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Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their[r]

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN LƯƠNG THẾ VINH

Mã số:

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary.

Người thực hiện: BÙI NGỌC XINH

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN

1 Họ và tên: BÙI NGỌC XINH

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh: 21/07/1969

8 Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO

- Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: Thạc sĩ

- Năm nhận bằng: 2007

III KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC

- Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 20 năm

- Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã có trong 5 năm gần đây:

1 How useful pre-reading activities are in teaching reading

2 Helping gifted students enrich their idiomatic expressions.

3 The effectiveness of group work in teaching reading

4 Extensive reading combined with extensive reading tasks to improve students’ general knowledge , increase their engagement in class and enrich their vocabulary.

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN

LƯƠNG THẾ VINH

CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc

Biên Hòa, ngày 03 tháng 5 năm 2012

PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Năm học: 2011-2012

Tên sáng kiến kinh nghiệm: Motivating students to practice listening skill

through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more

interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary.

Họ và tên tác giả: BÙI NGỌC XINH; Chức vụ: Giáo viên

Đơn vị: trường THPT Chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

Lĩnh vực: (Đánh dấu X vào các ô tương ứng, ghi rõ tên bộ môn hoặc lĩnh vực khác)

- Quản lý giáo dục  - Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: 

- Phương pháp giáo dục  - Lĩnh vực khác: Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã được triển khai áp dụng: Tại đơn vị  Trong Ngành 

1 Tính mới (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 2 ô dưới đây)

- Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới 

- Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ giải pháp đã có 

2 Hiệu quả (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 4 ô dưới đây)

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụngtrong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng tạiđơn vị có hiệu quả 

3 Khả năng áp dụng (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 3 ô mỗi dòng dưới đây)

- Cung cấp được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối, chính sách:

- Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn, dễ thực hiện và

- Đã được áp dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả

-XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN

(Ký tên và ghi rõ họ tên)

THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ

(Ký tên, ghi rõ họ tên và đóng dấu)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- TITLE ……… 2

- INTRODUCTION ……… 3

- RATIONALE OF THE STUDY………3

- PROCEDURES………7

- FINDINGS ……… 10

- CONCLUSION ……… 16

- APPENDIX 1……… 17

- APPENDIX 2……… 26

- REFERENCES ……… 31

Title

Motivating students to practice listening skill through English songs to decrease students’ tense while listening, make them feel more interested in listening and enrich their vocabulary.

2 INTRODUCTION

Listening is one of the four main skills in learning English.

After many years of teaching at Luong The Vinh high school I have found that a lot ofstudents at this school are afraid of listening periods , seem very tense while listening inclass and almost have no pleasure in listening lessons because listening lessons whichare based on the school curriculum cannot provide them with what they want However,they very much want to improve their listening skill but they don’t know how to do it As

a teacher, I think that I should do something to help them get pleasure from listening firstand then improve their listening skill For this reason I would like to encourage the

students to practice listening skill through songs in class and at home in order to decrease

tense while listening and enrich their vocabulary.

RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

a What is Listening ?

“Listening” is different from “hearing” as Professor John Drakeford says

Hearing is a word used to describe the physiological sensory processes by which auditory sensations are received by the ears and transmitted to the brain Listening, on the other hand , refers to a more complex psychological procedure involving interpreting and understanding the significance of the sensory experience.

( Drakeford , cited in Bolton 1987:32)

Listening skills allow one to make sense of and understand what another person is saying Inother words, listening skills allow you to understand what someone is talking about

“Listening without comprehension means that listening has not taken place successfully.”( From the Course book : Teaching Listening & Speaking – SEAMEO – p 15 )

b The importance of listening skill

Listening skill plays a very important role and we need good listening skills as Mckay pointsout that “ Good listening skills make workers more productive The ability to listen carefullywill allow you to :

- better understand assignments and what is expected of you

- build rapport with other people

Sarwar quotes a statement by Logan ( 1980 , in Sarwar , 2001 , pp 127-136 ) who says that “People can learn from a variety of sources , even if the final goals are the same ” Hence ,teachers’ role is very crucial in leading students to developing their learning habits inside aswell as outside the classroom One of the good learning habits is listening to English songs

c The aim of the innovation :

- To make listening lessons more interesting

- To decrease students’ tense while listening

- To motivate students to practice listening to English songs at home

c Why were songs chosen to teach ?

4Lyn Newton points out that “ singing songs and reading poems help expose students

to various types of genres” and he also shows us the benefits of listening to songs:

- Listening to songs is something people do in real life

- The language in songs is authentic / real

- They are interesting ; they motivate learners

- Repetition is not boring if it is in a song

- Rhythm and stress are easy in a song

- New vocabulary is learnt in context

- Listening to songs is a good group activity

- We can all sing alone

What’s more songs not only make students relaxed but also help them improve theirpronunciation , intonation and some grammar points

d How to choose songs

- The songs chosen must contain useful language ( words , vocabulary , idioms ,orphrases that are usually used in daily life ) or grammar points that students need

to learn

c The participants of the study

45 students of class 12 A 1 of LTV high school were chosen to take part in the

innovation The innovation was carried out in the last 7 minutes of listening periods after

the teacher and the students had already finished listening lessons And the innovation lasted

10 weeks in the first semester ( from 10 October to 3 December,2010

5The reason why the students of class 12A 1 were chosen as the participants of thestudy were that :

- They usually listen to music in their free time

song not the lyrics

( I once talked to them during speaking class about their free time ,and their attitude totheir listening skill )

The Secondary Innovation

This innovation process could not be conducted without the secondary innovationwhich was English songs The researcher wanted to control the participants’ participationduring the research process to see if they were interested in listening to songs , if theyreally remembered any songs and if their vocabulary were enriched ( I think students willremember vocabulary, phrases and sentences much easier, much longer if they listen tothem repeatedly ),so it was the researcher that introduced the English songs to theresearch subjects Here is a list of English songs used in the research ( SeeAppendix )

1 What Are You Doing ?

2 Who’s That Girl ?

8 The Skeleton Dance

9 Don’t Let he Sun Go Down on Me

10 Heal the World

In addition, the students could find English songs on the Internet

PROCEDURES.

1 ) Getting Started

a./ A questionnaire which consisted of 6 questions was used in order to find out what

the students thought about listening and what they had done to improve their listeningskill

The questionnaire included both open-ended questions and questions with fixedalternatives For the questions with fix alternatives the students were asked to indicatewhether they “ strongly agreed ” , “ agreed ” , “ were neutral ” ,

“ disagreed ” or “ strongly disagreed ” with each of the statements For the open-endedquestions the students could freely express their thoughts about the extensive

7reading activity and tasks

The questionnaire revealed that

- 90 % of them thought that listening was the most difficult

- 20 % reported that they often tried to listen to every word

- 80 % of them felt that they were failed listeners when they could not understand thelistening lessons

- 85 % of them felt very tense during listening periods

- 90 % did not listen to English songs very often

- 90 % of them reported that they could hardly learn any new vocabulary from thelistening lessons and if they learned any vocabulary they quickly forgot them

- 95 % hardly knew any of the ten songs that the teacher gave them before the innovation

b./ A pre-test on vocabulary

- A pre- test which consisted of 30 multiple-choice questions on vocabulary was used The giving of the pre- test to the students aimed at checking their vocabulary before theinnovation After the students had finished the test the researcher asked the students tohand in all of their tests and did not let them have a chance to look at the test again Thepurpose of doing this was that the researcher wanted to use the pre-test again as a post-test after the students had finished listening the ten songs to check if they learnt anythingfrom listening to songs

( The vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs were taken from the songs that they were

8going to listen to during the innovation.)

2 ) Students and teachers keep track of student progress by using English songs.

The listening of the songs could be carried out at the beginning of the listening periods aswarm-up or at the end of the listening periods

Listening tasks

The purpose of giving listening tasks was “ to prompt students to keep listening ”

( From the Course book : Teaching Listening and Speaking – SEAMEO – p 22 ) Hence ,

it is advisable to encourage them to report back on their listening in a number of ways

or music of the song

- The teacher asked the students to talk about the song ( e.g What is the song about ?Which vocabulary can you get from the song ? )

 Post -test ( Multiple -choice test on vocabulary )

The same multiple choice test on vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs was given a to the students again to check if their vocabulary increased or if they gained any vocabulary after they listened to the songs

( The vocabulary / idioms / phrasal verbs were taken from the songs that they had

listened to.)

 Questionnaire

A questionnaire was administered to the students at the end of the research Thequestionnaire was devised to find out (1 ) the students’ motivation to songs ( 2 ) theirattitude towards listening ( 3 ) their evaluation on listening to songs ( 4 ) and theircomments on listening to songs

The questionnaire included both open-ended questions and questions with fixedalternatives For the questions with fix alternatives the students were asked to indicatewhether they “ strongly agreed ” , “ agreed ” , “ were neutral ” ,

“ disagreed ” or “ strongly disagreed ” with each of the statements For the open-endedquestions the students could freely express their thoughts about the extensive readingactivity and tasks

FINDINGS

a ) The Pre- test

The number of correct answers The number of students who got the

b ) The post test

The result of the post test :

11

The number of correct answers The number of students who got the

Statements 1

SA

2A

3N

4D

5SD

1 You think that listening is

very difficult 87 % 5 % 4 %

2.You feel interested in

listening

3% 6 % 6 % 10 % 75 %

3.You could learn a lot ( e.g

vocabulary , grammar points )

from listening lessons

3N

4D

5SD

1 You thought that listening

was very difficult 50% 35% 14%

2 Listening to songs made you

feel more interested in listening

than before

60% 17% 14% 7%

3.There were a lot of useful

vocabulary in the songs you

listened to

80 % 10 % 5% 5

%

4 You listened to English

songs at home more often

%

5 You felt less tense and more

relaxed in listening periods 65 % 17% 9% 10

%

6 You started being interested

in listening to the lyrics of

English songs

53 % 17 % 14 % 14

%

B / Some comments given by the students when doing the questionnaire :

- They could listen for pleasure without the pressure of testing or marking

- Listening to songs made it possible for the weak students to participate in the

14

- activity that they had never had during listening class before

vocabulary much more easily and longer

Questionnaire findings revealed that

- The students were engaged in the listening lessons

- The students felt more relaxed while listening to songs

- The students started being interested in English songs.

- The students liked singing English songs , so they practiced listening to them moreoften

- The relationship between the teacher and the students was better because theysometimes discussed the content of a song , talked about the singers Once theyinvited the teacher to go singing karaoke with them

- They thought that listening activity was useful to them in many aspects : creatingconfidence in learning English , encouraging them to become independent listeners ,and helping them find pleasure and real purposes in listening

- However , they also wished to be provided with authentic listening materials

They wanted to be exposed to more real English world

this is more likely to be a consequence of the educational contexts that have been or arenow provided for them than of any inherent dispositions of the students themselves ” Students cannot only adopt new ways of teaching from their teachers but also becomevery responsible for their study and their tasks in class They will become moremotivated if learning materials and teachers ‘way of teaching meet their expectations ,needs , abilities and interests

16

APPENDIX 1

Song 1

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ?

What are you doing ?

I’m playing a game Watch what I do, and then do the same

What are you doing ? I’m playing a game Watch what I do, and then do the same

Nod your head Cover your ears