Like Buck, Rost (2002:59) believes that listening comprehension is a processwhereby language is linked to previous stored notions and associations in real life In other

words, it is the understanding of what the language is referring to, based on one‟s pastexperience or knowledge.

From the viewpoint of Shohamy and Inbar (1991:26), listening comprehensionentails an ability to receive and interprete input simultaneously because a listener cannotreplay what he or she has heard A competent listener is therefore dependent on instantcomprehension as well as an ability to remember information Unlike written text,utterances are dependent on the context and are usually unedited In accordance with theideas of Buck and Rost, Shohamy and Inbar also believe that listening comprehensionnecessitates an interaction between the listener‟s background knowledge and the spokentext

Listening is described by Bejar, Douglas, Jamieson, Nissan and Turner (2000:2) as

“the process of receiving an acoustic signal which is then structures” According to them,the reception of the signal occurs in real-time but the structuring is dependent on cognitiveprocesses which involve linguistic, situational and background knowledge which have to

be synthesized in order to achieve meaning

Brinley (1998:181) also defines listening as a multi-faceted and interactive process

“listeners use verbal and non-verbal cues to interprete messages

1.2.2 The significance of listening comprehension

Listening plays a very important role in student‟s academic success Researchshows that language learning depends on listening because it provides the aural input thatserves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spokencommunication

It is undeniable that “listening is the first language mode that children acquire Itprovides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays

a life-long role in the process of communicating” (Guo, N & Wills, R., 2006:3) A study byWilt (1950), found that people listen 45 % of the time they spend communicating, 30 % ofcommunication time was spent speaking, 16 % reading, and 9 % writing That findingconfirmed what Rankin discovered in 1928, that people spent 70 % of their waking timecommunicating and that three-fourths of this time was spent listening and speaking

According to Bulletin (1952), listening is the fundamental language skill It is themedium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information,their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and

their appreciation In this day of mass communication, much of it oral, it is of vitalimportance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically.

According to second language acquisition theory, language input is the mostessential condition of language acquisition As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role

in students‟ language development Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language byunderstanding the linguistic information they hear Thus language acquisition is achievedmainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the criticalcomponent in achieving understandable language input Given the importance of listening

in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help studentsbecome effective listeners In the communicative approach to language teaching, thismeans modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations:precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside theclassroom

1.2.3 The process of listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟understanding language by sense of hearing It is an interactive process of languageknowledge and psychological activities However, this process is not simply decodingthe message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process withits reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002)

According to Underwood, there are three distinctive stages in the listening process

At the first stage, the sounds go into a sensory store called the “echoic memory”, and areorganized into meaningful units according to the knowledge of the language the listenerhas The second stage is the processing of the information by the short – term memory.This is a brief stage at which words or groups of words are checked and compare with theinformation already held in the long-term memory and the meaning is extracted from them.When the meaning has been grasped, the actual words are generally forgotten Once thelistener has constructed a meaning from the utterance, he or she might transfer theinformation to the long-term memory for later use It can be seen that here Underwoodrelates the aural process in terms of time and memory The background knowledge oflisteners is also mentioned in the listening process

In addition, the conception of bottom- up and top- down processes incomprehension are also mentioned by such authors as Lynch (1988), Rubin (1994) and

Rost (2002) According to them, listeners use top- down processes when they use contextand prior knowledge to build a conceptual framework for comprehension Prior-knowledgeincludes topic of the listening material, context of the listening material, culture of thelistening material, text type of the listening material Whereas bottom- up processes areused when they construct meaning by accretion from phoneme-level to discourse- levelfeatures In the past, people used to prefer top- down to bottom- up processes because theythought that the using of top- down processes would help English learners listen moreeffectively Nowadays, both processes are equally appreciated and should be appliedproperly in a specific context and for certain purpose of listening It is important for bothteachers and students to recognize the existence of these two types of processing listeninginput as they both contribute to the development of listening skills.

1.2.4 Potential problems in learning listening comprehension

It cannot be denied that, listening is regarded as the most difficult among the fourskills for many second language learners The problems they may have in learninglistening are various

From the points of view of Underwood (1989), there are seven problems whichlearners often encounter in learning listening First, listeners cannot control the speed atwhich speakers speak Another problem is that listeners cannot always have wordsrepeated Next, the listeners have a limited vocabulary, the speakers may use words that thelistener doesn‟t know Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals indicating that thespeaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example or repeating a point Fifth,listeners may lack contextual knowledge because sharing mutual knowledge and commoncontexts makes communication easier Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate

in a foreign language, concentration is easier when the students find the topic of listeninginteresting Finally, students may have established learning habbits such as a wish tounderstand every word

Meanwhile, Yagang (1984) attributes the difficulties of listening comprehension tofour sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Higgi (1995)studies Omani students‟ problems in listening comprehension and finds the factors whichhinder or facilitating listening are speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation Rubin (1994)identified five factors that affect listening comprehension such as text characteristics,interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics and process

characteristics Besides, he also identifies some problems which listeners often faceincluding the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students‟ unfamiliarity withthe sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English; different varieties oraccents; false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences In addition, he alsopoints out that boredom, fatigue or distraction outside the classroom may affect theconcentration of the listeners.

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter deals with the context of the study, subjects and methods of the study

as well as the analysis of data collected

2.1 The setting of the study

2.1.1 The school

The study was conducted at CBUSSG which is located in the center of Cao Bangtown, a mountainous province of Vietnam It is also the only specialized school in Cao Bangprovince The school was originally founded in 1974 with only one class specializing inMaths After many years of establishment and development, today, it has been widened with

18 classes specializing in different subjects such as Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology,Literature and English The main duty of the school is to train and foster talents for thecountry in general and the province in particular Therefore, the teachers and students arecarefully selected from schools in the province and there is always competitive learningenvironment, which creates real opportunities for students to develop their full ability

The school has 18 classes with a number of students ranging from 30 to 36 for each.This class size seems favorable for students to study English comparing with that in otherschools in the province However, the school is equipped with only one language laboratory,which is not good enough because teachers and students sometimes get troubles when using

it So students often practise listening to English at their classroom with a cassette player

2.1.2 The teachers and the students

As in every high school, English is taught here as a compulsory subject by 7teachers aged from 26 to 48 Two of them graduated from the English Department ofCollege of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi four others were fromThai Nguyen University of Education and one is taking MA course Most of them are soyoung and have at least 5 years of teaching experiences, some of them have hadopportunities to attend the national or provincial textbook introduction workshops ortraining programmes to get the ideas about the textbook and new teaching methodology.However, they do not have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who cangive them precious help and advice

Concerning students, currently, there are approximately 618 students whose ageranges from fifteen to eighteen Most students in natural scientific classes are males.Many of them come from districts of Cao Bang province and belong to different ethnicminority groups of Tay, Nung, Dao One advantage of students studying at this school isthat they are brought up by scholarships from national and provincial budgets To beeligible for the school, students have to take hard entrance exams and have at least 4 years

of experiencing in English at lower secondary schools However, their Englishcompetence is very low It can be due to the lack of native learning environment Studentsrarely have chance to communicate with English speaking people in both classroom andoutside classroom Consequently, their abilities to speak and listen in English cannot beimproved and motivated as much as they live in the target language learning environment.Although they are aware of the importance and necessity of learning English, fewstudents have real interest in learning English In other words, the majority of the students

do not pay much attention to English, they are reluctant to speak English at school or even

in real- life communication Instead, they only give special attention to their specializedsubjects and consider English a pre- requisite

2.1.3 The English textbook 10

The new textbook English 10 is theme-based designed with 16 units, equivalent to

16 topics divided into 6 themes which are updated and relevant to many aspects of thedaily life including: Personal information, Education, Community, Health, Recreation,The world around us Those themes are represented through five sections: Reading,Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language Focus respectively Each section is designed

to be taught in forty-five period These sections are theme- based closely related to eachother to improve students‟ communicative skills After every three unit, there is a TESTYOURSELF, which provides students with more exercises to test how they are good atEnglish According to the syllabus, students have three periods a week for their Englishclasses Accordingly, time allocated for listening skills is one period (45 minutes long)every two weeks As a result, students have few chances to have further practice withother listening material prepared by their teachers

In the English textbook 10, different listening skills are utilized depending on what

to listen for such as listening for general understanding, listening for specific or detailedinformation, predicting guessing and interpreting In addition, the listening tasks

are various and flexible based on linguistic difficulty level, topics and students‟ interest.However, it is noticeable that all of these listening skills develope simultaneously as thelearners become more proficient at listening Therefore, it is important to provide learnerswith practice in all skills at all levels and design suitable activities to help them developthat listening skill.

2.2 Subjects of the study

The study was carried out with 108 participants categorized into two groups:

The first group are 102 tenth form students from classes of, Chemistry, Physics,Biology at CBUSSG The participants included 69 male students and 33 female students.They have been learning English for at least 4 years, their English proficiency is ratherlow Most of them have poor knowledge of English pronunciation, vocabulary andcommunicative skills like speaking and listening

Another group includes 6 teachers ranging from the age of 26 to 48 They have atleast 5 years of teaching English Two of them graduated from the English Department ofVietnam National University, Hanoi College of Foreign Languages, the rest were fromThai Nguyen University of Education

2.3 Data collection instruments

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to give qualifiedbackground data for investigating non- English majors‟ demotivation to learn listeningEnglish In this study, the qualitative data (interviews) was conducted after the quantitativedata collection to deepen understanding and interpretation of the results

In order to get detailed data, the study used a variety of research instruments,namely questionaires and interviews

The two survey questionnaires, one for non- English majors and the other for the

teachers, were adapted from Trang Tran., Balduf Jr (2007), Demotivation: Understanding Resistance to English Language Learning – The Case of Vietnamese Students The first

questionnaire, consisting of 13 questions was delivered to 102 tenth form students fromclasses of Chemistry, Physics, Biology at CBUSSG with an aim to elicit students‟ opinionsabout factors demotivating them in their listening lessons, explore their attitudes towardslistening lessons as well as their interest and desire All the questions were written inVietnamese to make sure that the students properly understood and express their ideasfully Whereas the second questionaire including 6 questions was conducted in English and

administered to teachers of English to identify their perspectives on demotivators inlistening English of the 10th form non- English majors and their current teaching methodsand activities used in class to help students motivated in the listening lessons.

The interview questions structured with a list of 7 open-ended questions were based

on the survey questionnaires to get a more comprehensive view of the matter 10 studentswere chosen randomly to clarify information about the items raised in the questionnaires.All the interviews were conducted in Vietnamese in order for the participants to fullyexpress their views without being constrained by the use of a L2 They were then recorded,transcribed for the analysis purpose, and then translated into English

Summary

In this chapter, the current situation of teaching and learning at CBUSSG has beenpresented as the context of the study Futhermore, the research methods including thesubjects of the study, data collection instruments are also discussed