Thái độ của giáo viên và học sinh về các hoạt động nghe trong sách giáo khoa tiếng anh 10 thí điểm

This research aims at exploring the BHGHS teachers and students‟ attitudes towards listening activities in listening section of the piloted English 10 textbook, then suggesting some feas

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐỖ THU HƯỜNG

TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS

LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN THE PILOTED ENGLISH 10 TEXTBOOK:

A SURVEY AT BIEN HOA GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL, HA NAM

THÁI ĐỘ CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH VỀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NGHE

TRONG SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH 10 THÍ ĐIỂM:

MỘT KHẢO SÁT TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BIÊN HÒA, HÀ NAM

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐỖ THU HƯỜNG

TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS

LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN THE PILOTED ENGLISH 10 TEXTBOOK:

A SURVEY AT BIEN HOA GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL, HA NAM

THÁI ĐỘ CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH VỀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NGHE

TRONG SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH 10 THÍ ĐIỂM:

MỘT KHẢO SÁT TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BIÊN HÒA, HÀ NAM

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Dương Thị Nụ

HANOI - 2017

i

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “Teachers and students‟ attitudes towards listening activities in the piloted English 10 textbook: A survey at Bien Hoa gifted high school, Ha Nam” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi National University - Vietnam

Hanoi, 2017 Signature

Đỗ Thu Hường

to develop an understanding of the subject and greatly contributes to the accomplishment of this thesis

Second, I am very grateful to many of the teachers in Post-Graduate Studies Department, College of Foreign Languages and Studies, Vietnam National University of Hanoi for their beneficial lessons from which I developed a good research method and created meaningful ideas for my study

Furthermore, I am thankful to the participants in this study for their cooperation and contribution This study would not have been successful without their help and enthusiasm

Finally, I would like to show my profound gratitude to my beloved family, who are always by my side, supporting and encouraging me Had it not been for their assistance, this study would not have been possible

iii

ABSTRACT

English has increased its importance in people‟s life and work over the last years As an international language, it is widely used in all fields throughout the world In Vietnam, English is taught as an important part and a compulsory subject

in most high schools A new set of textbooks for the Vietnamese upper secondary school, which follows the systematic, cyclical and theme-based curriculum approved by the Minister of Education and Training, has been designed to develop students‟ communicative competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing This research aims at exploring the BHGHS teachers and students‟ attitudes towards listening activities in listening section of the piloted English 10 textbook, then suggesting some feasible measures to develop listening teaching and learning The data will be collected by means of survey questionnaire and interview It is hoped that when successfully conducted, the research will be useful to English teachers and learners of grade 10 at Bien Hoa gifted high school as well as those who are concerned about this issue

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF CHARTS viii

LIST OF TABLES ix

PART 1 – INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Significance of the study 2

6 Methodology of the study 3

7 Structure of the study 3

PART 2 – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Communicative language teaching (CLT) 4

1.1.1 Definition 4

1.1.2 Main characteristics of CLT 4

1.1.3 CLT in teaching listening 5

1.2 Listening skill 6

1.2.1 Definition of listening 6

1.2.2 Definition of listening comprehension 7

1.2.3 The importance of listening in language learning 8

1.2.4 Listening processes 9

1.2.5 Difficulties students usually encounter in the process of listening 12

1.2.6 Listening activities 13

v

1.3 Attitudes 20

1.3.1 Definition 20

1.3.2 Components of attitudes 21

1.4 Textbook recordings 22

1.4.1 Definition of textbook 22

1.4.2 Textbook recordings – a good source of listening 22

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23

2.1 Research context 23

2.1.1 The institution 23

2.1.2 The teachers 23

2.1.3 The students 23

2.1.4 The listening materials 24

2.2 Research method 24

2.2.1 Participants 24

2.2.2 Instruments 25

2.2.3 Data collection 26

2.2.4 Data analysis 26

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27

3.1 Findings by means of the survey questionnaire and discussion 27

3.1.1 Students‟ attitudes towards listening skill in language learning 27

3.1.2 Students‟ attitudes towards listening activities in the listening section of the textbook 29

3.2 Findings by means of the survey interview and discussion 36

3.2.1 Teachers‟ attitudes towards listening skill 36

3.2.2 Teachers‟ attitudes towards listening activities in the listening section of the textbook 37

3.3 Main findings……….39

PART 3 – CONCLUSION 40

1 Conclusions 40

vi

2 Pedagogical implications of the study 41

3 Summary of the study 44

4 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 45

REFERENCES 46

APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 V APPENDIX 3 IX

viii

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1: Students‟ perceptions on the importance of listening skill Chart 2: Students‟ perceptions on learning listening skill

Chart 3: Students‟ interest in learning listening skill

Chart 4: Students‟ frequency of practicing listening skill

Chart 5: The benefits students get from using pre-listening activities Chart 6: Students‟ frequency of lacking confidence and interest in the post-listening phase

Chart 7: Students‟ options to improve listening activities

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students‟ difficulties in listening lessons

Table 2: Students‟ ideas about the listening topics

Table 3: Students‟ general perceptions on listening lessons in class

Table 4: Students‟ opinion about the necessity of using pre-listening activities Table 5: Suitability of while-listening activities with students‟ levels

Table 6: Students‟ opinions about the difficulty of post-listening activities

Of the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) that are generally recognized as the key to “knowing” a language, listening is probably the least understood, the least researched and, historically the least valued In the past, foreign languages were learnt mainly by reading and translating rather than listening In the second half of the twentieth century, increased research into how people learn both first and second languages, as well as developments in linguistics, sociology and anthropology, led to an understanding that listening is probably the key initial skill After all, we cannot talk without listening first Visibly, listening plays a vital part in language learning because it provides input for learners and it has also an important role in the development of learners‟ language knowledge

Teachers and scholars have increasingly recognized the prominence of listening comprehension in English language classroom and education developers have paid more and more attention to advancing listening section in the students‟ textbooks with the aim of meeting the demand of English competence

At Bien Hoa gifted high school, where I have been working as an English teacher for a long time, in some classes, listening skills have been experimentally

taught based on the set of piloted textbooks English 10, 11, 12 published by the

Minister of Education and Training From my personal observation and professional experience, I have realized that teaching and learning listening skills have still encountered certain difficulties and the students‟ ability to listen to English has not improved much I have always been haunted by the questions what difficulties in listening the teachers and students get into and how to improve the students‟ English listening ability successfully Exploring and analyzing the attitudes of the teachers and students towards activities in listening section in the piloted English 10

textbook will help me find out the situation of teaching and learning listening skills

in general and teaching and learning listening skills in this textbook in particular

2

From the result of the investigation, some possible measures will be taken to improve the situation

2 Aims of the study

With the above-presented rationale, the specific aims of the study, accordingly, are:

- to investigate the attitudes of Ts and Ss at BHGHS towards listening skill

- to find out the attitudes of Ts and Ss at BHGHS towards listening activities

in the piloted English 10 textbook

- to propose some possible solutions to increase the effectiveness of listening lessons

3 Research questions

In order to achieve the mentioned aims, the following questions have been proposed:

 What are the Ts and Ss‟ attitudes towards listening skill?

 What are their attitudes towards listening activities in this textbook?

 What should be done to improve listening lessons?

4 Scope of the study

As it has been stated above, the study is designed to investigate teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards listening activities in the piloted E10 textbook in the context of Bien Hoa Gifted High School, Ha Nam in order to make some recommendations for teaching and learning listening skill effectively The researcher focuses on listening activities including pre-, while- and post-listening activities in listening section but not other sections of the book

The study also limits itself to focus on the Ts and the tenth-form non-English major Ss at BHGHS who have taught and studied the piloted E10 textbook Besides, attitudes are explored in terms of feelings, opinions and behaviors, to some extent As this is only a small-sized scale study, a number of issues, though intriguing, would be beyond the scope of inquiry and would be best dealt with in a further study

5 Significance of the study

The study highlights the Ts and Ss‟ attitudes towards the newly- designed listening section in the piloted E10 textbook It gives the impressions of the Ts and

Ss towards this experiment Hence, This will be a good indicator in evaluating the

6 Methodology of the study

To achieve the aims stated, a survey research was conducted at BHGHS The survey questionnaire was used as the main instrument to collect the needed data from the learners Besides, the survey interviews with five English Ts at the school were also carried out The data acquired from the questionnaire and interview were then analyzed by means of descriptive statistic devices It is hoped that with the combination of these data collection instruments, reliable findings would be yielded from the research

7 Structure of the study

The study consists of three main parts, a list of reference and appendices Part 1 is the introduction which deals with the reason for the research, the aims, research questions, scope, significance, methodology and structure of the study Part 2 is the development which includes three important chapters:

Chapter 1 is intended to give some theoretical background related to communicative language teaching, listening skill, attitudes and textbook recordings

Chapter 2 is the methodology It presents the research context and the method of the research Also included in this chapter is the information of the research participants, instruments, method of data collection and data analysis

Chapter 3 – Findings and discussion - provides the details of the analysis which has a general description of findings and discussion It ends with the summary of main findings

Part 3 is the conclusion which consists of conclusions, pedagogical implications, summary of the study, limitations and suggestions for further study

4

PART 2 – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature relevant to the current study is presented in four major categories: communicative language teaching, listening skill, attitudes and textbook recordings

1.1 Communicative language teaching (CLT)

1.1.1 Definition

According to Richards (1992), Communicative Language Teaching is an approach to teach foreign or second language which emphasizes to acquire communicative competence

Littlewood (1981) states that CLT pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these into a more fully communicative view CLT advocates go beyond teaching grammatical rules of the target language, and recommend that, by using the target language in a meaningful way, learners will develop communicative competence

To conclude, communicative language teaching is aimed at improving learners‟ communicative competence in the target language and to enable them to use the target language appropriately as a means of communication in any given social context

1.1.2 Main characteristics of CLT

In CLT, the teacher spends less time on the structures of the language and more time encouraging the children to use the language This gives children the opportunity to say what they want to say, and the teacher does not always have control over their language Fluency plays a big role in CLT

In a real language situation (e.g writing to a pen friend or speaking to visitors in English), children will focus more on what they are saying rather than the grammatical structures of English CLT tries to bring this idea into the classroom, and helps children communicate effectively in the world outside school Fluency activities provide this practice because during these activities children often have to check that they have understood each other, repeat themselves, or change what they say, just like in real life

5

Fluency isn‟t the only skill practiced these types of activities Accuracy is important too, and the teacher should balance activities which focus on accuracy (correct grammar) as well as fluency However, the main point behind CLT is that accuracy alone isn‟t enough, and children improve accuracy through focusing on fluency

Teachers can provide motivating communication activities such as games and puzzles, and ask students to complete the activity working in pairs or groups They do not correct or intervene too much during the activity, and provide most of the feedback after the students have finished the task

David Nunan (1991:279) lists five basic characteristics of CLT:

1) An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language

2) The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation

3) The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the language but also on the learning process itself

4) An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning

5) An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom

In short, CLT emphasizes the use of English for real communication rather than demonstration of target grammar and vocabulary Using information-gap activities, role-plays, games, discussion of real issues, etc, CLT seeks to engage the student on a personal level through meaningful interaction and personalization

on drilling and repetition Listening in CLT has a communicative purpose in that students are expected to use the information they hear, just as we do when we listen outside the classroom

CLT brought with it significant developments in terms of listening to second language It emphasizes reality of materials, contexts and responses The passages

Ss listen to in a communicative approach tend to be closer to real-life use of language than was the case in, say, Audiolingualism, which often used contrived dialogues as carriers of the target grammar According to Ma (2010:464) and Adelmann (2012:512), The communicative situation includes real-life activities such as listening with a purpose, listening to the news on radio or exchanging news over the telephone, discussions with colleagues, asking for directions, asking questions, arguing and taking notes, receiving instructions to go somewhere or do something, retelling stories, participating in an interview, or attending a seminar, lecture or listening to a speech

In short, the communicative approach had a noticeable impact on the way in which listening was taught and is still being taught The effect is apparently expressed through the emphasis on listening‟s importance, the use of realistic materials and a learner-centered approach

1.2 Listening skill

1.2.1 Definition of listening

7

“Hearing” and “Listening” are habitually used interchangeably, but there is a great difference between these two terms Hearing is merely picking up sound vibrations Listening is understanding what we hear That is, listening requires paying attention, interpreting, and remembering sound stimuli Hearing occurs when your ears pick up sound waves being transmitted by a speaker whilst listening involves making sense out of what is being transmitted (Hamilton, 1999) as he quoted “Hearing is with the ears, listening is with the mind”

Particularly, Listening is variously defined

Thompson & Rubin (1996: 331) defines listening as "an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express"

Another definition identifies listening is "the active and dynamic process

of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings" (Purdy, M 1997:8)

Rost (2011: 2-4) share the same idea about listening when the author points out listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy

From the definitions of listening discussed above, it is clear that listening is the ability to identify and understand what the speaker is saying through understanding his accent, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and grasping his meaning Moreover, listening plays an important role in acquiring a foreign language and language Ts as well as Ss need to be aware of the importance of effective teaching of listening skills

1.2.2 Definition of listening comprehension

There are different definitions of the term “listening comprehension” According to Hamouda (2013), listening comprehension refers to the understanding

of what the listener has heard and it is his/her ability to repeat the text despite the fact that the listener may repeat the sounds without real comprehension

8

Listening comprehension used to be characterized as a passive activity which means that learners nearly get information passively while practice listening skill in the class like “tape recorder or trained parrot” (Anderson and Lynch, 1988) In other words, listeners inactively absorb what the speakers say without taking enough notice of the discourse such as the background knowledge or the speaker‟s purposes, attitudes and implications However, many theorists realized that listening is not a passive but an active process of constructing meaning from a stream of sounds (Berne, 1998; Vandergrift, 1999) Listeners actively attempt to grasp the facts and feelings in what they hear by attending to what the speakers say,

to how the speakers says it, and to the context in which the message is delivered (Purdy, 1997) O„Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) also have the same point of view when supposing that listening comprehension is an active process in which the listener constructs meaning through using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon numerous strategic resources to perform the task requirement

In short, although defined in many different ways, listening comprehension certainly requires the activeness of listeners It demands to “get inside” the speaker‟s head to understand the communication from his point of view A successful listener actively engage in the process of comprehension thanks to both his linguistic knowledge and his nonlinguistic knowledge, but not merely absorb and record the information given

1.2.3 The importance of listening in language learning

Listening is always regarded as a key skill in language learning Listening comes before speaking, reading, and writing (Wolvin & Coakley, 1988) Children

“listen before they speak, speak before they read, and read before they write” (Lundsteen, 1979, as cited in Coakley & Wolvin, 1997, p.180) It is the most regularly used language skill in human communication Morley (1990) clarifies further that “we listen twice as much as we speak, four times as much as we read, and five times as much as we write” (p.1) Apparently, listening holds a prominent place in language learning Although the other skills such as reading, speaking and writing are essential to develop language proficiency, listening contributes

9

predominantly to language expertise Listening awakens the awareness of the language as it is a receptive skill that first develops in a human being Learning to listen to the target language improves language ability The sound, rhythm, intonation, and stress of the language can only be perfectly adapted through listening To understand the shades in a particular language, one must be able to listen As we get to understand spoken language by listening, developing the other skills and gaining confidence become much easier

Furthermore, listening is believed to be the basic for communicative competence in terms of CLT This results from that listening provides the aural input and enables learners to interact in spoken communication It helps the language learner to acquire pronunciation, word stress, vocabulary, and syntax and the comprehension of messages conveyed can be based solely on tone of voice, pitch and accent; and it is only possible when we listen Without listening skill, no communication can be achieved Besides, every study carried out concerning the language skills acquisition has showed that when communicating, we gain 45% of language competence from listening, 30% from speaking, 15% from reading and 10% from writing With the utmost percentage of involvement in the exchange of information in effective communication, listening has to be considered a language forerunner With the advent of CLT and the focus on proficiency, the teaching and learning of listening have received more and more attention, and understandably should be concentrated on as much as possible

1.2.4 Listening processes

Listening comprehension, is an active process of constructing meaning by means of attending to and processing aural input (Buck, 2001:31) He also explains this as follows: “Meaning is not something in the text that the listener has to extract, but is constructed by the listener in an active process of inferencing and hypothesis building.” In the process of listening comprehension, one has to keep in mind that both linguistic and non-linguistic types of knowledge are involved Linguistic knowledge involves phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics and discourse structure, whereas non-linguistic knowledge which plays a role in understanding is knowledge about the topic, knowledge about the context and general knowledge about the

Bottom-up processing is the term used in the application of linguistic knowledge in comprehension, whereby the sounds, words, clauses and sentences of

a passage are decoded in a fairly linear fashion to elicit meaning (Buck, 2001:2; Rost, 2002:36; Graham & Macaro, 2008:748)

Bottom-up processing is used when a listener builds meaning from the sounds he or she hears The listener converts the sounds into words, then into grammatical relationships, and upwards until he or she arrives at a meaning (Nunan, 1998:25)

Because bottom-up processing is a strategy in which the listener depends on the message of the language, the learner creates meanings to understand the message sequentially from sound to words and from words to grammatical relation Thus, Bottom-up processing necessitates linguistic knowledge; especially, knowledge of vocabulary and grammar

In conclusion, the bottom-up model highlights the decoding of the smallest units – phonemes and syllables – to lead us towards meaning The approach is based on separate units of language in the text The listener‟s lexical and grammatical competence in a language provides the basis for bottom-up processing The input is scanned for familiar words, and grammatical knowledge is used to work out the relationship between elements

of sentences

1.2.4.2 Top-down processing

11

That top-down processing is also known as knowledge-based processing means that learners start with their background knowledge to understand the meaning of a message Listeners use what they already know to create expectations

of what they can expect to hear and to interpret what they have heard One‟s background knowledge has a great influence on comprehension The amount of knowledge a person has about a particular topic is crucial to how they will ultimately interpret the passage The prior knowledge about a specific topic will help a listener to come up with and confirm hypotheses about passage content This type of approach helps Ss to be able to bypass vocabulary deficiencies by not

relying on every word in the passage for overall meaning

To understand the top-down information processing theory, the concept

„schemata” needs to be clarified Schemata (the plural form of “schema”) is defined

as “complex mental structures that group all knowledge concerning a concept” (Vandergrift, 2013:18) Schema theorists proposes that listeners understand new inputs by stimulating relevant schemata in their minds Schematic processing permits people to interpret new inputs rapidly and sparingly, making intelligent guesses as to what is likely, even before they have explicit evidence

In brief, the top-down model emphasizes the use of background knowledge

to predict content It relies on prior knowledge and experience to build the meaning

of a listening text using the information provided by sounds and words To grasp the meaning of a text, the listener draws on his knowledge of the context, topic, speakers, situation, and the world, matching it to the aural input

1.2.4.3 Bottom-up processing or Top-down processing

More and more arguments have been arisen about which model is most salient when we listen to foreign languages Most errors in listening comprehension are assumed to be caused by Ss mishearing individual words – a failure of the bottom-up process Whereas, according to recent research, it is often the top-down process that causes mistakes in listening tasks, a typical occurrence being that the students know the topic, hear some familiar vocabulary and make wild guesses about the content Although many Ts tend to favor such top-down activities as comprehension questions, predicting, and listing, listening practice should

12

incorporate bottom-up exercises for pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary that allow learners to pay close attention to language as well Clearly, it is necessary that both the top-down and the bottom-up should be practiced simultaneously in the classroom

1.2.5 Difficulties students usually encounter in the process of listening

It is undeniable that listening plays an important role in the success of communication Nevertheless, listening second language is a source of enormous difficulties for foreign language learners

Boyle (1984) said that the main components that affect listening comprehension are listener, speaker, medium, and environment factors

According to Underwood (1989), some obstacles to effective listening comprehension process can be listed as follows First, listeners cannot control the speed of speech Second, listeners cannot have words repeated and this can cause critical difficulties for them Third, listeners do not have high vocabulary knowledge Fourth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge Listeners can sometimes comprehend the surface meaning of a passage but they can have substantial problems in understanding the whole meaning of a passage unless they are familiar with it Fifth, it is not very easy for listeners to concentrate on the listening text Sometimes a shortest break in attention can prevent comprehension

If the listening passage is interesting for listeners, concentration will be easy for them

Liaison, elision and colloquial words as Yagang (1994) think, are difficulties which listener often face while listening

Hasan (2000) indicated that unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that cause problems for learners‟ listening comprehension He continued that clarity, lack of interest, and the demand for complete answers to listening comprehension questions are the serious difficulties of students‟ listening comprehension

Buck (2001) mentioned a lot of problems in listening activities like unknown vocabularies, unfamiliar topics, fast speech rate, and unfamiliar accents

13

Vandergrift (2004) and Walker (2014) indicated that oral passages exist in real time and should be processed rapidly and when the passage is over, only a mental representation remains Listening needs immediate processing to access the spoken input again, making the skill more complex than reading Students‟ background knowledge can have an important role in their listening comprehension Based on the results of the studies by different researchers, the author would like to classify the problems learners often confront while listening into 3 major groups:

Problems from listeners:

- Lack of vocabulary and grammatical structures

- Lack of background knowledge

- Lack of concentration

Problems from listening materials:

- Poor tape quality

- Long listening

- Speed of speech

- Different accents

- Linguistic features (elision, linking words, colloquial words)

Problems from physical settings:

“preparatory work” that Ss should be “tuned in” or provided some relevant information so that they know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks Sharing the same opinion, Ur (1992: 4) stated that “It would seem a good idea when presenting a listening passage in class to give Ss some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening.” According to Richards (2005:87), pre-listening sets the stage for learners to practice listening for

14

comprehension through activities which require activating of prior knowledge and

making predictions as well as reviewing key vocabulary

In short, pre-listening usually involves activating background knowledge to help Ss to predict the content of the listening passage, setting up the goal of listening and pre-teaching vocabulary and grammatical structures Unquestionably, pre-listening plays a crucial role in listening process It helps Ss achieve success less difficultly in listening tasks and as a result, improves their listening ability

Activating background knowledge

There are some practical ways to activate the schemata and get students to predict what they will hear

 Brainstorming

The first goal of brainstorming is to making list of relating words, phrases; generate

large numbers of ideas based on a topic or a problem The next stage involves selecting words or phrases and whittling the ideas down to those which may be practically applicable

In this activity, Ss often brainstorm words, phrases, their own ideas about the topic, then possibly share them in pairs, in groups or presenting before the class Brainstorming can encourage learners to think more freely and creatively than if they were doing a more controlled planning exercise It allows learners to remember what they know, and to teach each other It is a dynamic and stimulating way to lead learners into a topic

 Using visual aids

Used in pre-listening activities, visuals have many advantages: they are immediate and evocative Moreover, many students have a visual learning style; they learn better when seeing images that correspond to the things being taught Visuals can help activate the schemata relating to any theme and any type of listening passage Pictures and videos can be used to help Ss recognize the lesson theme They send out a message about the topic of the lesson The Ss can simply look at the picture or see the video and guess what the listening text will be about Usually the pictures and videos will contain something intriguing, so there would be multiple interpretations possible in order to get the students to think creatively They

 Discussing

Students are given guiding questions or relevant statement to the topic which they are about to listen to and then are asked to discuss in pairs or groups This activity‟s aim is to elicit information about the topic, encourage Ss to share their knowledge and ideas and offer them the chance to be involved in the listening tasks

 Using games

This activity is to create an atmosphere of relief and joy before listening and it motivates Ss a lot in learning listening Some examples of the games are crosswords, hanging, guessing games Each game is appropriate with a kind of lesson

 Prediction of the content of the listening text

Students can be supplied with some pictures or some information about the speaker(s) and the topic, then they are asked to guess what they are likely to heat in the listening text This activity assists

Setting up the goal of listening

Once students‟ schemata have been activated, it is essential that teachers give them

a purpose for listening Here are a few general principles:

- Make the purpose realistic (the task must reflect the type of listening text)

- Make the goal achievable

- Get the students involved If they have invested time, effort and thought in the material, they are more likely to listen successfully

16

According to Wilson (2012:75), setting questions beforehand is the most common way of establishing a reason for the students to listen There are, of course, many different types of questions teachers can set One particularly useful type is sometimes known as a signposting question Just like a real signpost, this points the students in the right direction and ensures that no one gets lost Signposting questions make listeners aware of the key points of the text and guide the students through it

Pre-teaching vocabulary and grammatical structures

Unknown words and new grammatical structures make Ss‟ listening comprehension become more difficult Hence, pre-teaching vocabulary and grammatical structures, especially key items of considerable difficulty are of great importance It is likely that this activity will help Ss much in understanding the text and do the tasks better Vocabulary knowledge providing background on the topic is

a critical predictor of listening comprehension Ts should not pre-teach too much words and structures before Ss listen because it is a waste of time and Ss may lose interest in listening The teachers can use games, visual aids, synonyms, antonyms

or translation to provide lexis and new structures There are a variety of ways to present new words and structures such as: using games (matching, crosswords, puzzles, etc.), using visual aids (real objects, pictures, body language, etc.), giving examples, synonyms, antonyms, or even translation

Undeniably, pre-listening brings Ss a lot of benefits in listening comprehension “Pre-listening work is the “build-up” to the actual listening and serves not only to assist with comprehension but also to motivate students to want

to listen”, according to Underwood (1989:44) The study by Gilakjani & Ahmadi (2011:982) pointed out pre-listening activities “activate Ss‟ prior knowledge, build

up their expectations for the coming information; and provide the necessary context for the specific listening task” Generally, the pre-listening activities help facilitate comprehension, generate interest, diminish students‟ anxiety before listening and motivate them in learning listening skills

Common pre-listening activities

- Looking at pictures, maps, diagrams or graphs

17

- Predicting the content of the listening text

- Reviewing vocabulary and grammatical structures (doing matching, looking

up news words in the dictionary,etc)

- Answering the questions

- Discussing

1.2.6.2 While-listening activities

While-listening is the main part of a listening lesson, it focuses on facilitating

learners‟ listening and checking their comprehension The amount of time spent on this stage is usually about two thirds of the whole listening lesson Listeners are encouraged to attend the text more intensively and extensively, for gist and for

specific information

As we discuss the activities, it may help to bear in mind the distinction between responses that involve production and those that involve recognition only Productive responses include note-taking, writing answers to questions, correcting errors and completing tables, charts, diagrams and sentences Recognition responses include answering multiple-choice and true/ false questions, ticking words and phrases that are heard, matching and choosing pictures With recognition responses, the students have less to do and therefore experience less distraction from listening, whereas productive responses demand other skills besides listening A written response, for example, may require a focus on any or all of the following: grammar, spelling, punctuation and cohesive devices The time it takes to write also puts pressure on the students‟ short-term memory In other words, by the time they are writing, they may have forgotten much of the information in the listening passage

As we look at a number of while-listening activities, the distinction between the two types of response will be helpful in considering a number of questions For example, for which level of student is the activity appropriate? How long would the activity take, and what is the ratio of time spend listening to time spent responding? How much integration is there with other skills? How free or controlled are the students‟ responses in the activity?

Listening for gist

18

On their first encounter with a passage in the classroom , Ss usually listen for gist – the main idea Before we can develop any discussions of themes, analyze language used, examine features of pronunciation, etc., the Ss need to have grasped the overall communicative intention of the speaker This forms the basis and the context

of all other work we do on the text

Listening for the gist or main idea is referred to by Schwartz (1998:21) as

„skimming listening‟ Schwartz points out that a combination of listening activities can be used to promote listening behaviors During the pre-listening and while-listening (Hu, 2012:284) stage, tasks that include predicting or guessing and filling

in gaps, selecting relevant and non-relevant information, or global listening could be used to help Ss get the meaning of the message

Listening for detail

Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier

on as a superhero This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's on your list Similarly, when listening for details, you are interested in a specific kind of information – perhaps a number, name or object You can ignore anything that does not sound relevant In this way, you are able to narrow down your search and get the detail you need

Schwartz (1998:21) relates this kind of listening task to scanning listening or viewing for specific details (Hu, 2012:284) During while-listening, learners scan (listen) for keywords or questions that have been given in advance For example, learners may listen to or view a segment of a video and stop the speaker or tape when the answer to a previously posed question has been heard

19

Note-taking

In terms of improving the listening skill, note-taking promotes a higher level of attention It forces Ss to pick out the important points in the recordings because they cannot write down everything they hear

Note-taking is very helpful because it guides Ss to answer certain questions and definitions This organizer helps to record and listen for the important information only

Dictation

Another comprehensive teaching method according to Sun (2009:57) is dictation The ability to distinguish or differentiate different elements and tones, the skill of spelling words, and the skill of employing glossary and grammar are some examples of dictation and are the primary language skills that the Ss are expected to exercise during the teaching of listening skills (Sun, 2009:56-57) However, dictation fell out of fashion soon after the arrival of Communicative approach for the three main reasons First, done traditionally, it is not communicative Second, it can be dull; transcribing requires no creativity or emotional investment on the part

of the transcriber Third, it tended to be associated with Grammar-translation

In short, there are a lot of techniques which can be used to increase the

effectiveness of listening However, listening for gist and listening for detail are

focused on in the piloted E10 textbook

Common while-listening activities

- Listening with visuals

- Filling in the missing information

- Answering True/ False questions

- Note taking

- Answering Multiple choice questions

- Answering Comprehension questions

- Giving the right order

- Checking off items in a list

- Information transferring

1.2.6.3 Post-listening activities

20

Post-listening is the last one of a listening lesson All activities in this stage are aimed at helping learners to use what they have had from the listening text This stage often occupies about ten or fifteen minutes It is also important to bear in mind that post-listening task can usefully involve integration with other skills through the development of the topic into reading, speaking and writing activities

Post-listening activities according to Hu (2012:284) involve acting upon what they have heard to clarify meaning, summarizing the listening material orally or in writing, or retelling what they heard to check comprehension Learners could also use pictorial presentation like charts, diagrams, webs or maps These activities according to Hu (2012:284) strengthen learners‟ understanding of what they heard, and they also help learners to store the new information in their memory bank which further prepares them for listening comprehension during the next listening lesson

Hu (2012:284) argues that in the post-listening stage learners consolidate prior knowledge that has been activated and as well they review new information which they just learnt Activities presented at this stage therefore assist learners to transfer the listening skill to other areas beyond the listening classroom which facilitates listening comprehension in language learning

Common post-listening activities

- Summarizing the listening material orally or in writing

- Retelling what are heard to check comprehension

- Answering the questions

There are a variety of definitions related to the term “attitudes”

Attitudes are defined by Baron & Byrne (1984) as relatively lasting clusters

of feelings, beliefs, and behavior tendencies directed towards specific persons, ideas, objects or groups

21

In the brief words of Daryl Bem, "Attitudes are likes and dislikes" (1970, p 14) Similarly, Eagly and Chaiken (1993), in a highly influential textbook, defined attitudes as "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor" (p 1)

The term attitude is often used as an umbrella expression covering such concepts as preferences, feelings, emotions, beliefs, expectations, judgments, appraisals, values, principles, opinions, and intentions (Bagozzi, 1994a;1994b)

The attitude is an association in memory between a given object and a given summary evaluation of the object (Fazio, 1995)

According to Malhotra (2005), an attitude is a summary evaluation of an object or thought

Canh and Barnard (2009a) define attitudes as “the surface expression of underlying values, beliefs, and knowledge” (p 250)

To sum up, attitudes are an overall evaluation of an object that is based on cognitive, affective and behavioral information

1.3.2 Components of attitudes

Three components of attitudes are:

- Cognitive Component (Belief/ Thought)

Cognition refers to the thoughts and beliefs individual has about an attitude object

- Affective Component (Feeling/ Emotion)

The affective component is the emotional response towards an attitude object The significance of affective components is emphasized An individual‟s attitude towards an object cannot be determined by simply identifying its beliefs about it because emotion works simultaneously with the cognitive process about an attitude object

- Behavioral Component (Response/ Action)

The behavioral component refers to actions or responses (favorable/unfavorable) to do something regarding attitude object

In brief, the theoretical knowledge of attitudes proves that teachers and students‟ attitudes play an important role in teaching and learning a second/foreign

22

language, particularly, in this study, teaching and learning listening skill Therefore,

it is necessary to explore the teaching and learning attitudes for the purpose of improving teaching and learning a second language Due to limitations, the study finds out teachers and students‟ attitudes by focusing on their feelings, opinions and behaviors, to some extent, concerning listening skill

1.4 Textbook recordings

1.4.1 Definition of textbook

According to the webpage Wikipedia, a textbook or course book is a manual

of instruction in any branch of study Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions Tomlinson (1998) describes a textbook as a book “which provides the core materials for a course” and which covers many issues in a single volume by taking into consideration all the points that students are required to learn during a course period Harries and Hodges (1995) stated

“Textbook- a book used for instructional purposes, especially in schools and colleges” In most cases, textbooks symbolize the hidden curriculum of the language studies in a certain program or country That's why they play an important role for obtaining information about the likely teaching and learning practices of a particular school, program or institution

1.4.2 Textbook recordings – a good source of listening

There are a lot of listening sources like textbook recordings, the internet, television, video, DVD and radio Of these sources, textbook recordings are of great prominence Textbook recordings have a lot of strengths

One of these strengths is variety Modern textbooks contain recordings of many types: news bulletins, interviews with experts in their field, stories, jokes, songs, situational dialogues, discussion, and so on

Besides variety, textbooks provide listening sequences – exploitation material that gives students a “way in” to the recording, guides them through its difficulties and provides discussion point at the end All of this saves the teacher a lot of work Textbook recordings also have a degree of integration within the syllabus – perhaps they reinforce grammar or vocabulary that has been recently studied, or they introduce or extend the topic of the unit

2.1.1 The institution

The research was carried out at Bien Hoa Gifted High School, which is

located in Phu Ly city, Ha Nam province The school was established in September,

1959 However, it was not until 1997 that the school was in charge of educating

gifted Ss at upper-secondary education in Ha Nam province Since 2014-2015 school year, lower-secondary school Ss were recruited and educated in the school

In 2016-2017 school year, the school has a total of 31 classes including 9 classes of grade 12, 9 classes of grade 11, 9 classes of grade 10, 2 classes of grade 7 and 2 others of grade 6 There are about 35 Ss in each class The school has 10 Ts of English and more than 80 Ts of other subjects

The school has been equipped with many modern facilities for English teaching and learning like computers, projectors, interactive boards, software applications, etc

as a foreign language, which is supposed to be very valuable in conducting the present research

2.1.3 The students

As for the Ss of the school, about 60% of them come from five districts of the province and approximately 40% of them live in the city or near the city Since 2013-2014 school year, the piloted English textbooks have been taught for the Ss of