(Luận văn thạc sĩ) an investigation of demotivators in english listening lessons of the 10th form non english majors at cao bang upper secondary school for the gifted

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 SCH

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

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND 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

Hanoi – 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning 5

2.1.2 The teachers and the students 13

Summary

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS

3.1 Data analysis of students’ responses 17 3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses 25

Summary

PART C: CONCLUSION

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study 33

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 skills Table 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 skills Table 3.6: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ demotivation in listening skills Table 3.7: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids

Table 3.8: Activities adopted by teachers in listening lessons

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

L2 Second language

CBUSSG Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted

ABSTRACT

Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many second language (L2) learners This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG) Specifically, the study has been conducted

in the 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 employed for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews Four factors including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected The research also reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG It is interesting to find that textbook and 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 to solve the problems At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much benefit 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 the rise than ever before In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn it through compulsory programs in schools and universities Therefore, the teaching and learning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of special attention in recent years Since the introduction of the new English textbook 10 which emphasizes the need for the development of students‟ communicative competence through the four skills including speaking, listening, reading and writing, there has been shift from the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching However, most English language classrooms continue to be places to memorize textbooks rather than practise 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 and learning English at CBUSSG has shown that in spite of the great efforts exerted to teach English, weakness in listening and speaking skills is a matter of great concerns because teachers tend to educate students in a manner which is directed to meet the requirements of the exams which mainly focus on extensive vocabulary and grammatical rules Because the General 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 be examined As a result of my experience in the teaching field, I found out that most students have passive attitudes toward learning listening English due to the previous experiences that listening skill is hard to learn and they fail to take listenig input That is the reason why many of them get bored and become demotivated when listening classes start For these reasons, it is necessary to have a study on factors causing demotivation in listening lessons for 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 is considered a relatively new issue in the field of L2 However, most of the researchers have come to an agreement to a list of common demotivating factors facing students in learning English generally and learning listening particularly These factors involve learning environment, 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 additional evidence for demotivation factors that Vietnamese Upper Secondary School students have when listening in English The findings and recommendations of this study will be of great use to the improvement of the teaching and learning of listening of Upper Secondary School students in general and of the 10th form non- English majors at CBUSSG in particular The study may guide teachers to help their students eliminate demotivators in listening lessons and better their listening skills The results of the study may also be helpful 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 non- English majors at CBUSSG have in their listening lessons The study of demotivators in other skills would be beyond of the scope It involves the participants of 6 teachers of English and 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG To go ahead, the thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to better the current context

6 Method of the study

In order to achieve its aims, the research is carried out by both quantitative and qualitative methods: Firstly, the data were collected with the use of the survey questionnaire 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 were employed with students randomly selected from non- English Section for further information

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 to demotivation including the definition of demotivation, factors demotivating foreign language learning In addition, this chapter also covers the followings: the definitions of listening, the significance of listening, the listening comprehension process and potential problems in learning listening comprehension

Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, provides general information about the current situation of teaching and learning listening at CBUSSG as well as study subjects and data collection 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 of the study

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

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter presents theoretical background of demotivation, nature of listening

comprehension 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‟s success in developing a L2, it is crucial for L2 learning (Dornyei,1994; Oxford&Shearin,1996) because it directly influences how much effort students make, how often 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 on curriculum 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 recent decades, there have been studies carried out on motivation, however, motivation research alone cannot explained all the faucets of motivation, it is necessary to investigate other variables, one of which is demotivation (Hamada & Kito, 2007) Demotivation as a concept is relatively new in the field of L2 motivation and therefore not many definitions can 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 negative external factors According to him, there are two sources of demotivators: external and internal, external factors include grading and assignment, learning facilities etc and internal

foreign language In his study, Dornyei identifies the three negative factors that cannot be considered 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 a negative value in the same way as demotives Secondly, the gradual loss of interest in a long-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, for example, realizing that how demanding it is to attend an evening course while working during the day, cannot be regarded as demotives because these types of recognitions do not have any specific external trigger but result from internal processes of deliberation

Dornyei also makes the distinction between „demotivation‟and „amotivation‟ For him, „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 can lead

to amotivation (e.g a series of horrendous classroom experiences can put paid to the learner‟s self-efficacy), but with some other demotives, as soon as the detrimental external influence ceases to exist, other positive motives may again surface (e.g if it turns out that someone 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 frequent phenomenon related to the teacher‟s interaction with the students In L2 studies, in particular, the interest in demotivation has been aroused by a different reason The L2 domain is most often characterised by learning failure, in the sense that merely everyone has failed in the study of at least one foreign language So, language learning failure is directly related to demotivation

1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning

Much research has been conducted on language learning motivation but less on

the demotivating factors in learning L2 The studies by such authors as Gorham and Christophel (1992), Chambers (1993), Keblawi (2005), Rebecca Oxford (1998), Sakai and Kikuchi (2007), Ushioda (1998), Tran and Baldauf (2007) discussed in the following illustrate 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 Demotivators were collected from students‟ responses to the open-ended question: “ What things decrease your motivation to try hard to do your best in that class?” the research findings revealed three main categories of demotives, i.e., context demotives (factors likely to be regarded 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), the teacher 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 and the demotives resulting from teacher behavior, accounted for 79% of all responses In a follow-up study to ascertain whether the perceived sources of demotivation could be replicated, Christophel and Gorham (1995), using the same question to detect demotives with another group of college students studying communication, obtained findings that were consistent with those from the first study However, in both studies, no attempt was made to examine the cases of the students who might have already been demotivated before entering the class or was it clear whether the responses were not real or hypothetical sources of demotivation

To examine the degree to which teachers‟ perceptions of what affects student motivation were similar to those found in student reports, Gorham and Millette (1997) conducted a further study based on Gorham‟s previous research in which teacher participants were asked, with reference a specific class, to respond to the open-ended question, “What do you perceive decreases students‟ motivation to try to do their best in this class and to achieve your instructional goals?” The results indicated that teachers and students agreed on a set of central factors that are relevant to demotivation teachers were more likely to attribute student demotivation to performance-related factors such as the students‟ lack of success on graded work, the students‟ lack of prerequisite skills or knowledge and the students‟ heavy workload In contrast, students attributed more of their demotivation to teacher behavior, in particular poor presentational skills, lack of enthusiasm 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 was conducted on the school students and their teachers Students placed most blame

on teachers and learning materials While the teachers claimed that the students' motivation caused by psychological, social and attitudinal reasons

Keblawi (2005) conducted a study to explore the factors affecting negatively learning English in Palestine high schools The data revealed that English teachers were referred 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 the results 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 250 American 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

by collecting data from 656 students through a 35-item questionnaire The questionnaire were designed 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 learning contents and materials or test scores which were found to be the two most dominant demotives among participants In addition, lack of intrinsic motivation was found to be as salient as a teacher‟s competence and teaching styles which suggests that internal forces have to also be taken into account when discussing demotivation Inadequate school facilities 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 the conclusions arrived at in the previous studies, that is, the demotives were related to negative aspects of the institutionalized learning context such as particular teaching methods 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 essays from 100 students of their foreign language learning experiences The results of the study revealed that there are two groups of demotives: including internal attributions and external attributions The internal attributions includes students‟ attitudes towards English, their experiences of failure or lack of success and the incidents related to their self- esteem, meanwhile the external attributions contain teacher-related factors, the learning environment and other external factors The researchers have given a specific and comparatively full description of the issue in Vietnamese condition

Generally, most studies conducted in the field of motivation and demotivation found 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 or demotivation 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 both linguistics and non-linguistics knowledge Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis, semantics and discourse structure as well as the ability to interact with the input in real time (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 extract meaning based on their own knowledge and experience He believes that since comprehension takes place in the listener‟s mind, the setting or context for interpretation is the cognitive environment of the listener

Like Buck, Rost (2002:59) believes that listening comprehension is a process whereby 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 past experience or knowledge

From the viewpoint of Shohamy and Inbar (1991:26), listening comprehension entails an ability to receive and interprete input simultaneously because a listener cannot replay what he or she has heard A competent listener is therefore dependent on instant comprehension as well as an ability to remember information Unlike written text, utterances are dependent on the context and are usually unedited In accordance with the ideas of Buck and Rost, Shohamy and Inbar also believe that listening comprehension necessitates an interaction between the listener‟s background knowledge and the spoken text

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 cognitive processes 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 Research shows that language learning depends on listening because it provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication

It is undeniable that “listening is the first language mode that children acquire It provides 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

by Wilt (1950), found that people listen 45 % of the time they spend communicating, 30 %

of communication time was spent speaking, 16 % reading, and 9 % writing That finding confirmed what Rankin discovered in 1928, that people spent 70 % of their waking time communicating and that three-fourths of this time was spent listening and speaking

According to Bulletin (1952), listening is the fundamental language skill It is the medium 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 vital importance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically

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

in students‟ language development Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic information they hear Thus language acquisition is achieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical component in achieving understandable language input Given the importance of listening

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

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 language knowledge and psychological activities However, this process is not simply decoding the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process with its 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 are organized into meaningful units according to the knowledge of the language the listener has 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 the information 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 the listener has constructed a meaning from the utterance, he or she might transfer the information to the long-term memory for later use It can be seen that here Underwood relates the aural process in terms of time and memory The background knowledge of listeners is also mentioned in the listening process

In addition, the conception of bottom- up and top- down processes in comprehension 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 context and prior knowledge to build a conceptual framework for comprehension Prior-knowledge includes topic of the listening material, context of the listening material, culture of the listening material, text type of the listening material Whereas bottom- up processes are used when they construct meaning by accretion from phoneme-level to discourse- level features In the past, people used to prefer top- down to bottom- up processes because they thought that the using of top- down processes would help English learners listen more effectively Nowadays, both processes are equally appreciated and should be applied properly in a specific context and for certain purpose of listening It is important for both teachers and students to recognize the existence of these two types of processing listening input 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 four skills for many second language learners The problems they may have in learning listening are various

From the points of view of Underwood (1989), there are seven problems which learners often encounter in learning listening First, listeners cannot control the speed at which speakers speak Another problem is that listeners cannot always have words repeated Next, the listeners have a limited vocabulary, the speakers may use words that the listener doesn‟t know Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals indicating that the speaker 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 common contexts 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 listening interesting Finally, students may have established learning habbits such as a wish to understand every word

Meanwhile, Yagang (1984) attributes the difficulties of listening comprehension to four sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Higgi (1995) studies Omani students‟ problems in listening comprehension and finds the factors which hinder 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 face including the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students‟ unfamiliarity with the sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English; different varieties or accents; false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences In addition, he also points out that boredom, fatigue or distraction outside the classroom may affect the concentration 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 Bang town, a mountainous province of Vietnam It is also the only specialized school in Cao Bang province The school was originally founded in 1974 with only one class specializing

in Maths 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 the country in general and the province in particular Therefore, the teachers and students are carefully selected from schools in the province and there is always competitive learning environment, 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 other schools 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 7 teachers aged from 26 to 48 Two of them graduated from the English Department of College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi four others were from Thai Nguyen University of Education and one is taking MA course Most of them are so young and have at least 5 years of teaching experiences, some of them have had opportunities to attend the national or provincial textbook introduction workshops or training 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 can

give them precious help and advice

Concerning students, currently, there are approximately 618 students whose age ranges 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 ethnic minority groups of Tay, Nung, Dao One advantage of students studying at this school is that they are brought up by scholarships from national and provincial budgets To be eligible 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 English competence is very low It can be due to the lack of native learning environment Students rarely have chance to communicate with English speaking people in both classroom and outside classroom Consequently, their abilities to speak and listen in English cannot be improved 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, few students 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

specialized subjects 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 the daily 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 each other to improve students‟ communicative skills After every three unit, there is a TEST YOURSELF, which provides students with more exercises to test how they are good at English According to the syllabus, students have three periods a week for their English classes 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 with other 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 detailed information, 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 the learners become more proficient at listening Therefore, it is important to provide learners with practice in all skills at all levels and design suitable activities to help them develop that 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 rather low Most of them have poor knowledge of English pronunciation, vocabulary and communicative skills like speaking and listening

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

2.3 Data collection instruments

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to give qualified background data for investigating non- English majors‟ demotivation to learn listening English In this study, the qualitative data (interviews) was conducted after the quantitative data 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 from classes of Chemistry, Physics, Biology at CBUSSG with an aim to elicit students‟ opinions about factors demotivating them in their listening lessons, explore their attitudes towards listening lessons as well as their interest and desire All the questions were written in Vietnamese to make sure that the students properly understood and express their ideas fully Whereas the second questionaire including 6 questions was conducted in English and