Problem in learning listening comprehension among non english majors at cao thang technical college m a 60 14 10

LIST OF CHARTS CHAPTER 4 Chart 4.1: Attitudes to the English listening skill in the classroom………...42 Chart 4.2: Percentage of opinions about the difficulty of learning listening…...43 C

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

In partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

LÊ THỊ LY ĐA

Supervised by ĐOÀN THỊ HUỆ DUNG, Ph.D

HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 2012

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this thesis, entitled:

“Problems in learning listening comprehension among non-English majors at Cao Thang Technical College”

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution

Ho Chi Minh City, February 27th, 2012

Le Thi Ly Da

I would like to thank all my teachers in the course for their dedication

Many thanks also go to Ms Vo Thi Thu Thao for her invaluable assistance with the use of SPSS in the data collection and Ms Bui Thi Kim Loan for her willingness to share her resources and experience

Last but not least, I am extremely grateful to my family for their support throughout the course Without their encouragement, I could not have finished this thesis

ABSTRACT

This thesis investigated the problems most frequently faced by majored students at Cao Thang Technical College, so it aims to identify those problems and suggests some useful activities to teach in the pre-listening stage and examines their effects on listening comprehension

non-English-The study was carried out in two elementary General English classes (assigned in the Control Group of 51 and the Experimental Group of 49) Data were collected from pre- and post-questionnaires and pre- and post-tests together with nine weeks of experimental teaching to indentify the problems, to measure the learners’ performance and to find out their attitudes towards the experimental activities Put it more clearly, the formula of Mean was used to compare the mean

of two kinds of problems related to two listening processes, bottom-up and down, so that the higher mean indicates the problems most frequently encountered Besides, Independent-samples T-test and Paired-samples T-test were employed to find whether the mean scores between the Experimental Group and the Control Group and pre-tests and post-tests of the Experimental Group was significant or not

top-The results indicated that the majority of students most frequently had problems with top-down listening process Therefore, such three top-down activities

as quizzes, gap-fill exercises and board writing were applied into the pre-listening stage to deal with the learners’ problems Also, the data analysis shows that the Experimental Group gained the significant improvement in the post test results although just a little In addition, both teachers and students expressed their positive attitudes towards the experimental activities

The thesis therefore suggests applying top-down activities to help learners at Cao Thang Technical College overcome their difficulties in listening and become more active listeners

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Statement of authorship……… i

Acknowledgements……… ii

Abstract………iii

Table of contents……… iv

List of tables……… x

List of charts………xii

Abbreviations……….………xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……….1

1.1 Context of the study……… 1

1.2 Aim of the study……….3

1.3 Research questions of the study………3

1.4 Significance of the study………4

1.5 Organization of the study……… 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……… 6

2.1 Listening comprehension……… 6

2.2 Nonreciprocal listening……… 7

2.3 Bottom-up and top-down processes……… 8

2.3.1 Bottom-up process……… 8

2.3.2 Top-down process……… 9

2.4 Listening problems……….10

2.4.1 Problems with the bottom-up process……….11

2.4.2 Problems with the top-down process……… 12

2.5 Top-down processing activities of Predicting in Pre-listening stage………….13

2.5.1 Quizzes………17

2.5.2 Gap-fill exercises……… 17

2.5.3 Board writing……… 17

2.6 Relevant thematic studies in the M.A program at University of Social Sciences and Humanities of HCMC……… 18

2.7 Summary………19

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY……… 21

3.1 Study setting……….21

3.1.1 English program………21

3.1.2 Teachers………24

3.1.3 Students……….24

3.2 Participants……… 24

3.2.1 The Control Group………25

3.2.2 The Experimental Group……… 25

3.2.3 Resemblance……… 26

3.3 Data types of methods of data collection……….26

3.3.1 Questionnaires……… 27

3.3.1.1 Questionnaire about learners’ listening problems (before the experiment)………27

3.3.1.2 Questionnaires about attitudes towards experimental activities (after the experiment)………28

3.3.1.2.1 For learners……… 28

3.3.1.2.2 For teachers……….29

3.3.2 Experiment……… 29

3.3.2.1 Pre-test ……… 30

3.3.2.2 Post-test ……….31

3.3.2.3 Experimental teaching process……… 31

3.4 Analytical framework……… 35

3.4.1 Questionnaires……… 35

3.4.1.1 Questionnaire about learners’ listening problems ………35

3.4.1.2 Questionnaires about attitudes towards experimental activities…… ….37

3.4.2 Pre- and post-tests……….37

3.5 Summary……… 39

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS……… 41

4.1 Data analysis………41

4.1.1 Results from questionnaires……… 41

4.1.1.1 Pre-questionnaire about problem identification……….……41

4.1.1.1.1 About learning listening ………41

4.1.1.1.2 About problems with learning listening……….44

4.1.1.1.2.1 Problems with the bottom-up process……….44

4.1.1.1.2.2 Problems with the top-down process ……… 46

4.1.1.2 Post-questionnaire about attitudes towards experimental activities ……48

4.1.1.2.1 Students’ attitudes towards pre-listening activities………48

4.1.1.2.2 Teachers’ attitudes towards pre-listening activities………53

4.1.2 Results from the experiment………59

4.1.2.1 Pre-test results……… 59

4.1.2.1.1 Control group vs Experimental group……….59

4.1.2.1.2 Pre-test similarities………60

4.1.2.2 Post-test results……… 61

4.1.2.2.1 Control group vs Experimental group………61

4.1.2.2.2 Post-test differences……….63

4.1.2.3 A comparison of Experimental group’s results between before and after the experiment……….64

4.2 Discussion of results………65

4.2.1 Questionnaires……… 65

4.2.1.1 Pre-questionnaire……… 65

4.2.1.2 Post-questionnaire……… 66

4.2.2 Experimental teaching……… 67

4.3 Summary……… 69

4.4 Overall summary……… 69

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION………70

5.1 Answers to the research questions……… 70

5.2 Recommendations for English teachers and students……… 72

5.2.1 For students……… 72

5.2.2 For teachers……… 73

5.3 Limitations……… 75

5.4 Need for further research……… 75

5.5 Summary……… 75

REFERENCES………76

APPENDICES……… 81

Appendix 1: Lesson Plans Used In Experimental Group………81

Appendix 1.1: Lesson Plan To Instruct Board Writing As Pre-Listening Activities81

Appendix 1.2: Lesson Plan To Instruct Quizzes As Pre-Listening Activities…… 3

Appendix 1.3: Lesson Plan To Instruct Gap-Fill Exercises As Pre-Listening Activities………86

Appendix 2: Lesson Plans Used In Control Group……… 88

Appendix 2.1: Lesson Plan For Unit 8, Future World Language? 88

Appendix 2.2: Lesson Plan For Unit 11, Reach For The Sky……….…89

Appendix 2.3: Lesson Plan For Unit 12, Winning And Keeping Customers…….90

Appendix 3: Listening Comprehension Tests……….91

Appendix 3.1: Pre-Test……… 91

Appendix 3.2: Post-Test……….93

Appendix 4: Questionnaires……… ……….95

Appendix 4.1: Pre-Questionnaire………95

Appendix 4.1.1: Pre-Questionnaire In Vietnamese……… 95

Appendix 4.1.2: Pre-Questionnaire In English……… 98

Appendix 4.2: Post-Questionnaire……… 100

Appendix 4.2.1: Post-Questionnaire For Students In Vietnamese……… 100

Appendix 4.2.2: Post-Questionnaire For Students In English………104

Appendix 4.2.3: Post-Questionnaire For Teachers In Vietnamese……… 107

Appendix 4.2.4: Post-Questionnaire For Teachers In English……….110

LIST OF TABLES

CHAPTER 2

Table 2.1: Activities for predicting………16

CHAPTER 3 Table 3.1: Content of English program……….………23

Table 3.2: The Control Group’s background information……….25

Table 3.3: The Experimental Group’s background information……… 26

CHAPTER 4 Table 4.1: Statistics about frequency of listening self-study……….42

Table 4.2: Statistics about problems with the bottom-up process……… 45

Table 4.3: Statistics about problems with the top-down process………47

Table 4.4: Activities pre-taught in the past……….49

Table 4.5: Statistics of opinions about pre-listening top-down activities…………49

Table 4.6: Activities’ help in dealing with learners’ listening………50

Table 4.7: Statistics of activities’ importance in learners’ listening……… 50

Table 4.8: Opinions for the frequency of experimental activities………51

Table 4.9: Interest of top-down activities………51

Table 4.10: Necessity of top-down activities……… 52

Table 4.11: Effectiveness of top-down activities………53

Table 4.12: Teachers’ opinions about the difficulty of listening……… … 54

Table 4.13: Teaching experience and pre-listening activities ……… …….54

Table 4.14: The necessity of teaching pre-listening activities……… 55

Table 4.15: Opinions for the frequency of top-down activities………56

Table 4.16: Interest of top-down activities……… 57

Table 4.17: Necessity of top-down activities……… 57

Table 4.18: Effectiveness of top-down activities………58

Table 4.19: Evaluation of top-down activities………59

Table 4.20: Descriptive statistics about pre-test score………60

Table 4.21: Independent Samples Test for pre-test……….61

Table 4.22: Descriptive statistics about post-test score……… 62

Table 4.23: Independent Samples Test for post-test……… 63

Table 4.24: Paired Samples Test for Experimental group’s pre and post-test……64

Table 4.25: Paired Samples Statistics about Experimental group’s pre and posttest……….65

Table 4.26: Statistics of Experimental group’s pre- and post-test scores ……….65

LIST OF CHARTS

CHAPTER 4

Chart 4.1: Attitudes to the English listening skill in the classroom……… 42

Chart 4.2: Percentage of opinions about the difficulty of learning listening… 43

Chart 4.3: Percentage of problems with the bottom-up process………44

Chart 4.4: Percentage of problems with the top-down process……….46

Chart 4.5: Teaching experience……… 53

ABBREVIATIONS

B.A : Bachelor of Arts

CTTC : Cao Thang Technical College

CUP : Cambridge University Press

EFL : English as Foreign Language

HCMC : Ho Chi Minh City

M.A : Master of Arts

OUP : Oxford University Press

TOEIC : Test of English for International Communication

USSH : University of Social Sciences and Humanities

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Context of the study

Nowadays, learning English has been emphasized strongly in the

government documents, especially in the project “Teaching and learning foreign

language in the national educational system in 2008-2020” which was approved

and published according to the government’s decision – QĐ1400 on September

30th, 2008

In the context of integrating in the world economy, English has taken an important part in Vietnam It is the instrument for communication, business transaction and development

However, the limitation of foreign language knowledge, especially English,

is the problem of young laborers in Vietnam More specifically, English is a barrier for Vietnamese students in so many areas Many students still do not consider

English as a very important tool for their job hunting and career advancement in future though understanding and using English is more and more important nowadays

In fact, if two people have the same level of professional ability, the one with better English can have more opportunities to find a well-paid job and to advance faster in his/her career than the one without a good command of English That is the reason why Vietnam has experienced meaningful economic growth but is still facing the challenges of developing a skilled workforce with adequate English language competence for work

According to the Department of Higher Education, 51.7% graduates from 59 big universities in Vietnam do not meet the requirement of English proficiency

(from DH-kem-vi-thieu-chuan.html) Meanwhile, English is the leading concern of enterprises in their companies’ recruitments As a result, so many students who are good at professional skills, but cannot communicate in English, cannot have desirable jobs

http://tuoitre.vn/Giao-duc/291254/Giang-day-tieng-Anh-trong-cac-truong-One of the reasons why Vietnamese learners cannot communicate well in English is that they often have difficulty in listening comprehension For instance, a

recent survey by a group of students from Van Hien University entitled “Students’

English listening and speaking skills: realities and solutions” shows that the

percentage of those who have good listening ability is only 8.46% (from http://nld.com.vn/2009100411424834p0c1017/ky-nang-nghe-noi-tieng-anh-cua-sinh-vien-con-yeu.html) Hence, it is necessary to change the way of teaching and learning English, as English is not only a tool for research but also a means for communication

In the course of communication in English it is noticed that listening is an important skill but a difficult one It is impossible to communicate well without listening Therefore, in order to succeed in communication, it is necessary to listen and comprehend what has just been said However, listening, especially nonreciprocal listening, is difficult For example, students normally find it easier to speak than to listen in English because they have time for thinking what to say Besides, unlike written texts (which students can look at in their own way, re-reading some bits and taking their own time about it) tapes do not stop, so the students are forced to go at the tape’s speed, not their own

It, consequently, is difficult to teach listening skill if a teacher does not understand all sorts of difficulties in listening that his or her students are facing

There are several studies in these aspects, namely An Investigation into EFL Listening Problems of Intermediate Learners at HCMC University of Education

Foreign Language Center by Hoang Thi Bich Thao in 2006 and Teaching Listening Comprehension at Food Industry College of HCMC by Do Thi Minh Chau in 2007 These two studies explored the causes for the problems in listening, not only nonreciprocal but also reciprocal, and gave some useful recommendations to learners, teachers as well as administrators

Unlike these above studies, this study is investigating the most common problems in English listening faced by beginners at Cao Thang Technical College, then applying top-down activities to listening in an effort to encourage learners’ role

in the listening process, from passive to active, and improving their listening comprehension ability

1.2 Aim of the study

The study aims to identify the problems most frequently encountered by learners at Cao Thang Technical College while studying English listening comprehension and to explore useful activities for teaching and learning listening skills in the pre-listening stage

1.3 Research questions of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study is guided by the following research questions:

(1) What are common problems most frequently faced by learners at Cao Thang Technical College in the process of listening to English?

(2) To what extent can pre-listening activities affect the learners’ listening comprehension?

(3) What activities should be taught in pre-listening stage to enhance the learners’s comprehension?

1.4 Significance of the study

By investigating the most frequent factors, it is hoped that the study will provide useful information about common problems that learners who do not major

in English often have in the process of listening comprehension Furthermore, the study may provide helpful knowledge about and benefits of top-down processing activities of predicting in dealing with the common problems in listening comprehension Thus, for learners, it is a good idea to use helpful information about predicting so as to deal with their English listening comprehension learning and also, for teachers, it can facilitate their teaching of English listening

1.5 Organization of the study

The study is comprised of five chapters Chapter One provides an introduction to the topic of the study with its context, aim, research questions, significance and organization

Chapter Two presents a review of the literature relevant to the study such as the definition of listening for comprehension, nonreciprocal listening, two listening processes (bottom-up and top-down), listening problems related to the two processes, and top-down processing activities of predicting used in pre-listening stage Also, this chapter reviews previous relevant thematic studies in the M.A program at University of Social Sciences and Humanities of HCMC

Chapter Three describes the design and methods of investigation by taking the four features of setting, participants, data types of methods of data collection, and analytical framework into account

Chapter Four analyzes the findings from the questionnaires, the results from the experiment, together with findings of the questionnaire about learners’ attitudes

towards pre-listening activities

Chapter Five draws conclusion in response to research questions and gives some recommendations for both teachers and learners in teaching and learning listening comprehension

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews theories of listening related to the topic under investigation It begins with the definition of listening comprehension The second part will focus on nonreciprocal listening, the more usual type in class of listening Thirdly, bottom-up processing and top-down processing are theoretically examined

in detail Next, it reviews some empirical research on listening problems related to bottom-up processing and top-down processing Then, it presents some top-down processing activities of predicting applied in pre-listening stage Finally, the chapter ends with relevant thematic studies in the M.A program at University of Social Sciences and Humanities of Ho Chi Minh City

2.1 Listening comprehension

It can be said that listening comprehension is “the process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language” (Richards, J.; Platt, J and Platt, H., 1992, p 216)

While listening for perception have the main aim of giving the learner practice in identifying correctly different sounds, sound-combinations and intonations (Ur, 1984, p 35), listening for comprehension, as stated by Buck (2001, p.247and 248), is an active process of meaning construction in which listeners, based on their purpose for listening, attend to and process aural and relevant visual input, automatically in real time, in order to understand what is unequivocally stated and to make all necessary inferences implied in the input

Besides, distinguishing hearing from listening, Samovar and Mills (1980) stated that when we hear, we perceive sounds only, but when we listen, hearing is

accompanied by a deliberate and purposeful act of mind “To listen means to get meaning from what is heard” (p.59)

Underwood (1989) showed that in language teaching, the phrase “listening skills” is often used to mean “listening and understanding skills” or “listening comprehension skills” Therefore, listening comprehension is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear To listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, and not simply to understand themselves (p 1)

2.2 Nonreciprocal listening

In terms of the role of the learners, listening can be classified as one-way listening (nonreciprocal/transactional) and two-way listening (reciprocal/interactional)

In their book on listening, Anderson and Lynch (1988) distinguished between reciprocal listening and non-reciprocal listening Reciprocal listening refers

to those listening tasks where there is the opportunity for the listener to interact with the speaker, and to negotiate the content of the interaction Non-reciprocal listening refers to tasks such as listening to the radio or a formal lecture where the transfer of information is in one direction only – from the speaker to the listener (p.23)

Also, nonreciprocal listening, the more usual type in the listening class is termed ‘listening in order to learn’ and reciprocal listening is termed ‘listening-and-speaking’ (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2002, p.196) However, the non-reciprocal listening is considered more demanding than the reciprocal one as a listener cannot control the pace, lexical, or grammatical content of the message

In fact, as cited in Griffiths (2008, p.209), reciprocal or interactive listening,

in which the listener interacts with the speaker to achieve the purpose of the interaction, and in which the listener can ask for clarification and provide verbal and

non-verbal feedback (nodding, saying “mmm” and so on) has been rather neglected

in language classrooms (Vandergrift, 1997a; Richards, 1990)

Meanwhile, Lynch (1998) pointed out, at the nonreciprocal end of the continuum, L2 listeners must use their own top-down and bottom-up processing skills without benefit of any interaction with, or feedback from, the speaker (as cited

in Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, p.105)

Furthermore, nonreciprocal listening describes a situation in which the listener has no opportunity to contribute to a dialogue, for example while watching television or listening to the radio In these situations, the listener’s lack of control over the input is a crucial issue The listener has no influence over factors such as the speed at which the speaker talks, the vocabulary and grammar used, and no recourse to asking for repetition of a word if the speaker’s pronunciation renders it incomprehensible (Wilson, 2008, p.13)

In brief, for all of the above reasons, nonreciprocal is usually regarded as more difficult than reciprocal listening And this kind of nonreciprocal or one-way listening shall be concerned primarily in this study

2.3 Bottom-up and top-down processes

While finding out the reasons of listening difficulties, according to Wilson (2008), researchers have tended to use two models to describe the listening process: the bottom-up model and the top-down model

The bottom-up processing model assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (or phonemes) to complete texts According to this view, phonemic units are decoded and linked together to form words, words are linked together to form phrases, phrases are linked together to form utterances, and utterances are linked together to form complete meaningful texts In other words, the process is a linear one, in which meaning itself is derived as the last step in the process (p 200)

Or in the bottom-up process of listening, the decoding of the smallest units – phonemes and syllables – is emphasized to lead us towards meaning And listeners who decode in a bottom-up manner create meaning by accretion, gradually combining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-level features “The approach is based on discrete units of language in the text” (Wilson, 2008, p.15)

2.3.2 Top-down process

The second model is the top-down or knowledge-driven processing in which the listener is as an ‘active model-builder’ (Anderson & Lynch, 1988, p.11)

Nunan (1999) stated as follows:

The alternative, top-down view, suggests that the listener actively constructs (or, more accurately, reconstructs) the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues In this reconstruction process, the listener uses prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening takes places to make sense of what he or she hears (Context of situation includes such things as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speaker or speakers and their relationship to the situation as well as to each other, and prior events.) (p.201)

This process emphasizes the use of background knowledge to predict content This may refer to world knowledge, knowledge of the speaker or context,

or analogy (if the situation is familiar, listeners can guess what they are going to hear next)

Thus, listeners use initial cues (linguistic or other) in the input or the context

of the listening act to activate a conceptual framework for interpreting the input, much of which may be unintelligible to them The different types of knowledge that listeners can apply to this interpretation process include experiential, cultural,

textual, linguistic and pragmatic knowledge

To put it in a nutshell, the bottom-up process is based on perception of sounds and words to understand texts It is a text-based approach as it focuses on building up the message word by word rather than on the students’ background knowledge of the situation, topic or theme (Wilson, 2008, p 184)

On the other hand, the top-down process is based on the listener’s or reader’s knowledge of the topic, theme or situation as much as the actual words heard It is a student-based approach because it relies on the students’ schemata and background knowledge (as quoted in Wilson, 2008, p 189)

And understanding listening process is of practical importance for learners in improving their listening ability, as “the more you know about the listening process, the better you will be able to identify both your listening requirements and the listening problems you encounter” (as noted by Brownell, 1986, p.13)

Also, there is not much room for learner involvement, which prevents them from developing a better awareness of the listening process So far, many researchers have mentioned learner problems with the process of listening

2.4.1 Problems with the bottom-up process

As pointed out by Ur (1984) and Harmer (1998), the most easily-recognized difficulty in second language listening is the unfamiliar systems of sounds, accents,

vocabulary and grammar In other words, it is commonly thought that the main

difficulties with listening are caused by lack of vocabulary and speed of speech

For example, in 1984, with the book Teaching listening comprehension, Ur

noted some learner problems with hearing the sounds and understanding intonation, stress, colloquial vocabulary and different accents As a stress-timed language, English speech can be a terror for some learners as mouthfuls of syllables come spilling out between stress points Also, intonation patterns are very significant not just for interpreting such straightforward elements as questions and statements and emphasis but more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise, etc

Later, in 1999, Ur once again mentioned that learners often have trouble with

sounds, words and cannot understand fast, natural native speech in A course in

language teaching: Practice and Theory

Beside stress, rhythm and intonation as mentioned above, Brown (1994) added clustering and reduced forms which also make learners find it difficult in

listening comprehension to them in Teaching by Principles – An Interactive

Approach to Language Pedagogy In spoken language, due to memory limitations

and our predisposition for “chunking,” or clustering, we break down speech into smaller groups of words Therefore, listeners will make a mistake in trying to attend

to every word in an utterance Spoken language has many reduced forms Reduction

can be phonological (“Djeetyet?” for “Did you eat yet?”), morphological (contractions like “ I’ll”), or syntactic (elliptical forms like “When will you be back?” “Tomorrow, may be”) These reductions pose significant difficulties especially to classroom learners who may have initially been exposed to the full forms of the English language

2.4.2 Problems with the top-down process

As mentioned in the 2.3 part, the top-down process of listening is based on the listener; much of the comprehension relies on what happens in the mind before

the listening has even begun

Lack of socio-cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture (Anderson and Lynch, 1988)

In addition, being familiar with context contributes to listener’s listening Underwood (1989) stated that, “students who are unfamiliar with the context may have considerable difficulty in interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their surface meaning” (p 19)

Added to these are the different conversation features of the second language culture, for example, intonational emphasis, turn taking, pacing and pausing (Rost, 1991) Similarly, Ur (1984) gave some factors such as coping with redundancy and

predicting that make listening comprehension difficult

Ten years afterwards, Brown (1994) also pointed out that most of listening problems are due to redundancy and performance variables For example, learners might initially get confused by redundancy Or such distracting performance variables as hesitations, false starts, pauses and corrections can easily interfere with

comprehension in second language learners

To sum up, these problems in some way influence the processing of speech and can often block comprehension In other words, they can make the listening process difficult

2.5 Top-down processing activities of Predicting in Pre-listening stage

In Wilson’s How to Teach Listening (2008), thinking ahead, predicting and

grappling with the meaning of the whole text rather than being worried about unknown words help listeners become better listeners They are involved and see themselves as ‘active participants’ rather than ‘passive receptacles of messages’ (p.41)

Also, Harmer (2007) provided six principles for listening Out of them, he noted that preparation is vital:

Students need to be made ready to listen This means that they will need

to look at pictures, discuss the topic, or read the questions first, for example, in order to be in a position to predict what is coming This is not just so that they are in the right frame of mind (and are thinking about the topic), but also so that they are engaged with the topic and the task and really want to listen (p.135)

Accordingly, it is possible that in teaching listening, the choice of top-down processing activities in pre-listening stage not only provides encouragement but also develops students’ confidence and prediction in their ability to deal with listening problems

That is, 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 (as mentioned by Underwood, 1989, p 44)

And so far, there have been a lot of pre-listening activities as follows:

- Brainstorming vocabulary

- Reviewing areas of grammar

- Discussing the topic of the listening text

- Reviewing of existing knowledge

- Giving some background information

- Reading something relevant

- Looking at the pictures, diagrams, etc

- Questioning and answering session

- Predicting the content of the listening text

- Speculating on what they will hear

- Writing something relevant

- Following the instructions for the while-listening activity

- Considering how the while-listening activity will be done

(as cited by Underwood, 1989, p 31; Harmer, 1998, p.100; and Richards and Renandya, 2002, p.243)

Besides, Rost (1990) noted that the pre-listening phase should “make the context explicit, clarify purposes and establish roles, procedures and goals for listening” (p 232) Indeed, according to Rixon (1986), Celce-Murcia (2001) and Richards and Renandya (2002), the goal of the pre-listening activities is to activate the learners’ background knowledge, arouse their interest in the subject matter of the spoken text, increase motivation and provide some input, language, information

or context, which will encourage them to make predictions about the text as well as

helping them understand the listening passage better Together, these activities help increase learners’ comprehension

In short, pre-listening is a very important stage, for it aims to generate interest, to build confidence and to facilitate comprehension (Berman, 2003) Therefore, understanding pre-listening tasks helps students get ideas of the content and predict for answers (Ur, 1984)

Moreover, in order to help listeners become more active in the process of comprehending, some top-down activities for predicting should be taught in pre-listening stage, which makes the students aware of a situation and activates their prior knowledge

It can be said that predicting means guessing at the rest of a message based

on only part of the information – the information might be only partial because either only part of the discourse has been heard so far, or only part has been comprehended Hence, if a listener can make a guess that is going to be said next,

he will be much more likely to perceive it and understand it well

For instance, Wilson (2008) presented six types of activities that consist of brainstorming; visuals; realia; texts and words; situations; and opinions, ideas and facts They are used to activate the schemata and to get students to predict what they will hear (p.64) He also gave a variety of ways for each type of activities Following is the summary table of activities for predicting as mentioned in the pages from 64 to 75:

Table 2.1: Activities for predicting

All ways above aim to activate the students’ schemata and prepare them to predict content Frequently, several ways are used at the same time; for example, we might use a picture and a short text, a list of questions along with a chart, and so on The key thing is to provide a ‘way in’ that arouses our students’ interest and gives them at least some of the information they will need in order to understand the text (Wilson, 2008, p.75)

Despite many ways as mentioned above, this study takes into consideration only three ways among them, based on the listening texts selected to teach They are

board writing, gap-fill exercises and quizzes, which can help listeners in class become more active participants in the process of comprehension

As mentioned by Wilson (2008), we often read before we listen in daily life,

so texts may give us vital information as well as motivate us to investigate a topic further This type of activity can be used with any type of listening passages; the transcript simply needs to be manipulated

Gap-fill exercises may be transcripts with blanked out words or phrases that

students read and fill the gaps or texts contain incorrect phrases that students

‘doctor’ and underline before listening With the later, it is necessary to put

‘soundalike’ absurdities in order to make the exercises amusing (p.70-71)

2.5.3 Board writing

Board writing is one of brainstorming activities Brainstorming is used to

generate large numbers of ideas based on a topic or a problem, and it is useful for pre-listening to factual passages with one main topic (Wilson, 2008, p.64)

There are several ways in board writing One way is brainstorming the same topic Students work in groups, and each group is allocated a section of the board

and given a different colored board pen or piece of chalk First, they note down their ideas on paper in their groups, and then one scribe from each group comes up and writes the group’s ideas on the board

Another way is that students are given different questions based on the same topic They may work in groups to formulate ideas first or shout out ideas for their own scribe The final stage is for the students to sit down and appraise all of the contributions on the board before listening (Wilson, 2008, p.64)

2.6 Relevant thematic studies in the M.A program at University of Social Sciences and Humanities of HCMC

There are many studies about the problems in listening carried out by

students in the M.A program at USSH of HCMC

They include investigating problems of learning and teaching EFL listening, finding out the reasons for those problems and suggesting some feasible solutions to help learners and teachers overcome their difficulties

In 2006, the results of the study “An Investigation into EFL Listening Problems of intermediate learners at HCMC University of Education Foreign Language Centre: Causes and Solutions” by Hoang Thi Bich Thao showed that the learners encounter various kinds of listening problems related to the listening text, the speaker factors, the listener factors, the listening tasks and the teaching and learning facilities

The data analysis reveals that the causes of the difficulties are: (1) the learners seriously lack listening practice and training in class as well as at home; (2) some of the learners’ listening learning ways are improper and ineffective; (3) the teaching material is out of date, not authentic and lacking

in listening tasks for helping improve listening ability; (4) limitations of

learning and teaching facilities obstructs learners’ listening learning; and (5)

a proportion of teachers do not have effective ways of teaching listening

One year later, the findings of the study entitled “Teaching listening comprehension at Food Industry College at HCMC: Problems and Solutions” by Do Thi Minh Chau indicated that the amount of teaching time, the listening objective according to the curriculum, and the class size play important roles in the efficiency

of teaching listening comprehension And the problems of teaching this skill can be one of the sources resulting in difficulties for students in acquiring it These are associated with the internal factors of learners such as their affective statuses, listening habits, information processing capacities, English proficiencies, and their belief about listening activities Other barriers concerned the nature of listening strategies, the listening material used and teaching methods

Most of these studies focused on listening problems of both reciprocal and nonreciprocal types In other words, they just investigated listening problems and suggested solutions to them in general

There were not many studies carried out on researching nonreciprocal listening problems in the process of comprehension and there have been no related thematic studies conducted in Cao Thang Technical College

Hence, this study suggests a broad research on surveying problems in learning listening comprehension and also applying some useful activities at the pre-listening stage and investigating their impact on improving learners’ listening skills

2.7 Summary

So far, Chapter Two has mentioned learner problems with top-down and

bottom-up processes after an overview about all its related aspects, namely definition of listening comprehension, nonreciprocal listening, and two listening

processes Then it continues with three top-down activities of predicting applied in teaching pre-listening stage to help listeners become more active in the process of comprehension Finally, the chapter reviews three typical previous theses relating to listening problems in the M.A program at University of Social Sciences and Humanities of HCMC

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research design and the methods employed to investigate the problem identified in Chapter One To achieve this aim, a survey was carried out first and then an experiment was proceeded

This chapter first gives a description of the study setting and its participants

It then continues with a detailed presentation of the procedure for distributing the questionnaire to identify learner problems with listening comprehension in class, carrying out experimental teaching, collecting the data about students’ performance (pre- and post-tests) and finally surveying the attitudes towards activities in the experimental teaching (questionnaire for learners and teachers)

3.1 Study setting

The study was carried out at CTTC learners from the General English program of A2 in the 35th course, which is compulsory for students of regular training modes

3.1.1 English program

According to the College’s regulation, at first, students have to take the placement test which is designed to arrange students into the appropriate levels (A1, A2 or A3) Based on the result of the test, students can enroll in the evening General English classes at CTTC’s Foreign Language Center or other centers Afterwards, they take the achievement tests at the end of the course

The A2 program consists of 6 following units, in which 5 units, from unit 8

to unit 12, are from the book “International Express Elementary” and unit 1 from

“International Express Pre-Intermediate” by Liz Taylor (2002) The contents are as

follows:

 Writing emails and faxes

 Modal Verbs: should / shouldn’t, may, can / can’t, have to / don’t have to

 Pronunciation : can / can’t

 Hotel file

 Invitations

 Suggestions

 Past simple and present perfect

 Present perfect with ever

 Pronunciation : weak forms of has / have

 Verbs with prepositions

 Confusing verbs

 Answerphone messages

 Emails and mobile phones

11 REACH FOR THE SKY

 Past simple passive

 Pronunciation : weak forms of was / were

 Word building

 Opinions

 Agreeing and disagreeing

 Tense review

 Describing people , places and things

 Pronunciation : word stress

 Social exchanges

 Focus on communication review

 Present simple , WH – questions

 Frequency adverbs

 Pronunciation : intonation of questions

 Personal information file

 Learning vocabulary

 English in the world

 Introductions , greetings and goodbyes

Table 3.1: Content of English program

3.1.2 Teachers

Most of them are experienced and enthusiastic teachers of English They have taught here for a long time and considered this center as their family That finding the effective ways of teaching to help their students who are not good at English is always their first priority, especially English listening

3.1.3 Students

At Cao Thang, students are taking part in the two-year (Trung cap) or year (Cao dang) programs Currently, the College offers degrees in such fields as electrical and electronic enineering, mechanical engineering, automotive engineering, information technology, and accounting

Specifically, the even class - the control group - was taught listening

comprehension with the bottom-up approach (i.e the text-based approach such as

pre-teaching vocabulary) in 72 periods during 9 weeks On the other hand, the odd

class - the experimental group - was also taught during the same time, but with the

top-down approach (i.e the student-based approach such as using quizzes, gap-fill

exercises, and board writing in pre-listening stage to predict the content of the listening passage more actively)

3.2.1 The Control Group

As shown in Table 3.2 below, the control group comprises 51 students, including 3 females (5.9%) and 48 males (94.1%) Among them, 21 students accounting for 41.2% learned the listening skill at high school whereas the rest of

30 occupying 58.8% did not learn this skill at high school

Participants Control Group – Even class

Table 3.2: The Control Group’s background information

3.2.2 The Experimental Group

In the same way, the Experimental Group was described in terms of number, gender and listening learning experience

As presented in Table 3.3, the total number of the students of this group was

49 with only one female (2%) and 48 males (98%)

In addition, most of the participants were not taught the English listening skill at high school Specifically, 27 ones occupying 55.1% did not learn this skill while 22 students learned, accounting for 44.9%

Participants Experimental Group – Odd class

3.3 Data types of methods of data collection

The data were collected from two sources: (i) questionnaires about student

problems with the process of listening comprehension and about learners’ and

teachers’ attitudes towards predicting activities after the experiment, and (ii) tests

reflecting learners’ performance before and after the application of these top-down activities