Nghiên cứu về ảnh hưởng của những hoạt động kích thích kiến thức nền trong việc nghe hiểu ngôn ngữ thứ hai

ABSTRACT This research project investigates the effects of using text-relevant schemata activation activities on listening comprehension of EFL sophomores of University of Languages and

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS

OF SCHEMATA ACTIVATION ACTIVITIES

ON L2 LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Supervisor: Nguyễn Chí Đức, Ph.D Student: Trần Minh Thảo

Year of Enrollment: QH2014.F1.E2

HANOI – 2018

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA NHỮNG HOẠT ĐỘNG KÍCH THÍCH KIẾN THỨC NỀN TRONG VIỆC

NGHE HIỂU NGÔN NGỮ THỨ HAI

HÀ NỘI – 2018

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Chí Đức, PhD Sinh viên: Trần Minh Thảo

Khóa: QH2014.F.1.E2

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Tran Minh Thao from QH2014.F1.E2, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Tran Minh Thao

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Chi Duc, for untiring supporting me during these 7 months He is the most dedicated person and one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever known

He always provided insightful comments that helped me to view issues from various perspectives Although I had many shortcomings, one of which was my weak research skill, he still patiently guided and encouraged me from the beginning till the end He is my best role model for a scientist, a mentor and a teacher I could not have imagined a better supervisor for this journey

Next, a very special gratitude goes to all teachers and students in University

of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam, who willingly spent time

participating in my study Without their help, I would not have been able to complete this thesis

I also thank to my beloved friends for their care, their wishes and their encouragement Special thanks to Bui Quynh Trang, Pham Hong Ngoc, Nguyen

Vu Quoc Duy, Nguyen Thu Tra, Nguyen Ngoc Anh and Luong Huyen My who listened and offered me valuable advice when I needed support

Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to my family My special and heartily thanks to my mom who pushed me to complete this thesis, cheered me up when I felt down about myself, stayed up with me through some sleepless nights and always believed in me

ABSTRACT

This research project investigates the effects of using text-relevant schemata activation activities on listening comprehension of EFL sophomores of University of Languages and International Studies The research subjects were divided into three groups, two receiving an experimental treatment (either formal

or content schemata) and a control group receiving no treatment At the end of treatment, a listening test including a summary writing task and a set of comprehension questions was administered to all groups The analysis of the test scores revealed that the formal and content schemata activation activities significantly facilitated learners’ L2 listening comprehension Between these two listening supports, the former brought about a slightly better listening outcome than the latter Additionally, question types and learners’ general listening proficiency were two factors that moderated the effects of schemata activation on L2 listening comprehension Learners performed greater on global questions than local question and high proficiency learners were found to benefit more from the formal schemata activation activities than low level counterparts Regarding the pedagogical implications, this study informs teachers and course designers in their decision-making to select and/or design suitable pre-listening activities to foster learners’ listening comprehension

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Research aims and research questions 3

3 Potential contributions 3

4 Research methodology 4

5 Structure of the study 5

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1 Listening comprehension 6

1.1 Definition of listening comprehension 6

1.2 The process of listening comprehension 7

2 Schema 10

2.1 Definition of schema 10

2.2 Types of schema 12

3 Roles of schema activation in listening comprehension 13

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 21

1 Overall research design and research aims 21

2 Research participants 23

3 Input materials 24

4 Data collection instrument 25

4.1 Pre-listening test 25

4.2 Post-listening test 26

5 Procedures of data collection 27

5.1 Formal schemata activation group 27

5.2 Content schemata activation group 28

5.3 Control group 28

6 Data analysis 39

CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS 30

1 The overall listening comprehension scores 30

2 The scores on the summary measure 32

3 The scores on the specific question measure 34

4 The scores on the inference question measure 36

5 Overall summary 38

CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 39

1 Discussion 39

2 Implications 41

2.1 Pedagogical implications 41

2.2 Research implications 42

CONCLUSION 44

1 Summary of research findings 44

2 Limitations of the study 45

REFERENCES 46

APPENDIXES 52

LIST OF TABLES, DIAGRAMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

TABLES

Table 1: Zeng’s techniques to trigger stored schemata 13

Table 2: Nguyen and Newton’s techniques for schemata activation 14

Table 3: Summary of Chang and Read’s procedures of data collection 16

Table 4: Research Design 22

Table 5: The Overall Listening Comprehension Scores 31

Table 6: Scores on the Summary Measure 33

Table 7: Scores on the Specific Question Measure 35

Table 8: Scores on the Inference Question Measure 36

DIAGRAMS Figure 1: Cognitive Processes and Knowledge Sources in Listening Comprehension 8

Figure 2: A person’s possible schema of an egg 11

ABBREVIATIONS

L2 Foreign or Second Language

IELTS International English Language Testing System

CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Language

ESL English as a Second Language

EFL English as a Foreign Language

INTRODUCTION

First, the rationale for this study will be presented, which is subsequently followed

by the research aims and the contribution that this study can make to research and instruction practices Most importantly, the research questions which work as a

guideline for the whole research project will also be stated in this section

1 Statement of the problem and the rationale of the study

Listening is often regarded as the most frequently used language skill in normal life (Rost, 2001), which therefore deserves to have an important place in language teaching and learning agenda (Rost, 2001; Vandergrift, 2004) Significant though it may seem, it has been considered “the Cinderella of the four language skills” [i.e., speaking, reading, writing and listening] (as cited in Peter, Guangwei & Lawrence, 2009) This might be partially reflected in the paucity of research on L2 listening and therefore more investigations into this language skill are still welcomed

According to Vandergrift (2004, p.3), “listening is probably the least explicit of the four macro language skills, making it the most difficult skill to learn” and therefore to teach as well Chang and Read (2006) also supported the view above Goh (2000) even identified ten cognitive problems regarding L2 listening comprehension, such as: L2 lexical segmentation and recognition, limited capacity of human working memory and challenging nature of real-time listening Goh also attributed these problems to many factors, one of which was learners’ failure to use relevant schematic knowledge to facilitate their listening processes Schematic knowledge includes content schemata and formal schemata While the first one refers to topical knowledge or knowledge about the world outside, the latter refers to knowledge about the structure of a given text Grabe (1991) pointed out that, to comprehend a spoken or a written text, L2 learners need both types of

schematic knowledge above This therefore suggests that schema activation should not be neglected in L2 listening instruction However, previous research to date has provided rather inconsistent findings regarding the effects of schema activation activities on L2 listening comprehension Some studies (e.g., Taglieber, Johnson & Yarbrough, 1988; Chang & Read, 2006; Sadighi & Zare, 2006) found that L2 listening process was facilitated by different schema activation activities

In contrast, other studies (see Jensen & Hansen, 1995; Sarandi, 2010 for example) were dubious about the effectiveness of such activities on L2 listening outcome Jensen and Hansen (1995) even reported a negligible impact of prior topical knowledge on L2 listening performance What seemed to play important roles in lecture comprehension were other factors [e.g types of listening tasks]

All the aforementioned studies dealt with schemata activation and its effects on L2 listening However, it should also be noted that most of them focused on the content rather than the formal schemata Very few have examined the effect of formal schemata activation on L2 listening comprehension So far, according to Nguyen and Newton (2018), there has been only one study by Tudor and Tuffs (1991) that gauged the effects of a formal schemata activation activity

on L2 listening outcome In this study, Tudor and Tuffs found out that activating formal schemata before listening brought about better text comprehension than activating content schemata Given the scarcity of empirical research in this area, the hypothesis above still need to be further verified Moreover, the study by Tudor and Tuffs (1991) has several limitations, one of which is concerned with the ambiguity in distinguishing the two key concepts “content schemata” and “formal schemata”, which I will discuss further in the literature review chapter

All research gaps above have motivated me to carry out this research project In addition, findings from this research project are also expected to inform teachers of L2 listening in their decision-making process regarding how to select or design supporting activities in the pre-listening stage

2 Research aims and research questions

First of all, this study is to investigate the effects of a formal and a content schemata activation activity on L2 listening comprehension Next, it also gives a closer look at the relationship between the degree of learners’ text comprehension and their general L2 listening ability Put differently, this research project is implemented to answer the following research questions:

1 Does activating schemata before listening have any effect on text comprehension of the participants?

2 Is better text comprehension obtained in the formal than the content schemata activation condition?

3 Is this effect (if any) also dependent by the type of comprehension questions?

4 Is the text comprehension obtained by these two groups associated with participants’ general L2 listening ability?

3 Potential contributions

Once finished, the study will provide further empirical evidence for the effects of schemata activation in general and formal schemata activation in particular on L2 listening comprehension In addition, as previous research failed

to make a clear distinction between the two key concepts “content schemata” and

“formal schemata” in their research design, this study also aims to fill this gap

Regarding pedagogical values, this research project expected to inform teachers and course designers in their selection and/or design of schemata activation activities that are deemed to foster learners’ listening processes

4 Research Methodology

In order to achieve the research aims, the study employs a experimental research design Three groups are involved, two of which receive treatments and the other serves as the control group The independent variables in this study are content and formal schemata activation activities and the dependent variables are the listening performances of the experimental and the control group After the treatment, the test scores of three groups are compared to see the effects

quasi-of the treatment in the experimental groups

5 Structure of the study

Apart from the introduction and the conclusion section, this research report includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review

This chapter aims first to provide the fundamental theoretical background to the present research project To be more specific, I will define related key concepts such as listening comprehension and schemata and then describe the relationship between these two factors Finally, a critical review of previous research findings is also presented in this chapter

Chapter 2: Methodology

This chapter is to restate the research questions, describe the overall research design, research participants, instrument as well as procedure for data collection and data analysis

Chapter 3: Results

In this chapter, I shall report key findings from this research project These findings will be organized according to the research questions mentioned above

Chapter 4: Discussion and Implications

In this chapter, I will propose some plausible explanations for the findings above In addition, these findings will be compared and contrasted with those of previous research Finally, implications will be drawn out for both research instruction practices

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter aims to set the theoretical background for the whole research project In this chapter, key concepts of listening comprehension and schemata will be presented Subsequently, a brief review of previous research will be carried out to identify the research gaps

1 Listening comprehension

1.1 Definition of listening comprehension

Listening comprehension has been defined differently to date or, in other words, there is no consensus on the definition of this concept (Chun, 2011; Buck, 1988) Glen (1989), for example, examined a collection of thirty-four different definitions of listening comprehension in his study and then admitted his failure to reach a universal definition Listening comprehension used to be defined as the ability to understand what a person has heard (Howatt & Dakin, 1974; Brown & Yule, 1983) This included the ability to comprehend speakers’ accent, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and his/ her meaning Later, Chastain (1971) further added that the ultimate goal of listening comprehension was to understand natural conversations at normal speed in an unstructured condition

In a disagreement with the above concept of listening comprehension, Baki -Miri (2012, p.83) claimed that listening comprehension might be something going beyond the ability to hear and comprehend what other people said, it “involves etiquette, asking for clarification, showing empathy and providing an appropriate response”

From another perspective, Anderson and Lynch (1988) criticized the norm

of viewing listening as a passive language skill in which learners were considered

“tape recorder or trained parrot” They pointed out that listening comprehension was a process requiring listeners to relate his/her previous knowledge to listening input in order to comprehend what was being spoken Many scholars shared a similar opinion Helgensen and Brown (2007), for example, regarded listening as

an “active” receptive skill O’Malley, Chamot and Kupper (1985) stated that as listeners needed to use their existing and contextual knowledge to understand input content, listening comprehension should be viewed as an active and conscious process Rost (2009) also argued that listening was indeed an active cognitive ability which helped learners to understand the world around them and was one of the necessary elements in creating successful communication

In conclusion, there exist different points of view on the construct/definition of listening comprehension However, most scholars have agreed that listening comprehension involves selecting and integrating information from auditory and visual input and relating it to previous schemata in order to construct the meaning and intention of speakers Therefore, my current research project will use this definition of listening comprehension

1.2 The process of listening comprehension

According to Vandergrift and God (2012, p.28), the listening process can

be diagrammed as in the figure below:

Figure 1: Cognitive Processes and Knowledge Sources in Listening Comprehension

The figure shows that the process of listening comprehension includes three interconnected phases: perception, parsing and utilization Perception (also called

as perceptual process) is the decoding of an aural text During this phase of listening, listeners attend closely to the input and make an effort to segment phonemes from the speech stream and the sounds are retained in echoic memory The second phase, parsing, involves translating word representation into meaningful representation This occurs when an utterance is segmented according

to syntactic structures or semantic (meaning) cues In the final process, utilization, the listener relates these mental representations to the existing knowledge stored in their long term memory In other words, the listener tries to comprehend the new information by relating it to old information, and then make inferences to respond

to the speaker Goh (2000), who investigated cognitive listening problems faced

by second language learners, suggested that low-ability listeners reported more

problems related to the perception and then parsing than the utilization phase

In addition, listening comprehension process is normally believed to be constructed on the two principal sources of information which are referred to as linguistic knowledge and prior information These sources of knowledge are derived from two listening processes which are bottom-up and top-down

Bottom-up processing is a process of using linguistic knowledge to interpret the meaning of a given message To be more specific, it is seen as a decoding process in which phonemic units are decoded and connected together

to make words; words are connected together to form phrases; phrases are connected to make utterances; and utterances are connected to make a complete text During this combination of such linguistic components, listeners gradually construct meaning from the minimal units to increasingly larger units of meaning

Top-down processing, on the other hand, involves the application of context and prior knowledge to help listeners understand the meaning of whole text To be more specific, listeners who approach a comprehension task in a top-down manner use their relevant prior knowledge and experience to predict, filter, analyze and interpret perceived information According to Vandergrift (2002), prior knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term memory as schemata, which will be described in more detail in Section 2 of the literature review chapter

In fact, listening comprehension is neither merely top-down nor bottom-up processing, but an inter-dependent combination of these two processes In other words, if top-down processing brings meaning to the text through schemata activation, learners have more cognitive resources left to work on decoding information at word level (i.e., bottom-up processing) It is, therefore, important to note that listening comprehension is influenced by information that an individual

stores in their long-term memory Thus, this relevant schema must be activated to enhance listening

In short, listening comprehension involves two distinct processes

(bottom-up and top-down) and three phases (perception, parsing, utilization) with two principal sources of knowledge (prior topical knowledge and linguistic knowledge) In these processes, prior knowledge (schemata) is an indispensable component, which is mainly focused in the current study

2 Schema

2.1 The definition of schema

The term “schema” (its plural form: schemata) was first used by Frederic Bartlett (1932) who was a British psychologist, referring to “an active organization

of past reactions or of past experiences” stored in our memory Subsequently, this term became more popular since 1970s thanks to the development of cognitive psychology and cognitive science Until now, there have been many definitions of this concept

Like a number of other scholars (e.g., Rumelhart 1980 ), Minsky (1975) proposed a “frame” concept when defining schema In his conception, schemata are symbolic knowledge structures, including fixed structural relationships between different attributes The following passage is an example:

“It can be hard work going down, but luckily the facilities make it much easier going up Keep them pointed upwards, and be careful when you exit so you don’t stop things from moving Be on the lookout for others who are having difficulty, and watch out for the edges!”

At first, this passage is ambiguous and difficult to interpret; however, when cues about the appropriate schema (snow skiing) are provided, the passage becomes more meaningful and easier to understand (Bransford & Johnson, 1972 )

Alba and Hasher (1983) defined schema as general knowledge that a person processes about a particular domain, which Sanford and Garrod (1981) used the term “scenario”, instead Similarly, Cook (1997) defined schema as “a mental representation of a typical instance” (p.86) The following is an example of schema for “egg”

Figure 2: A person’s possible schema of an egg (Davis, 1991, p.24)

According to Brown and Yule (1983), schema is regarded as organized background knowledge which can help people to make predictions and expectations within their interpretation They say that our background knowledge

is organized and stored in some fixed schemata, together with some other flexible schematic structures

For example, we might have schemata for a classroom which includes chairs, tables, blackboard, and bookshelves; therefore, each time we enter a classroom, we do not need to consider those elements above When being given a

new situation in which we are required to read a text about a third-grade classroom

in a book, we still can flexibly use our established classroom schemata to predict its appearance

Although there have been various definitions of schema, it can be seen that almost all definitions stem from Bartlett’ concept To put it simply, schema is an abstract knowledge structure gained through past experiences and stored in one’s mind whose main function is to help us interpret new information

2.2 Types of schema

Schemata are classified into two types, namely formal schema and content schema (Carrell, 1983) The former deals with the background knowledge of discourse forms, such as: stories, poets, newspapers, research reports, which guide learners to decode organizational forms and rhetorical structures of those texts For example, the formal schemata underlying many stories are the story setting, followed by a series of events, and then the final resolution The story normally begins with a setting in which the time, the place and the main characters are identified Then a series of events (normally problems and conflicts) are presented before the final solution is described Different genres have different rhetorical structures Lack of such kind of knowledge also contributes to problems in listening comprehension

Content schemata, on the other hand, refer to factual knowledge and prior experience with a particular subject, helping listeners to predict, select information and comprehend a given text For example, schemata for going to a restaurant would include information about menus, services, food order, and bill payment Content schemata are largely culture-specific Therefore, cultural schemata are usually categorized in the realm of content schemata

3 Roles of Schemata Activation in Listening Comprehension

Many scholars in this field consent that listening comprehension depends

on learners’ successful activation of relevant schemata (Taglieber, Johnson &

Yarbrough, 1988; Brown, 2000) According to Taglieber, Johnson, and Yarbrough

(1988), comprehension takes place when listeners make use of their schemata about a given topic Brown (2006) gave an example of a listening task in classroom whose goal is to listen to job titles According to him, prior to listening,

it was necessary to give students the chance to apply their schematic knowledge in completing this task [e.g., ask students to list jobs they know in English] He added that not only did this activity facilitate learners’ listening comprehension but it also motivated students themselves by bringing their lives to lesson Zeng (2007) suggested the following techniques to activate stored schemata (see Table 1)

Brainstorming Call out related words or phrases to be put on the

board or OHP

These knowledge- oriented activities aim to prepare students

by encouraging them to activate stored schemata

or acquire relevant types of world

Discussion Discuss similar or related issues based on

prompt questions or pictures

Games Use simple word or information-gap games

Guide-questions Guess answers to questions on the text

Picture/Diagram Complete illustrations with simple drawings or

words

Predictions Predict contents, characters, setting or sequence

Skimming Read a related short text for gist

Table 1: Techniques to trigger stored schemata (Zeng, 2007)

Furthermore, Nguyen and Newton (2018) suggested some more activities in order to activate listeners’ prior knowledge They even identified specifically which type(s) of schemata is/are activated regarding each technique

Thanks to these activities, L2 listening comprehension became easier

in the regard that schema activation encouraged listeners to use what they already knew and integrated the prior knowledge into acquiring new knowledge

Chang and Read (2006) investigated the effect on L2 listening comprehension of schemata activation through four listening-support activities, namely comprehension-questions preview, input repetition, topic preparation and vocabulary instruction For the sake of the study, 160 business majors at the college in Taipei, Taiwan were recruited and randomly assigned into four groups Following is the table summarizes four treatments in four groups:

to textbook CD

Listen once

Preview questions

Listen twice

Read topic-related material and discuss the topic with the teacher

Preview questions

Listen once

Study topic-related vocabulary and listen to how it is pronounced

Preview questions

Listen once

Note: PQ = preview the questions; RI = repetition of the input; TP = topic preparation; VI = vocabulary instruction

Table 3: Summary of four treatments

After listening to two short talks, all learners were given an immediate comprehension question test to measure their level of text comprehension An interview was also employed to elicit participants’ attitudes towards the listening supports above and the strategies that they applied in completing the task The findings showed that providing information about the listening topic was the most useful type of support, followed by input repetition and comprehension-question preview Vocabulary preview was the least effective one

Another study was conducted by Jafari K and Hashim (2012) among

108 EFL sophomores at Ghaemshahr Azad University in Iran For the purpose of this investigation, they divided these participants into one control group and two experimental groups (vocabulary preview and main ideas preview) Prior to listening, students in vocabulary teaching group were provided with a list of vocabulary items, while students in the other experimental group received a list of key sentences In the control group, students did not receive any kind of pre-listening activity but had a chance to listen twice and read the comprehension questions between two times listening At the end of the experiment, researchers conducted an interview with 12 students with a view to obtaining information about students’ ideas and reflections on the use of different advance organizers in class The findings demonstrated that the two treatment groups outperformed the control group; however, there was no significant difference between these two conditions This therefore implied that teaching any kind of pre-listening activities whether the main ideas of the passage or teaching vocabulary items could activate students’ prior knowledge, making the listening input more meaningful This quantitative result was consistent with their attitude and perception of pre-listening activities, in which they were highly interested in having these activities as regular activities in class

Overall, these two studies above clearly demonstrated the benefits of prior knowledge activation activities for L2 listening comprehension They are also strong in terms of methodology as both used a quantitative method (i.e., the listening comprehension test) and a qualitative method (i.e., the follow-up interview) in their research design However, it should also be acknowledged that both have a problem with the independent variables In the former study, the topic preparation treatment did not only involve reading topic-related materials, discussing the content with the teacher but also had the opportunity for previewing the comprehension questions In other words, participants in this treatment group were exposed to two different independent variables simultaneously Therefore, the learning outcome attested in this group might have resulted from both the topic preparation and the question preview rather than from the former only This problem also happened with vocabulary preview and input repetition group Regarding the second study, students in the control group had two-time listening plus a comprehension-question preview, which meant they were also given experimental treatment Thus, it is unlikely to compare the control group with the experimental group to see the results of the manipulations of the independent variables Many other studies have removed the limitations above and their findings were generally consistent with the results above (see Sadighi & Zare,

2006 for example) It is therefore suggested that activating relevant content schemata helps listeners to construct a meaningful interpretation of listening input

In contrast, there were several researchers (Jensen & Hansen, 1995; Sarandi, 2010) who were skeptical about the effectiveness of schemata activation for fostering listening comprehension

Jensen and Hansen (1995) examined the effect of prior knowledge (or schemata, more broadly) on EAP listening-test performance To be more specific, university students (the exact number of the participant and the studied context were not given) were delivered 11 lectures, including 5 nontechnical

lectures and 6 technical ones Before listening, learners were given information about the topic of the lectures together with the listening context, and then allowed

to preview comprehension questions to activate relevant content schemata Scores from 11 lecture-listening subtests were analyzed to explore the effect of the prior knowledge on the listening performance A self-report form in which students were required to answer yes/no questions as to whether they had studied the topic

of the lecture beforehand Their responses to this question were then used to create two groups for each lecture: 1 = students who had not studied the topic before and

2 = students who had studied the topic before The result showed that prior knowledge exhibited inconsistent effects on listening outcome Moreover, as the effect size of prior knowledge was trivial, they came to conclusion that prior knowledge did not contribute much to participants’ listening performance What seemed to be more important was the type of listening tasks

In the same vein, Sarandi’s (2010) conducted another study to discover the role of schemata activation on listening comprehension Twenty male and female adult university students at the upper intermediate level were randomly assigned into a control and a treatment group The participants in the experimental group were given general prior knowledge about the content of lectures After listening to the lectures, they were required to answer some multiple-choice comprehension questions that focused on specific information Students in the control group, on the other hand, did not receive any prior information They only listened to the lectures and answered the follow-up questions The results showed that the provided background knowledge had insignificant effects on listening outcome as the experimental group did not perform better than the control group

in the final listening comprehension test

These two studies above have brought another perspective on the effect of schemata activation on L2 listening comprehension As reported above, schemata activation proved to have no significant effect on L2 listening comprehension in

these experiments However, other factors such as text type, delivery style and general L2 proficiency also have some role to play

From previous studies, it can be clearly seen that no consensus has been reached as to the extent to which content schemata activation may affect listening comprehension Therefore, more empirical research into this area is still welcomed

The review above shows that previous studies in this area have mostly focused on the effect of content schemata activation on L2 listening comprehension, ignoring that of formal schemata activation According to Nguyen and Newton (2018), Tudor and Tuffs (1991) has been the only one to date that examined the role of formal schema in L2 listening comprehension Tudor and Tuffs (1991) conducted an experiment to examine the effect of both formal schemata and content schemata on L2 listening comprehension among a sample group of 108 ESL advanced learners in Business Administration at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium For the purpose of this investigation, researchers divided these learners into three groups Two groups received either the formal or the content schemata activation, while the other (a control group) received no treatment Students in the formal schemata activation group received a problem-solution model then a task-based activity in the use of this model; whereas, in the content schemata group students were provided with background information about the topic, also followed by a task-based activity about the general topic The study material was a video set that discussed a topic of economy After watching the video, participants had to do the immediate tests including a summary writing and a set of comprehension questions The results supported the findings of previous research about the positive effects of text-relevant schemata on L2 listening comprehension It also showed that levels of L2 listening comprehension attained by the formal schemata activation group were higher than those of the

content schemata activation group, although this difference was less pronounced

on the delayed than on the immediate post-test

One outstanding feature of this study is that it has by far been the first study

to examine the effect of formal schemata activation on L2 listening comprehension Moreover, Tudor and Tuffs used videos as the input materials, which were also a new instrument in this area because there has been still a paucity of research that investigates the effects of schemata activation on viewing outcome It is generally believed that video input can bring about better L2 listening comprehension than audio input (Baltova, 1994)

Although there are some merits as mentioned above, Tudor and Tuff’s study does have some limitation that should not be overlooked One is the ambiguity in their conceptualization of “formal schemata” In the procedure of formal schemata activation in this study, learners’ formal schemata were simultaneously activated with their topical knowledge In fact, there is virtually no way to detach formal schemata from content schemata as a structure of a given text and its content appears to be inseparable These researchers, however, failed to acknowledge this limitation in their research report

Summing up, in this chapter, the concept of listening comprehension has first been presented Generally, listening comprehension is an active process in which listeners relate information from auditory and/or visual input to their relevant schemata to interpret the text There are two types of listening process which are the bottom-up and the top-down processing Schema activation, regarding both types (content schemata and formal schemata), is deemed to foster listening comprehension However, the question of the extent to which schemata activation activities affect L2 listening outcome has not been fully answered yet In addition, most studies have focused on content schemata rather than formal schemata, which therefore calls for more empirical studies in this area

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter is to discuss the overall research design, research aims, research participants, input materials and data collection instruments Moreover, procedures for data collection and data analysis will also be described in detailed

1 Overall research design and research aims

In this present study, the main research aim is to examine the effect of formal and content schemata activation activities on L2 listening comprehension

To achieve this research aim, I employed an experimental research design

An experiment, as defined by Creswell (2013, p.13), is “to determine if a specific treatment influences an outcome” He further explained a typical procedure of an experiment as follows: “the researcher assesses this by providing a specific treatment to one group and withholding it from another and then determining how both groups scored on a measure of the outcome” In this case, the treatment is served as an independent variable to observe changes in the dependent variable(s) (i.e., the outcome mentioned above) Therefore, it can be clearly seen that this research design satisfies the research aim of the present study

According to Keppel (1991), there are two types of experiments, which are true experiments and quasi-experiments (as cited in Creswell, 2013)

Regarding true experiments, an important element of these experiments is randomization of cases, which means participants must be assigned randomly to the treatment and the control group They are often conducted in a well-controlled laboratory setting to control all other variables, thereby failing to create a fully realistic situation As a result, although true experiments are strong on internal validity, it may lack external validity

Quasi-experiments, unlike true experiments, use nonrandomized assignments of research participants to the experiment and the control conditions According to Seliger and Shohamy (1989), these designs are often used in educational contexts on the grounds that it is infeasible to control all other possible

confounding variables Additionally, this present research project is conducted at the university where all participants have already been arranged into classes by the university at the beginning of the semester By using these intact groups, quasi-experiments do not only avoid disruption to their present learning environment but also ethical concerns that are associated with random assignment; for instance, the withholding of a potentially effective treatment or the provision of a less effective treatment for one group of research participants That students are in their own intact classes also resembles learning condition in real context, hence, I believe a quasi-experiment is able to bring practical values compared to true-experiment and help me to answer the research questions as follows:

1 Does activating schemata before listening have any effect on text comprehension of the participants?

2 Is better text comprehension obtained in the formal than the content schemata activation condition?

3 Is this effect (if any) also dependent by the type of comprehension questions?

4 Is the text comprehension obtained by these two groups associated with participants’ general L2 listening ability?

The overall design of this study is described in the table below:

To be more specific, selected participants will, in their intact classes, be assigned to one of three groups Two are experimental groups who will experience either a content schemata activation activity or a formal schemata activation activity, while the other will receive no treatment A pre-test of participants’ entering L2 listening ability is administered to all groups before the treatment This test is to ensure that participants have an equal level of L2 listening proficiency before they are involved in this study In this study, a full actual IELTS listening test is used as it has been validated by IELTS organizations After the treatment, all participants will be asked to take the same post-listening test Any difference in the test scores will be attributed to the effect of the treatment procedures

In a nutshell, a quasi-experimental research design is the most suitable for the present study due to the practicality and ethical consideration

2 Research participants

The study was carried out with a small sample recruited from a pool of 500 second-year students in the Faculty of English Language Teacher, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi More specifically, 78 sophomores (13 males and 65 females) aged between 19 and 20 took part in this experiment (See Appendix B for personal profiles) They were all enrolled in the same intensive English language training program to develop their English language proficiency from the CEFR B2-/ B2 level or the IELTS overall band score of 5.5/6.0 to the CEFR C1+ level or the IELTS overall band score of 7.5 At the time my data collection, they had the B2 level on the CEFR scale In their intact classes, these students were assigned to either the control condition (N=19), the content schemata activation condition (N=26), or the formal schemata activation condition (N=33) To recruit research participants above, I had to contact potential research participants beforehand I came to their classes to briefly introduce the research purpose, the data collection procedure and the guaranteed

confidentiality of their participation in the research project Then I asked for their voluntary participation by giving a consent form (see Appendix A) to each of them

to fill out and sign

3 Input materials

In order to check the effect of schemata activation activities on L2 listening comprehension, a video was carefully selected for use in this study There are certain reasons for choosing a video instead of an audio file as the input material

In the first place, a video is found most useful in developing listening skills (Macknight, 1983) It is because visual content can compensate for the learner's deficiencies in the target language Furthermore, a video is often found to enhance learners’ motivation in classroom than an audio input material (Kennedy, 1983; Macknight, 1983).In fact, videos give learners a feeling of exposure to real-life rather than simulated language use

In the process of selecting the input material for this study, I followed certain principles below

First and foremost, the language of the video is of great importance If the video contains a great number of unfamiliar words and complicated structures, learners may be not only discouraged to listen but also they might fail to comprehend the text

Secondly, the length of the video must be appropriate for classroom use and learner’s listening proficiency According to MacKnight (1983), for the advanced and the intermediate level learners, the average length of a video should be around

20 minutes However, due to the limited time that I was granted for my study, I had to resort to a video which lasts between 5 and 10 minutes

Thirdly, regarding student interest, if the theme of the video is appealing and familiar to students, it helps to motivate them They may feel more engaged with exploring the content of the video

Following the above criteria, three short videos were initially chosen The first one taken from the National Geographic Channel is called Climate Change

101 with Bill Nye and lasts five minutes It discusses the causes and effects of climate change and then proposes different solutions to handle it The second one

is from the Ted-ed Channel It tells about the history of urbanization and illustrates what a future city may look like It is around five minutes in length The last video

is called Plastic Ocean (7 minutes) and taken from the United Nations Channel It talks about the problems of oceans that are now being covered with plastic and then some solutions for those problems Subsequently, I invited eight students who had a similar level of L2 proficiency to those of the research participants in this study to rate these sample videos regarding their comprehensibility and general appeal Thanks to these students’ feedback, the video named Urbanization and Future of the Cities was selected as it was consistently rated as the most comprehensible and appealing among the three videos (see Appendix C for further information on this video and its transcript)

4 Data collection instrument

4.1 Pre-listening test

A pre-test was employed to obtain data on learner’s entering L2 listening proficiency The pre-test was taken from an actual listening test of IELTS, which included 4 sections with 40 items in total Mean scores from the pre-test showed that the students’ entering L2 listening proficiency was equivalent to the IELTS band score of 6.0 or the CEFR B2 on average The level of English listening proficiency ranged from intermediate to advanced level To be more specific, out

of 78 participants, 9 participants (11%) were identified as intermediate-level students, 55 participants (71%) as upper-intermediate-level students and 14 participants (18%) as advanced learners As all data were normally distributed, a one-way ANOVA test was carried out to compare the scores across all three

groups No difference was found: F(2, 75) = 0.07 (p = 93) In other words, the

groups were relatively homogenous in terms of their L2 listening proficiency before they were involved in this research project Thus, any between-group difference in the listening scores attested in the post-listening test will be attributed

to the effects of the treatment procedures

4.2 Post-listening test

A post-listening test was delivered to all participants with a view to collecting evidence about their comprehension level after the experiment Many researchers have tried to describe L2 listening ability in terms of taxonomies of subtle skills According to Barta (2010), three most widely used listening subtle skills in a listening test are (a) identifying main ideas, (b) recognizing specific information, and (c) making inferences about implicit meaning Therefore, I designed the post-listening test with these three aspects in mind

Summary

To check students’ ability to grasp the main ideas of the selected video, a written summary task was administered since this task can prompt test-takers to concentrate on the main points and organization of an input material (Kintsch and Kozminsky, 1977) To prepare for the measure, five senior students at the University of Languages and International Studies were invited to watch the video and read its transcript to identify the main idea units of that video Fifteen idea units were listed In the scoring process, participants will receive 2, 1 and 0 point for a fully, a partially and an unsuccessfully recalled main idea, respectively (see Appendix E for a student’s sampled summary)

Comprehension questions

To measure the other two subtle skills, I used a set of ten closed-ended questions, including multiple choice items and true/false items

Multiple-choice items required students to select an answer from a specified number of options Each multiple-choice item consisted of a stem and suggested responses True/false items required the participants to determine whether a statement agreed or disagreed with the video content Advantages of a multiple choice test and a true/false test have been acknowledged by several researchers all over the world (Ebel & Frisbie, 2009, Thompson, 1995, Cunningham, 1986) Firstly, these question types are easy and fast to score since

no subjective judgment is required Secondly, it takes up only a small amount of time to complete multiple choice items and true/false items; thus, test-designers

can include many items that cover various content areas Thirdly, L2 learners have

been familiar with these question types All these features are relevant to the purpose of the present test (see Appendix D for the test paper)

To examine the quality of the test, I adapted Runte’s (2001) checklist for evaluating multiple-choice items and true/false items (see Appendix F) An experienced EFL teacher was invited to check the quality of the test with the researcher Any item that failed to meet the checklist requirements will be re-examined and modified Then, I gave the test to five other students who never watched the video before If they can answer some of the questions correctly, it meant that these questions might be of common senses and thus should be removed

5 Procedure of data collection

5.1 Formal schemata activation group

In this condition, the experimental treatment lasted 10 minutes First,

I informed participants that they were going to watch a video about urbanisation Before watching the video, they were required to work in groups of 4 to 5 to brainstorm ideas about the topic based on a given mind-map (see Appendix G) This mind-map was designed by the researcher, which contained six key words in

the input text Next, I told the learners that the listening passage would be organised in a chronological order so they needed to rearrange their brainstormed ideas in a particular sequence of time Subsequently, students were asked to watch the video about Urbanization They were encouraged to take notes when listening After the video ended, they were asked to summarize the video in 10 minutes and complete a text comprehension text in 5 minutes afterwards Then, the test results

of the students would be analyzed to answer the research questions

5.2 Content schemata activation group

This experimental treatment also lasted 10 minutes First, I informed participants that they were going to watch a video about urbanisation Before watching this video, they were required to work in groups of 4 to 5 to brainstorm ideas about that topic Subsequently, students were asked to watch the video about Urbanization They were encouraged to take notes when listening After the video ended, they were asked to summarize the video in 10 minutes and complete a text comprehension text in 5 minutes afterwards Then, the test results of the students would be analyzed to answer the research questions

5.3 Control group

Students in this group also have 10 minutes before listening During this time, I returned the pre-test papers to participants and answered their questions about this pre-test Subsequently, I informed that they were going to watch a video about Urbanisation They were encouraged to take notes when listening After the video ended, they were asked to summarize the video in 10 minutes and complete

a text comprehension text in 5 minutes afterwards Then, the test results of the students would be analyzed to answer the research questions

6 Data analysis