Nghiên cứu việc áp dụng các hoạt động trước khi nghe để kích hoạt hứng thú cho học sinh nghe tốt hơn

Aims of the study The study aims at examining the use of various pre-listening activities in thepre-listening stage to improve students’ listening comprehension... In addition, some pre-

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

PHAM THI HOAI DIEP

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPLICATION OF LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO ACTIVATE LEARNERS’ SCHEMATA FOR BETTER COMPREHENSION

PRE-(Nghiên cứu việc áp dụng các hoạt động trước khi nghe để kích hoạt hứng thú

cho học sinh nghe tốt hơn)

M.A THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201

THAI NGUYEN – 2020

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

PHAM THI HOAI DIEP

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPLICATION OF LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO ACTIVATE LEARNERS’ SCHEMATA FOR BETTER COMPREHENSION

PRE-(Nghiên cứu việc áp dụng các hoạt động trước khi nghe để kích hoạt hứng thú

cho học sinh nghe tốt hơn)

M.A THESIS (APPLICATION

I hereby declare that the thesis entitled “An investigation into the

application of pre- listening activities to activate learners’ schemata for better

comprehension” is my own study I further certify that it has not been submitted

before for any degree or any examination to any other university Any reference towork written by any person and institution obtained from other sources have beencited and referenced

Thai Nguyen, 2020

Approved by Supervisor Student

Nguyen Thi Dieu Ha, Ph.D Pham Thi Hoai Diep

I would like to express my faithful gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyen ThiDieu Ha, Ph.D for her patient guidance, stimulating suggestions andencouragement throughout my research

I wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies,School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University, for providing me the bestenvironment to fulfill my thesis

My sincere gratitudes also go to my college from Tran Phu, Hoang Quoc Vietand Vo Nhai high schools The supports that they gave me truly help with myprogress and completion of the research Especially, I would like to express myspecial gratefulness to my family who offered me their love, care, support andencouragement so that I could accomplish my study

Last but not least, I would like to express appreciation to my students in TranPhu high school who were very enthusiastic to support me and participate in theprocess of collecting data for this research

Listening skill is one of the four core language competences fostered forstudents in high school’s English curriculum, especially in Vo Nhai district.Although listening skills are being applied in English lesson, student’s proficiencystill remains low During the teaching time, the researcher realized that the mainreason for this problem is students are not interested in listening skills and are notwell-prepared from the pre-listening stage Therefore, it is extremely necessary toconduct a study with the aim of raising students’ interest in listeningcomprehension by reinforcing pre-listening activities In the study, questionnaireswere employed to check the students’ listening interest and students’ attitudeswhen teacher used varied pre-listening activities The findings of this studysuggest that students’ listening interest was much better after being exposed tovarious pre-listening activities Results also showed that the students had improvedattitudes towards learning listening skill after the introduction of varied pre-listening activities

Hopefully, the thesis can be considered as a contribution to a more effectiveteaching practice at Tran Phu high school and the ongoing process of renovationfor teaching and learning listening skills

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Background of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Method of the study 3

6 Significant of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT……… 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATIRE REVIEW 5

1 Theoretical background of listening skills 5

1.1 Definition of listening 5

1.2 Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process 7

2 Factors affecting students’ listening comprehension 9

2.1 Linguistic factors 10

2.1.1 Unfamiliar topics 10

2.1.2 Pronunciation, speech and intonation 10

2.1.3 Reduced forms 12

2.1.4 Listeners’ vocabularies’ limitation 12

2.2 Non-linguistic factors 13

2.2.1 Listeners’ background knowledge 13

2.2.2 Lack of concentration 14

2.3 Pre-listening stage 16

2.3.1 Definition 16

2.3.2 The role of pre-listening stage 17

2.4 How do various pre-listening activities affect student’s listening skills? 19

2.5 Pre-listening activities 20

2.5.1 Brainstorming 20

2.5.2 Class discussion 21

2.5.3 Pictures 21

2.5.4 Prediction of content 21

2.5.5 Pre-teaching of new words and difficult key words 22

2.5.6 Pre-questions 22

2.6 What is schemata?……… 23

2.7 Previous research studies 24

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 28

2.1 Definition of action research 28

2.2 Characteristics of action research 29

2.3 Process of action research 30

2.4 Benefits of action research……… 32

2.5 The method(s) of collecting data ……… 33

2.6 The respondents/participants 34

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 36

3.1 Data collected from questionnaire for students 36

3.1.1 Data collected from questionnaire for students part 1 36

3.1.2 Data collected from questionnaire for students part 2 37

3.2 Data analysis on the teachers’ questionnaire 38

PART III: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION 52

1 Conclusion 52

2 Implication 54

3 Limitation of the study 56

REFERENCES 58 APPENDICES

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: The table of teacher’s frequency of using pre-listening activities 41

Figure 1: Simple Action Research Model adapted from MacIsaac (1995) 30

Figure 2: Detailed Action Research Model adapted from Susman (1983) 31

Chart 1: Students’ comments about pre-listening activities 36

Chart 2: Students’ comments on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied 37

Chart 3: Teacher’s purposes of using pre-listening activities 39

Chart 4: Teachers' opinions of the most effective pre-listening activity to the students 43

Chart 5: Teachers' techniques for pre-teaching new vocabulary and grammatical structures 45

Chart 6: Teacher’s problems in using pre-listening activities 49

Chart 7: Teachers’ comments on pre-listening activities in the textbook “English 11” and their suggestions 50

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Background of the study

Listening is an essential skill in acquiring a language and it can be defined asthe process of understanding speech in a second language or foreign language Asmentioned in Richards (2008), listening is the most frequently used incommunication It is stated that people spend 50 percent on listening, 25 percent onspeaking, 15 percent on reading, and 10 percent on writing Moreover, according toMorley (1984), listening is a key to all effective communication without the ability

to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood In listening comprehension,

it is commonly recognized that pre-listening is very important because it can makestudents interested in the listening tasks and they can listen to the tasks better Pre-listening is a preparation of the listening class In this stage, teachers tend to arouselearners' expectation and interest of the language text they are going to listen Theycan also motivate learners by providing background knowledge of the text;organizing learners to discuss a picture or a related topic which involves in the text;asking some related questions to the text In general, pre-listening plays a role inwarming-up and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention

on the following while-listening stage and decrease the difficulties of the text

It can be said that the pre-listening is a kind of introductory work which usedmake the content explicit, clarify the purposes and establish roles, procedures andaims for listening In real life it is unusual for people to listen to something withouthaving some idea of what they are going to hear Underwood (1989) described pre-listening as follows: before listening, students should be “tuned in” so that theyknow what to expect, both in general and for a particular task This kind ofintroductory work is generally described as pre-listening work or just pre-listening

To catch up with the new trends in language teaching, Vietnam is trying tolaunch reforms in education step by step Teachers, for example, are investing timeand effort to help students improve their English, especially listening It is the fact

that, communicative approach is used to teach English according to the policy of theMinistry of Education According to the 2020 Project of Vietnam’s Government,listening and speaking are more and more important in learning English Moreover,

in high school, textbooks contain four skills which focus on students’communication therefore; there are various effective methodologies for teacher toapply in teaching listening However, the students’ listening is still low due to somereasons Firstly, the English background of students in rural areas such as Tran Phu,

Vo Nhai and Hoang Quoc Viet high schools are low because most of them comefrom remote areas, they did not have chances to exposure to English like the ones inthe big cities The other reason might be the lacking of English learning facilitiessuch as there is no specializing room for learning English The students share in thesame room with the other subjects in which headphones and computers are notprovided This directly affects students’ listening attitudes and listeningcomprehension The number of the students in class is normally about 40 to 50whereas the ideal class for studying language is about 20 to 25 members Thiscould be another reason why students listening skills cannot be improved As aresult, the students are not interested in listening skills; therefore the teachers have

no motivation to teach listening

In conclusion, pre-listening stage is very essential in the process of teachinglistening The purposes are to involve students into the topic and make theminterested in the listening lesson so that they will have higher level in listeningcomprehension Moreover, the testing and assessment system in Vietnam isprimarily concentrated on grammar, vocabulary and reading ability This partlyexplains the reason why listening, one of the very important parts in learning alanguage, does not seem to be improved effectively in Vietnam

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at examining the use of various pre-listening activities in thepre-listening stage to improve students’ listening comprehension

3 Research questions

With the above mentioned aims, the study attempts finding answers to thefollowing research questions:

How do pre-listening activities activate learners’ motivation?

What are the teachers’ attitudes toward pre-listening activities in enhancinglistening comprehension?

4 Scope of the study

The study concentrates on the effects of alternating pre-listening activities toactivate students’ motivation and the teachers’ attitudes toward pre-listeningactivities in enhancing learner’s listening skills The subjects of the study were TranPhu high school students who are at low level

5 Method of the study

The researcher used two kinds of data collection instruments includingquestionnaire and observation to collect information about student’s listeningcomprehension The observers were fourteen English teachers from high school in

Vo Nhai district also participate in the research

Hopefully, after the research, students will be interested in listening lessons;

as a result their listening skills will be improved

6 Significant of the study

By reviewing the literature about listening, the researcher, firstly, emphasizesthe importance of listening skills in English language classes and, secondly,revealing a literature gap in the factors affecting student listeningcomprehension After reviewing a number of studies, articles and journals, a list offactors influencing students’ listening skills will be chosen to be the theoreticalframework of this study

During the time implementing conventional teaching method, the researcherrealizes that the students are not interested in the listening lesson and their listeningcomprehension is low One of the reasons for this is the teachers’ teaching method;

especially the pre-listening activities were not used in the listening lessons due tothe lack of time The same activities in the textbook could not be useful andeffective for students’ listening comprehension Because different listening tasksrequire different pre-listening activities to get students’ background knowledge,interests and motivation so students could better comprehend the listening skills.

The researcher hopes that after four weeks of experiment, the students wouldparticipate in the varying pre-listening activities They would show great interest inpre-listening activities They felt more confident to work in groups, pairs to discusstheir ideas about the topic before listening to the audio and they will have goodattitude with the pre-listening activities Consequently, their listening skills will bebetter comprehended

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATIRE REVIEW

This chapter reviewed the literature on the theories of listeningcomprehension The first section provided basic theories about listeningcomprehension and the second part discussed some factors that affect students’listening comprehension Next, the listening stages of the listening lesson werereviewed In addition, some pre-listening activities were provided to help teachersand students improve listening comprehension Some previous researches werepresented in the final part of the chapter

1 Theoretical background of listening skills

1.1 Definition of listening

Listening skills are considered an important role in receiving information andare regarded as active, rather than passive, skills in that a response is needed todemonstrate that one has correctly perceived individuals It is thought as the firstskill to start off the learning and acquisition process and plays an important role inthe early ages of the learners This skill is considered as the base for speakingskill and its correlated with the other skills The relation between these two skillsand their correlation is a complex process Listening has long been the neglectedskill in second language acquisition In Nunan (2000), it has been emphasizedthat, listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning Yet, it has beenoften overshadowed by its elder sister: speaking This is because speaking andwriting abilities are what most people refer to when they claim they know asecond language Listening and reading are therefore secondary skills, i.e they aremeans to other ends, rather than ends in themselves

Goh (2002) referred to listening as the most frequently used language skills,which accounts for as much as fifty percent of human’s everyday communicationtime Sharing this opinion, Rubin (1994) stated that listening is used far more thanany other single language skill in our daily lives, twice as much as we speak, four

times more than we read and five times more than we write Good listening,therefore, significantly contributes to the success of communicating process.Understanding spoken English is much more challenging to language learners thanfiguring out meanings of a written text Thus, the teaching of listeningcomprehension is of great importance.

Rost (1994) argued that listening is a crucial element of communication and

it is also an important factor for interaction A learner can express himself orally butnever able to communicate with speakers of English if he is unable to understandwhat is said to him In general, listening is used far more than any other singlelanguage skill in our daily lives We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak,four times than we read, and five times more than we write

Underwood (1989) claimed that the listening skills includes everything fromlearning particular sounds to comprehending complicated messages Without thisskill, communication can break down Therefore, successful communication reallydepends on listeners or receivers of messages Listening is defined as the activity ofpaying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear It is differentfrom hearing which is simply the process of recognizing the sound system of spokenwords Listening skill is composed of everything from learning particular sounds tocomprehending complicated messages More specifically, listening involvesunderstanding a speaker’s accent, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary to grasphis or her meaning He also believed that listening to spoken language also requiresthe ability to understand the implicative in a conversation Moreover, he added thatnext difference is the sounds that can be easily mixed up As an example she useswords with vowel sounds like “sit and seat” Then there is the stress and intonation,which functions as a means to highlight words that carry the main information or tochange the meaning of a speech without changing the order of the words Thespoken English is also very often much simpler than written version and speakerseven use incomplete sentences and less specific vocabulary

Traditionally, listening is considered as a passive language skill along sidethe reading skills It means that learners are almost passive in practicing listening

the classroom like “tape recorder or trained parrot” Anderson and Lynch (1988).

Learners just hear what they are to listen without paying sufficient attention to thediscourse such as the background knowledge of the speakers as well as theirintentions, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning, etc This view oflistening comprehension seems to be inappropriate and inadequate because it doesnot capture all the relevant features of comprehension Therefore,

In addition, Buck (2001) described that listening is a complex process inwhich the listener takes the incoming data and interprets it based on a wide variety

of linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge Briefly, the linguistic knowledgeincludes knowledge of phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics, discourse structure,pragmatics and sociolinguistics The non-linguistic knowledge included knowledge

of the topic, the context and general knowledge about the world and how itworks Thus, vocabulary and grammar knowledge are important issues in listeningcomprehension Learning new words and grammatical structures in pre-listeningactivities will lead students to better listening comprehension by recognizing them

in the listening text This knowledge not only provided encouragement but alsodevelops students’ confidence in their ability to deal with listening problems

Ur (1984:4) argued that what are the main characteristics of real languagesituations, as for example listener having a purpose for a listening and someexpectations In real situations people that are communicating can see each otherand receive some visual or contextual clues during listening Discussion is usuallydivided to short conversation As a result, it is different from formal spoken text inthe quantity of redundancy, noise and colloquialisms

1.2 Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process

It is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development

in a native language and in second language; therefore there have been numerousdefinitions of listening comprehension which presents views of scholars towards thisconcept

Buck (2001) defined listening comprehension as an active process ofconstruction of meaning, done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound,involving both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge.

Regarding listening comprehension, many researchers agreed that contextplays an important role and should be taken into appropriate consideration Garrod(1986) and Mc Donough and Shaw (1993) shared the same idea that listeningcomprehension requires the activation of contextual information and backgroundknowledge

Lynch (1995) gave a more detailed description of listening comprehension,which is a process in which listeners interact with the text Their level of interest,emotional reaction to the content and motivation can either facilitate or interferewith comprehension Successful listening seems to involve a comparison andintegration of new information with established knowledge structures Similarly,Mendelsohn and Rubin (1995) believed that listeners not only passively understandthe text, but also actively construct their own knowledge and then monitor theincoming information in order to keep developing it

The concept of listening and listening comprehension is also defined aseverything that impinges on the human processing which mediates between soundsand the construction of meaning, Underwood (1989) This definition once againemphasizes the activeness of listeners in processing the information heard

So far, a number of methods to evaluate students’ listening comprehensionability have been suggested In this study, listening comprehension is measured bystudents’ performance on their listening tests He also divides listening process intothree stages There are two level activities of the aural process: recognition andselection The first level is that the structure and relationship between syntax andphonology of the language are recognized At this level, the sound goes into asensory store called the “echoic memory” “Echoic memory” is just the short termmemory because there is continuous arrival of new information before thelistener has opportunity to deal with it That is why there is the following stagewhich is called

important or comprehensible in the utterance At this point, words or groups ofwords are checked and compared with information already held in the long termmemory and the meaning is extracted from them (Underwood, 1989: 2) Therefore,the listeners usually remember the meaning rather than the exact word spoken when

he has to recall what has been said The basis of listening comprehension is theability to recognize and select the specific details in the discourse

2 Factors affecting students’ listening comprehension

A great number of factors affecting listening have been reported so far.According to Brown and Yule (1983), there are four groups of factors including thespeakers (the number of speakers, speakers’ speed, accents); the listeners (the role oflisteners, the listeners’ interest in the subject); the content (vocabulary, grammar,background knowledge) and the support (pictures, diagrams, visual aids, etc…).Krashen (1981) emphasizes performers with self-confidence and a good self-imagetend to do better in second language acquisition and low anxiety seems to beconductive to second language acquisition, whether measured as personal orclassroom anxiety Boyle (1984) states there are 3 classes of factors influencinglistening, dividing them into listener factors, speaker factors and factors in thematerial and medium On the basis of the analysis of Boyle and some otherresearchers such as Brown (1989) and Anderson and Lynch (1988), proposes fromcognitive perspectives that three interrelated aspects contribute to the difficulty oflistening, namely text features, task features and contest features After theexamination of the analysis of the above mentioned and some other researchers, theclassification of two factors contributing to the effective factors of listeningperformance are proposed: the subjective factors and objective factors Thesubjective factors include lack of vocabulary of the topic, lack of backgroundknowledge of the topic, lack of confidence The objective factors are the material,the medium, and the surroundings In this thesis, I concentrate on the relativecontribution of pre-listening

activities to the students’ performance in listening comprehension As a result, thefollowing part of pre-listening activities was also discussed He also divided the

influential factors into three different categories including the type of language, thepurpose in listening and the context in which the listening takes place Theirexperiments showed a number of factors that may impede students’ listeningperformance: the organization of information, the familiarity of the topic, theexplicitness and sufficiency of the information, and the type of referring expressionsused and the relationships described in the text (dynamic of static relationships).

Regarding influential factors affecting listening comprehension result,Helgesen, Brown (1994), Dunkel (1991), and Ur (1984) introduced a list ofcharacteristics of spoken language, which are also troubling to listeners Thosefactors include clustering, redundancy, reduced form, performance variable,colloquial language, rate of delivery, stress, rhythm and intonation and interaction

In summary, it can be concluded that listening comprehension is influenced

by both linguistics and non-linguistic features In this study, the researcher shallfocus on some major problems faced by her students

2.1 Linguistic factors

2.1.1 Unfamiliar topics

Unfamiliar topics have remained one of the most challenging problems forlisteners According to Ur (1984) and Rixon (1986), as we rarely know exactly what

we are going to hear although we may have already had some general expectations,

it is much easier to process a familiar topic than a strange one

Similarly, Rost and Candlin (2014) stated that listening to unfamiliar topicswhich are not addressed to listeners is more problematic than listening to popularones As listeners comprehend better with a common topic, it is suggested thatteachers’ selection of input in the early stage should surround themes that frequentlyoccur in real life conversations This not only facilitates students at the beginning ofthe course but also helps ease the learning and teaching process Anderson andLynch (1988)

2.1.2 Pronunciation, speech and intonation

The first factor is learners cannot control the speaker’s speed Many Englishlanguage learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension,

as opposed to reading comprehension, is that the listener cannot comprehend asquickly as the speaker speaks Obviously, listeners cannot always repeat the wordsmany times This is a serious problem in learning situations In the classroom, thedecision as to whether or not to replay a recording or a section of a recording is not

in the hands of students Teachers decide what and where to repeat listeningpassages; however, it is hard for the teacher to judge whether or not thestudents have understood any particular section of what they have heard

Rost (1994) stated that pronunciation is one of the major sources ofdifficulties students encounter in the listening process Sharing the same idea, Rixon(1986) claimed that word stress, strong form and weak form in natural spokenutterance make listening comprehension far more challenging than reading a writtentext Assimilation and elision are other sources of complications, as Helgesen et al.(1994) added These features of spoken English can be a terror for a number oflearners

Speech and intonation also contributes to make listening more troublesome.The unfamiliarity with rhythm and intonation patterns makes listening become moredifficult Brown (1977) saw rhythm as part of general look of how the speakers oftheir language speak it With its own characteristics, the rhythm of English is worthmuch attention since it is also the guide to the structure of information in the spokenmessage

Moreover, Nunuan (1988) confirmed that listening to unfamiliar topics whichare not addresses to listeners is much more difficult to comprehend than listening onfamiliar topics which are addressed to listeners The level of students play a greatrole when listening long parts and keeping all the information in the mind It is noteasy for the lower level student to listen more than three minutes long listening thencompleting the desired activities Short listening texts facilitate listeningcomprehension and diminish boredom, keep learners concentration alive If the text

contains a lot of information, it is not easy to store everything in mind, exceptionallistening ability and strategy required to understand Another reason makes listening

text difficult is the speed If the speakers speak faster than normal listener may havedifficulties to catch target words He also states that on the contrary of readingcomprehension the listener cannot control speed of the speaker and this cause thegreatest difficulty with listening comprehension It is clear for most languagelearners and teachers that a slower speech speed would facilitate beginner learnerslistening comprehension The speed of the speech also supplies cues for catchingthe main points As a matter of fact, the natural talk is very fast to second languagelearners so it makes up some trouble to the non-native speaker Nevertheless, in thestreaming of listening students would notice that sometimes the speaker speaks a bitslower and clearer than he did before This is mostly the points of the listening It isthe chance for students to capture the necessary information in a listening text.Emphasis is a natural factor in speaking so speaker also emphasizes to signal themost significant ideas What students should do is to pay attention to the speed andthe intonation of the speaker and identify the points.

2.1.3 Reduced forms

As Ernestus, Baayen, and Schreuder (2002) explained, “these forms involveunstressed vowels, omitted sounds, and other alternations of the full form, such asassimilation, contraction, and blending (p 230) The term-reduced forms refer to aphenomenon commonly observed in the informal speech of native speakers Onetype of reduced form is called neutralization of vowels, which in most cases results

in a schwa sound Reduced forms are very common in native conversation

2.1.4 Listeners’ vocabularies’ limitation

The other factor which affects students’ listening is vocabulary If thelearners have a limited vocabulary, it could be a challenge when doing the listeningtask The speaker may choose words the listener does not know Listenerssometimes encounter an unknown word, which may cause them to stop and thinkabout the meaning of that word thus causing them to miss the next part of thespeech According to Ur (1984), the listener’s limited range of vocabulary isanother obstacle in listening

comprehension Although listeners can stop the speaker and asks if they do notunderstand the conversation but she or he has to try her/his best to understand whatthe speaker says In the native language, listeners are generally able to continue withthe interaction and to respond, despite understanding only a part of what a speakermeans In mother tongue, when the listeners cannot hear clearly they will dismissthe meaning of a word in context In foreign language, limited vocabulary can be thebarrier of understanding the meaning of a word or a sentence In Rost and Candlin(2014), it is said that 89.4% of the participants suffer from incompletecomprehension Some listeners thought that meaning resides within the unfamiliarwords so they need a huge amount of vocabulary On facing a new word, they tend

to find out the meaning rather than infer it from the context The basic strategy is touse the clues which are the words or phrases coming after the unknown words.Nevertheless, students have to make sure that they do not spend much time onguessing the unfamiliar word or they will miss the speaker’s next point In addition,the speakers may use synonyms, antonyms or appositives to explain the words

2.2 Non-linguistic factors

Students employ listening strategies throughout the day, whether engaging insocial situations or participating in learning activities In general, listeningcomprehension improves when they are interested in the topic Bring students intothe discussion by relating the lesson to something they are familiar with Teachaverages by talking about a popular baseball player’s batting average, explaininghow it is calculated If you simply explain the process of calculating averageswithout making it practical, students with poor listening skills may tune out Whenthe subject matter presented grabs the student ‘s interest, he becomes activelyinvolved in learning and begins to interpret what he hears

2.2.1 Listeners’ background knowledge

Background knowledge can be understood as the listeners’ preliminaryinsight about the culture where the language is used, the knowledge about the subjectmatter of the listening that he is going to hear, the familiarity with the topic andcommand of the linguistic aspects of the listening text, Nguyen Van Trao (2002) It

is common that listeners may lack contextual knowledge therefore sharingknowledge and common context makes communication easier Even if listeners canunderstand the basic meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties incomprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with thecontext Non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, nods, gestures or tone ofvoice, can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures

According to Carrell and Eisterhold (1983), background knowledge falls intotwo different categories including content and formal schemata The former consists

of respects such as cultural knowledge, topic familiarity and the previous experiencewith a field The latter, formal schemata concerns people’s knowledge of discourseforms which are text types, theoretical conventions, and the structural organization

of the text These two factors if well combined can help listeners easily comprehendthe listening text

Also discussing the influence of background knowledge on listeningcomprehension, Alderson and Urquhart (1984) believed that listeners with differentcultural backgrounds have different levels of listening comprehension Little culturalunderstanding can present a number of quandaries for comprehending the message

To understand what is said, it is important for listeners to have sufficient andrelevant knowledge of the culture, which is relevant to the particular instance of thelanguage they are concerned with Brown and Yule (1983b) It is undeniable thatlistening comprehension partly depends on their background knowledge, whichnecessitate the decode of the auditory input, Rixon (1986) This fact makesthe provision of background knowledge more meaningful to listeners

2.2.2 Lack of concentration

Nichols (1948) emphasized that the inability to concentrate while listening isalso one worrying issues It is sometimes the low quality of the listening materialsthat cause troubles Besides, the unfamiliarity of topic can interfere with listeners’concentration The break in attention, even very short can have negative impact onthe effectiveness of listening Therefore, concentration plays an important role in thelistening process Sometimes the listeners may not concentrate on the listeningbecause of some private reasons In listening comprehension, it is clear that even ashort break in attention can seriously impact the result of the listening activity If thestudents find the listening topic is amazing, they may pay more attention to thelesson However, students sometimes feel the listening task very tiring even if theyare interested because it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow themeaning.

The lack of ability to concentration while listening is also one of the bigproblems It is sometimes the consequence of the bad quality of the materials andelectronic devices used to play them which make the trouble Besides, theunfamiliarity of topic also causes difficulties in concentration The break inattention, even very short can have negative impact on the effectiveness of listening.Therefore, concentration plays an important role in the listening process Students’motivation is one of the crucial factors that affect listening comprehension It can bedifficult for students maintaining the concentration in a foreign language learningclassroom In listening comprehension, even the smallest pause in attention mayconsiderably spoil comprehension When students find the topic of thelistening text interesting, comprehending would be easier

Moreover, students should establish certain learning habits such as trying tounderstand every word Traditionally, teachers often hope that students understandevery word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading thelanguage to suit their level, by speaking slowly and so on Consequently, studentstend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase andthey will be discouraged by the failure It is thus sometimes necessary for students

to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding To sum up, there

are varieties of factors which influence students’ listening comprehension However,in

this thesis, the researcher focused only on the pre-listening activities to motivate students in to listening.

2.3 Pre-listening stage

Normally the listening lesson is divided into three stages which are listening, while-listening and post-listening Each stage has its own characteristicsand time allocation

pre-2.3.1 Definition

Pre-listening stage involves the activities that are often carried out in a shortperiod of time (seven to fifteen minutes) aiming at preparing necessary backgroundfor learners to understand the spoken text They may also elicit students’ previousknowledge about the topic of listening and making them aware of the vocabularyitems, related experience and consequently capture their interest As summarized byBaker and Westrup (2000) as well as Lewis and Hill (1992), pre-listening stage is apurposeful activity which can help arouse interest in the topic, provide certainlinguistic preparation for the text, then promote and activate a flexible learningenvironment Through giving learners a reason for listening, this stage undoubtedlyinitiates willingness for listening Before listening, students need assistance toactivate what they already know about the topics they are going to hear Simplybeing told the topic is not enough The teacher must help them to build up priorknowledge, pre-teach some key words or structures and establish purposes forlistening

As cited in Rixon (1986: 63), pre-listening is “Things to do before the students hear the passage, to help them get the out most of what they are going to hear.” In

the other word, the teacher has to prepare the students to achieve the most from thelesson More specifically, Underwood (1989) defined pre-listening is a kind of

“preparatory work” which students should be “tuned in” or provided some basic

information so that they know what to expect, both in general and for particular

tasks Ur (1992: 4) also presented that “It would seem a good idea when presenting

a listening passage in class to give students some information about the

situation and speakers before they actually start listening.” It means that the

teachers should prepare knowledge about the listening tasks before listening lesson

so that would have more motivation to listen Underwood (1989: 31) lists differentpossibilities of pre-listening activities:

 “The teacher gives background information

 The students read something relevant

 The students look at pictures

 Discussion about the topic or situation

 Asking a question and answering it

 Written exercises

 Students follow the instructions for while-listening activity

 Students and the teacher consider how the listening activity will be done”

2.3.2 The role of pre-listening stage

It can be said that pre-listening stage is necessary an in a listening lesson.Buck (1995) argued that a context for interpretation and background knowledge can

be provided by pre-listening activities Mendelsohn (1995) also mentioned that the

importance of pre-listening activities is to “activate the students’ existing knowledge

of the topic in order for them to link what they comprehend and to use this as a basis

of their hypothesis – information, prediction, and inference” (p.140) Normally,

when people listen to something they often have some ideas or backgroundknowledge about the context of the listening passage For example, when listening

to a radio channel, they will probably know which topic is being talked In mothertongue, we rarely have trouble understanding listening But, in a secondlanguage, it is a challenging skill because there are various unfamiliar sounds,words and structures This is even more difficult if we do not know the topic underdiscussion, or who is the speaker So, providing listeners with the knowledge

or contextual support

required for the task can orient them to what they are listening to and thus directtheir attention to the task rather than having them listen aimlessly According toUnderwood (1989: 44)

Lewis and Hill (1992) emphasized that pre-listening stage plays an importantrole in teaching listening for students Pre-listening is a preparation on of thelistening class In this stage, teachers tend to arouse learners’ expectation andinterest of the language text they are going to listen They can also motivatelearners by providing background knowledge of the text; organizing learners todiscuss a picture or a related topic which involves in the text; asking some relatedquestions to the text In general, pre-listening plays a role of warming-up and themain aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention on the followingwhile-listening stage and decrease the difficulties of the text These activities canalso promote an active and flexible learning environment, help increase learners’motivation for learning, motivate learners by giving a reason for listening andprovide them with some language for the listening

It is obvious that students may fell the listening lesson difficult when they donot know what they are going to listen Although they fell the words are familiar butthey cannot understand the speaker because they may be lack of basic knowledge,the context of the speaker

Thus, the listeners’ expectation and purposes should be taken into account.These make listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language.Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations and see the purposebefore a listening lesson This kind of work is described as “pre-listening activities”.The two main aims of pre-listening are to help to activate students’ backgroundknowledge, guess the topic of what they are going to hear and provide certaincontext for the listening task The teacher should vary the activities such as twopeople having a conversation about their daily life and asks students to completethe true or false questions or vocabulary building for student before the listeningtask, Nunan (2002)

According to Sheerin (1987), pre-listening activities significantly help arouse

linguistic items necessary to understand the listening text and make them feel moreinterested in the recordings With the acknowledged significance of the stage, avariety of pre-listening activities have been introduced and recommended for use byvarious researchers namely Baker and Westrup (2000), Doff (1988), (Lingzhu,2003), Rost (1994), Underwood (1989) and Ur (1984).

Each of these activities helps to focus students’ minds on the topic bynarrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating relevantprior knowledge and already known language The pre-listening activities are notused separately; many pre-listening activities can be used in a listening lesson togain best effects

2.4 How do various pre-listening activities affect student’s listening skills?

It is obvious that students may fell the listening lesson difficult when they donot know what they are going to listen Although they fell the words are familiar butthey cannot understand the speaker because they may be lack of basic knowledge,the context of the speaker

Thus, the listeners’ expectation and purposes should be taken into account.These make listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language.Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations and see the purposebefore a listening lesson This kind of work is described as “pre-listening activities”.The two main aims of pre-listening are to activate students’ background knowledge,guess the topic of what they are going to hear and provide certain context for thelistening task The teacher should vary the activities such as two people having aconversation about their daily life and asks students to complete the true or falsequestions or vocabulary building for student before the listening task, Nunan (2002)

According to Sheerin (1987), pre-listening activities significantly helped’;arouse students’ interest in listening A good pre-listening stage should providestudents with linguistic items necessary to understand the listening text and makethem feel more interested in the recordings With the acknowledged significance ofthe stage, a variety of pre-listening activities have been introduced andrecommended

for use by various researchers namely Baker and Westrup (2000), Doff (1988),(Lingzhu, 2003), Rost (1994), Underwood (1989) and Ur (1984) In the followingpart of the study, the researcher will provide a list of different activities for pre-listening stage.

2.5 Pre-listening activities

According to Berne (1995), pre-listening activities also help students preparefor what they are going to hear, and helps mitigate the anxiety which comes fromlistening in a foreign language, by providing a clear context Moreover, pre-listeningactivities can offer opportunities for class discussion and more interaction amongstudents There are certain pre-listening activities which can be adapted easily fordifferent classes and levels, as well as for general English and listening lessons

2.5.1 Brainstorming

The prediction of information surrounding a topic before listening about itencourages learners to focus on a topic and conceivably develop a relatively highsense of self-esteem while conducting the task To make use of this activity, theteacher may begin by posing a question word and idea, and then ask students tobrainstorm the plot and share ideas with their friends The activity can intensifystudent’s attention on the content of the upcoming recording and expand theirknowledge during the process of exchanging ideas with other students It issuggested that students should find out ideas, possibilities or suggestions of thetopic before listening Then they can use their ideas, possibilities or suggestions asbasic knowledge for main listening activities The best advantage of this activity isthat the student’s ideas can cover words and expression which they know, or whichthey learn by asking for help as they brainstorm

2.5.2 Class discussion

This is a very common form of pre-listening activity, principally whenstudents are going to hear a recorded text This activity can be started by theteacher’s instruction to students about the topic of listening text The teachers

their students some background information, begin to talk about the topic andindicate what the students should expect to hear Pair and group discussions beforelistening are essential for students They engage students in the sharing of ideas andrender them concentrate more on their job Lingzhu (2003) Generally, teachers raiseguiding questions and discussing topics When organizing groups, teachers shouldgather students of different levels so that they can help themselves in expressingideas as well as prepare students with some background of the topic and get themmore willing to listen Students are posed guiding questions or certain topics afterthat, they are required to talk in pairs or groups It is very important for studentsbecause this activity encourages them to share ideas and knowledge, and giveopportunities for them to involve in the task as well as speak English It is noted byDoff (1988) that there should be fluent and less fluent students in one group becausethe former can help the latter confidently express their ideas.

2.5.3 Pictures

According to Greher (2002), in some pre-listening activities, pictures can beexploited as a useful teaching aid Listeners are often asked to match pictures withgiven words, or guess words from pictures or activities of the sort which aim ateliciting the topic-related vocabulary as well as maintaining learners’ focus on thetheme of the listening

It is suggested that when carrying out such activities, teachers should avoidusing a plethora of unknown words and long explanations as they may distractlisteners and sometimes even demotivate them from continuing the task

2.5.4 Prediction of content

The activity helps activate students’ background knowledge Once listenershave had some ideas about the context of the listening, they usually become moreinquisitive about the listening and the comprehension of the spoken text will likely bemore accurate One way to encourage the prediction of content is asking students toanticipate the context and content of the listening through the title or illustratingpictures

The prediction of the listening can also be done by asking students readthrough the questions of the listening tasks, which prepare them for the content ofthe listening and facilitate their process of comprehension.

Another predicting activity is through True or False statements Teachersprovide a variety of statements which are based on the general or detailedinformation of the listening The principle is that teachers let students discuss amongthemselves, make prediction but do not reveal their decision of true or falsestatements until they finish the listening task

2.5.5 Pre-teaching of new words and difficult key words

The presence of new words and difficult key words in the listening text is abig problem to many listeners For students, a large number of unknown words mayhinder listening, and certainly lower confidence Therefore, it is crucial to presentthe new words, especially items of great difficulty to the students’ comprehension,prior to ask them to listen There are many ways to present the new words such as:using visual aids, using games, definitions or explanation and translation Amongthem, visual aids might be the most useful technique they help to make the language

in class more real and alive Moreover, using visual aids is a quick way to reduceanxiety, stimulate self-confidence and improve language competence, Buck (2001)

to the topic

In summary, pre-listening activities are occasionally employed to supplystudents with prior information about the listening task, prepare them for the taskand make them more focused on listening and therefore comprehend better.However, in application of a diversity of pre-listing activities, there are someconcerns that teachers should take into account Wilson (2008) presented someuseful pieces of advice for planning listening At first, the recording of the listeningshould be checked beforehand to find out about the speed, accent and other things,that cannot be observed by reading the transcript only The machine should bechecked as well It is a good idea to plan out the time carefully so that the teacherknows how long the listening is going to take and be sure everything goesaccording to the plan The teacher ought to predict problematic parts of the listeningand prepare how to help the students with them.

2.6 What is schemata?

A schemata is considered as a mental structure which derives from all theparticular experiences we have had (Nuttall 1982:7) Schemata theory was firstproposed by the gestalt psychologist Bartlett (1932), who observed that when peoplewere asked to repeat a story from memory, they often filled in details which werenot included in the original but related to what they already knew based on theircultural background Schema then is culturally bound, as shall be shown in thisessay The concept of schema can be found from anthropology to philosophy andhas been considered for both instruction and assessment in language learning,examples of which will be referred to and considered later From that newinformation, concepts and ideas can only have meaning when they can be related tosomething already known by the individual This exemplifies how the idea ofbackground knowledge in language-related performance has been around forcenturies, if not actually coined as a term at the time

Also, there is evidence that the contextual and background information givenmay not always necessarily be adopted by the learners However, there is little doubtthat schema theory has positively influenced the teaching of reading and listeningand that pre-activities can help to improve a learner's comprehension in manysituations

Therefore, it makes sense for teachers to use such activities but not be assumptivethat what we expect is in fact reality In other words, teachers should make sure thatthey check the usefulness of the activities used and pay close attention to possibleschema-interference or non-activation In essence, we must do the most possible inorder to increase comprehension, and thus, maximize overall performance.

2.7 Previous research studies

Ash Pekin, Janset Muge Altay, Didem Baytan (2001) carried out aninteresting study about listening activities He found out contrast between effectiveand ineffective listening habits to become effective listeners He said that instructorsshould provide various chances for students to practice listening skill and to becomeactively engaged in the listening process He emphasized that there are three stages

in listening process: pre-listening, during listening and after listening He definedpre- listening help students with cultural background, build prior knowledge, andstimulate students’ interest in the listening lesson However, in his study, hesuggested that instructor should let students watch movies than listen to the tapesbecause it can help students pay more attention to the listening Students can bothpractice listening and see manner and culture visually

Being one of the most challenging language skills, listening comprehensionhas caught attention of a number of pedagogy specialists Berne, J (1995) hasshown the impact of listening habits on listening comprehension The researcherssuggested teachers to provide students with numerous listening opportunities, thushelp them become actively engaged in listening As defined by those researchers,listening process has three inevitable phases including pre-listening, during listeningand after listening, among which the purpose of the first phase is to prepare studentsfor cultural and lexical background knowledge, review necessary listening skillsand stimulate students’ interest in the listening task As concluded by the group ofresearchers, good habits of listening make effective listeners, and according to them,listening to movies is much better than to tapes due to the fact that movies are moreattractive to listeners They explained that when watching movies, students haveopportunities to both listen

and observe the speakers’ manner Although the suggestions of this researcher groupappear compelling and can be beneficial to their teaching environment, theapplication of them in Vietnamese teaching context may be a big challenge due to ashortage of necessary facilities.

Wang (2002) also concluded that a number of pre-listening activities not onlymotivate students, help change them from passive to active listeners, but alsoeffectively increase the language input According to these researchers, it isnecessary for teachers to make good effort to design and apply pre-listeningactivities in their teaching process for the sake of their students

Another proponent of varying pre-listening activities, Trao (2002) indicatedthat pre-listening activities are useful as they make students feel well-prepared, thusminimize the fear of listening The study was successful in showing the influence ofpre-listening activities on listeners’ effectiveness of listening comprehension.However, it is suggested that the results of pre-test and post-test should be analyzedfor more details such as the changes in each section of the listening test Moreover,the research result would be more reliable if the experiment were carried out in alonger timeframe rather than only one month

In an M.A thesis, Thuy (2005) made an experimental research to investigatewhether pre-listening activities motivate students before the listening and thereforeimprove their listening comprehension The experiment group was provided withnumerous pre-listening activities while only new vocabulary and structures weregiven to the control group students in the first phase of listening While and post-listening activities were the same for both groups The effectiveness of pre-listeningactivities was evaluated by comparing the difference between the results of a pre-test and post-test The result showed that the application of various pre-listeningactivities has positive influence on the test results of the experiment group

Besides, there are some articles, which research the effect of the use of video

on listening comprehension tests Londe (2009) examined two video formats

(close-up view of the head of the lecturer, and full body view of lecturer) and comparedtheses to 28 the audio only format in a listening comprehension test setting A

stimulated classroom lecture is videotaped and used, and one hundred took the test.The aim of the research is to explore whether there are any performance differenceswhen students take these tests in the different formats The results of the presentstudy show that the addition of the visual channel does not contribute to or takeaway from the performance in English as a second language listeningcomprehension test.

Moreover, Farrokhi and Modarres (2012) carried out a study on the effects oftwo pre-task activities: glossary of unknown vocabulary items and content relatedsupport on improvement of Arian EFL learners’ listening comprehension The studyshowed that offered pre-task activities for listening tasks improved learners’listening performance It is concluded that pre-task activities had differentsupportive roles on low and high proficient learners’ performance

Ha (2006) carried out an experiment to examine the effects of pair and grouppre-listening activities on Dong Do university first year English major students’attitudes, their motivation and her listening comprehension in comparison with thewhole class pre-listening activities The results of the study showed that pair andgroup pre-listening activities were better at helping students increase theirmotivation and improve their listening comprehension better than in whole classpre-listening activities This study makes a contribution to teaching and learningEnglish at Dong Do University If there were more efforts and contribution, thestudy has been more successful

Moreover, Tu (2012) explored the effects of the use of video in pre-listeningstage on grade 10 students’ motivation in English listening lessons at Tran HungDao School She emphasized that the students also showed great interests inlistening activities They were willing to share knowledge and opinion as well aspositively discuss the listening topic before listening to the tape script or doing thecomprehension tasks when the teacher used video in the pre-listening stage

Another research which is also related to listening stage is a study on listening techniques to motivate Non-English major students to develop theirlistening skills at the Faculty of Electro-Mechatronics at Phuong Dong University in

pre-Hanoi by Le (2006) The findings of the study revealed several techniques used atthe

first stage of listening lessons with the textbook “Lifelines” by Tom Hutchinson.The students’ preferences for these techniques were also highlighted Then, basing

on the teachers’ and the students’ comments, some suggestions to improve thesituation of teaching and learning at Phuong Dong University were made Besides,Berne (1995) investigated how varying pre-listening activities effect secondlanguage listening comprehension According to the study, comparison of thelistening comprehension of second language learners completing three different pre-listening activities after one and two exposures to a passage shows that scores forsubjects completing the question preview activity were higher than for subjectscompleting the filler activity and that additional exposure improves comprehension

In addition, Chang and Read (2006) investigated the effects of four types oflistening support on a listening test: previewing the test questions, repetition of theinput, providing background knowledge about the topic, and vocabulary instruction.The results showed that the most effective type of support overall was providinginformation about the topic, followed by repetition of the input Vocabulary

Long (1990) carried out a research with the results collected from ninetyuniversity students of Spanish classes of different levels of proficiency, talkingimmediate recall-protocols showed that topic familiarity had impacts on the scores

of the recall measures and that there was a consistent increase in the comprehensionscores across the different levels Furthermore, the results demonstrated no relationbetween topic familiarity and course level; that is, L2 listening proficiency, whichdisclosed that students of different course levels scored higher on the familiarpassage

In summary, this chapter aimed at providing with useful the theoreticalbackground for the research The theory was the definition of listeningcomprehension and then found out some factors that affected listening skills.Moreover, it discussed some various pre-listening activities and the importance ofpre-listening activities After that, it presented some previous research to comparethe difference between them

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the research methodology used in the thesis Firstly, ageneral overview of the action research which is chosen as an appropriate approach

is provided Moreover, the research questions, the participants of the study arepresented The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the chosenresearch method, research design, research strategies, research instruments, andtechniques of data analyses

2.1 Definition of action research

As cited in Creswell (2002), action research are procedures which are done

by teacher to get information about what should be improve in school ororganization about teaching or learning process

Cohen and Manion (1994) also stated that action research involves a reflective, semantic and critical approach to enquiry by people who aresimultaneously members of the context in which the research take place

self-According to O'Brien (1993), action research is known by many other names,including participatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipator research, actionlearning, and contextual action research, but all are variations on a theme Putsimply, action research is “learning by doing” a group of people identify a problem,

do something to resolve it, see how successful their efforts were, and if not satisfied,try again While this is the essence of the approach, there are other key attributes ofaction research that differentiate it from common problem-solving activities that weall engage in every day

Moreover, Abbott and Mayes (2014) mentioned that action research involves

a self-reflective, semantic and critical approach to enquiry by people who aresimultaneously members of the context in which the research takes place Theobjective of action research is to improve the current state of affairs within theeducational context in which the research is carried out

2.2 Characteristic of action research

According to Creswell (2002), action research design has some followingfeatures: Practical focus, The educator-researcher’s own practices, collaboration, adynamic process, a plan of action, and sharing research

It is clear that action research’s target is to approach an actual problem ineducation environment It means that action research focuses on practical issueswhich can bring advantages to education The problem might be a concern eitherfrom a teacher or many educational institutions In this research design, it is commonthat the researcher may be interested in producing their own practice rather thanstudying other studies Within all the definitions of action research, there are fourbasic themes: empowerment of participants, collaboration through participation,acquisition of knowledge, and social change In conducting action research, westructure routines for continuous confrontation with data on the health of a schoolcommunity These routines are loosely guided by movement through five phases ofinquiry action research cycle: Identification of problem area, collection andorganization of data, interpretation of data, action based on data and reflection

2.3 Process of action research

Action research has been analyzed in many ways MacIsaac (1995) hascreated a simple model of the cyclical nature of the typical action research process(figure

3.1) There are four steps in each cycle: plan, act, observe, and reflect

Simple Action Research Model