An investigation into the employment of pre listening strategies to teach listening to the 11th graders at an thoi high school m a 60 14 10

Therefore, this research aims to investigate the employment of pre-listening strategies to help improve students’ listening comprehension at An Thoi High School in Ben Tre Province.. Pre

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EMPLOYMENT

OF PRE-LISTENING STRATEGIES TO TEACH LISTENING

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements

of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By CHAU THI KHANH LINH

Supervised by Assoc Prof Dr NGUYEN THANH TUNG

HO CHI MINH CITY, MARCH 2012

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this thesis entitled “AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EMPLOYMENT OF PRE-LISTENING STRATEGIES TO TEACH LISTENING TO THE 11 th GRADERS AT AN THOI HIGH SCHOOL” is my

own work

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

other institutions

Ho Chi Minh City, 12th March, 2012

Chau Thi Khanh Linh

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RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Chau Thi Khanh Linh, being a candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan, and reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, 12th March, 2012

Chau Thi Khanh Linh

My special thanks go to all my teachers in the Department of English Linguistics and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University in Ho Chi Minh City, for their devotion and helpful instruction during the 2007 - 2010 TESOL course

I am greatly indebted to the teachers of English and students at An Thoi High School in Ben Tre Province who all have enthusiastically helped me accomplish this thesis

I would also like to express my thanks to my classmates of MA in TESOL at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities They shared with me both joys and sorrows during the course

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Last but not least, I am greatly grateful to my beloved parents, my brother and sister, and my friends who have constantly given me favor, sympathy and encouragement Without their kind help, I could never have completed the study

] ]

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ABSTRACT

A new series of English textbooks, from Grade 6 to Grade 12, has been used for several years with an emphasis on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to

meet the needs of the society The new textbook Tieng Anh 11 has come into

official use since the school year of 2007-2008 In this textbook, listening is one of the four skills which are developed separately in order to assist students in acquiring the language better However, there exists reluctance to use the communicative approach in teaching listening amongst high school teachers They did not want to use the pre-listening stage in the textbook in their teaching They also found that their students were not willing to participate in communicative activities because of the students’ lack of prior knowledge of the topic Hence both teachers and students ignore the importance of listening and lose interests in teaching and learning it for the reason that it is not included in the examinations at high school Therefore, this research aims to investigate the employment of pre-listening strategies to help improve students’ listening comprehension at An Thoi High School in Ben Tre Province

An experiment was employed with the participation of two separate groups of experiment and control Pre- and post-tests were used to explore students’ comprehension before and after the use of pre-listening strategies in teaching listening lessons with the help of a t-test analytical tool A copy of the questionnaire was delivered to the students in the experimental group after the teaching experiment to investigate their attitudes towards these strategies The findings showed that after the teaching program, there was a statistically

7 significant difference in means between the two groups Additionally, most students expressed their positive attitudes towards them

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of authorship i

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Acknowledgement s iii Abstract iv

Table of contents v

List of tables ix

List of charts x

List of abbreviations xi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Aim of the study 4

1.3 Research question 4

1.4 Significance of the research 4

1.5 Organization of the study 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Linguistic theory and listening comprehension 6

2.1.1 Definitions of listening 6

2.1.2 Schema theory 7

2.1.3 Listening as a bottom-up and top-down process 9

2.1.3.1 Listening as a bottom-up process 10

2.1.3.2 Listening as a top-down process 10

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2.2 Principles for listening teaching 11

2.2.1 Encouraging top-down processing 12

2.2.1.1 Content 12

2.2.1.2 Predictive skills 12

2.2.1.3 Purpose and expectations 13

2.2.2 The employment of pre-listening activities 14

2.2.2.1 Definition of pre-listening 14

2.2.2.2 The importance of pre-listening 15

2.2.2.3 Pre-listening activities 16

2.2.3 Empirical studies in the employment of pre-listening strategies to teach listening 21

2.3 Implications for listening teaching 23

2.3.1 Learning strategies 23

2.3.2 Top-down strategies 24

2.3.3 Pre-listening strategies 25

2.4 Summary 28

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research site 29

3.2 Participants 29

3.3 Data types 30

3.3.1 Experiment 31

3.3.1.1 Pre-test 31

3.3.1.2 Experimental teaching process 32

3.3.1.2.1 Preparation 32

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3.3.1.2.1.1 Selecting the listening lessons 33

3.3.1.2.1.2 Lesson plans 34

3.3.1.2.2 Teaching practice 35

3.3.1.3 Post-test 37

3.3.2 Questionnaire 37

3.4 Analytical framework 38

3.4.1 Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-tests 39

3.4.2 Quantitative analysis of questionnaire 40

3.5 Summary 41

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 42

4.1 Results from the experiment 42

4.1.1 Pre-test results 42

4.1.1.1 The control group 42

4.1.1.2 The experimental group 43

4.1.1.3 A comparison of the pre-test results 44

4.1.1.3.1 Score distribution 44

4.1.1.3.2 Mean 45

4.1.1.3.3 T-test 46

4.1.2 Post-test results 47

4.1.2.1 The control group 47

4.1.2.2 The experimental group 48

4.1.2.3 A comparison of the post-test results 49

4.1.2.3.1 Score distribution 49

4.1.2.3.2 Mean 50

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4.1.2.3.3 T-test 51

4.2 Results from questionnaire 52

4.2.1 Students’ perceptions of listening comprehension before the treatment 53

4.2.2 Students’ attitudes towards pre-listening strategies 55

4.2.2.1 The students’ preference for pre-listening strategies 56

4.2.2.2 Students’ evaluation of the usefulness of pre-listening strategies 56

4.2.2.3 Students’ enjoyment of pre-listening activities 58

4.2.2.4 Students’ evaluation of their present listening with pre-listening strategies 61

4.2.2.5 Students’ preference for listening learning with pre-listening strategies 63

4.3 Discussion 65

4.3.1 The experiment 65

4.3.2 The questionnaire 67

4.4 Summary 70

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 71

5.1 Answers to the research questions 71

5.2 Strengths and limitations 73

5.3 Recommendations for English language pedagogy 75

5.3.1 For teachers and administrators 75

5.3.2 For students 76

5.4 Suggestions for further research 77

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5.5 Summary 77

REFERENCES 79

APPENDICES 86

Appendix 1 Listening pre-test 86

Appendix 2 Listening post-test 89

Appendix 3 Lesson plans 92

Appendix 4 Questionnaire for students (in English version) 104

Appendix 5 Questionnaire for students (in Vietnamese version) 108

Appendix 6 Pre-test and post-test scores 113

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.2.2.3: Pre-listening activities 17

Table 2.2.3a: Pre-listening strategies 26

Table 2.3.3b: Pre-listening strategies and pre-listening activities used 27

Table 3.2: Students’ background information 30

Table 3.3.1.2.1.1a: Strategies used for each unit 33

Table 3.3.1.2.1.1b: Activities used for each unit 34

Table 4.1.1.1: Pre-test score analysis for control group 43

Table 4.1.1.2: Pre-test score analysis for experimental group 44

Table 4.1.1.3.1: Comparison of the pre-test scores between control and experimental group 45

Table 4.1.1.3.2: Experimental and control group statistics 45

Table 4.4.1.3.3: The output produced for the t-test analysis of the pre-test 46

Table 4.1.2.1: Post-test score analysis for control group 48

Table 4.1.2.2: Post-test score analysis for experimental group 49

Table 4.1.2.3.1: Results from the post-test scores between control and experimental group 50

Table 4.1.2.3.2: Experimental and control group statistics 51

Table 4.1.2.3.3: The output produced for the t-test analysis of the post-test 52

Table 4.2.2.2: Students’ evaluation of the usefulness of pre-listening strategies 57

Table 4.2.2.3: Students’ enjoyment of pre-listening activities 59

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LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.2.1a: Students’ view of the most difficult among the four skills 53 Chart 4.2.1b: Students’ interests in listening learning 54 Chart 4.2.1c: Students’ characterizing the level of the difficulty

of listening lessons 55 Chart 4.2.2.1: Students’ preference for pre-listening strategies 56 Chart 4.2.2.4a: Students’ evaluation of their present listening 61 Chart 4.2.2.4b: Comparison of students’ evaluation of their listening

before and after the treatment 62 Chart 4.2.2.5a: Students’ preference for listening learning with pre-listening

strategies 63 Chart 4.2.2.5b: Comparison of students’ preference for listening learning

before and after the treatment 64

DOET Department of Education and Training

BE2 Business English 2

DELL Department of English Linguistics and Literature

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

English has become an international language in this globalization era In Vietnam, English has maintained its dominant role as the first foreign language for the last ten years It is now increasingly used in nearly all aspects of daily life This has led to innovations in education, methodology and materials In order to keep pace with the current trend, the Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) introduced

a new English teaching curriculum and took responsibility for creating new textbooks

A new series of English textbooks, from Grade 6 to Grade 12, has gradually been used for several years The change is that speaking and listening components are included as equally important parts as reading and writing skills in the curriculum Its main objective is to help language learners to use English as a medium of communication with others after finishing high schools (MOET, 2006) Under this system, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been utilized and emphasized

in the new English teaching curriculum at high school

The new set of the textbook Tieng Anh 11 (MOET, 2007) has come into official use in

the whole country since the school year of 2007-2008 However, after three school years carrying out the new teaching curriculum with the CLT, high school teachers have found out that the results are not as expected They may not be familiar with developing the language skills separately They are still in a state of confusion in teaching skills At a local level, in relation to this study, there still exists reluctance to use the communicative approach in teaching listening amongst the teachers of English

at An Thoi High School (ATHS) Anecdotal evidence obtained through informal discussions with the teaching staff suggests that some teachers may not want to use

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the pre-listening stage in the textbook in their teaching because they think that it does not help at all and that it is only a waste of time They also maintain that to help students listen well the teacher only needs to provide them with a list of vocabulary and some structures extracted from the listening texts Other teachers have expressed their doubts about the effectiveness of the communicative approach when they found that, as Rao (1996, p 459) also notes, “their students were not willing to participate in communicative activities”, particularly in pre-listening activities

Reasons given for the above situation have been that the students lack prior knowledge of the topic, or that they lack the communication skills (Aebersold & Field, 1997, as cited in Farrell 2002, p 5), or that traditionally they tend to take a passive role in learning (Rao, 1996, p 459)

Another reason is that the content of the English tests in Vietnamese high schools focuses too much on grammatical patterns and highlights the rote-learning knowledge Despite the new teaching curriculum, most of the tests which students are supposed to take at the end of each semester in the school year as well as when finishing school are written Therefore, high school teachers only focus on teaching grammar, reading and writing to meet the requirement of the examinations

As stated by Ho (2005, p 2), a study done on checking and evaluating teaching and learning skills in all the secondary and high schools in Phu Yen Province, organized

by the Department of Education and Training (DOET), shows that the effectiveness of teaching and learning listening skill is the lowest Most of the teachers in high schools tend to make light of the importance of listening skill despite the fact that listening is the most fundamental skill to develop the other three (speaking, reading and writing) skills (Oxford, 1993) Indeed, they only cover the listening lessons by reading the tapescript themselves for students to do the tasks They seem not to have any interest

in teaching listening Therefore, the majority of high school students are not aware of

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the importance of listening They also lose interest in listening learning As a consequence, they are very passive in a listening class They want to listen well and try their best However, they cannot get much improvement They are then confused and become less confident and discouraged In other words, students find it hard to pay attention to the complete listening process Therefore, this skill becomes the most challenging for them to develop

In teaching listening, Underwood (1989) and Richards and Renandya (2002) have suggested that a good pattern for a listening session should include three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening stage is extremely essential for teaching and learning listening In most listening classes at high schools in Vietnam, however, little attention is paid to pre-listening strategies to activate students’ background knowledge before they listen Very few activities which are not enough to make the class more interested and motivated are used at the pre-listening stage In fact, Nguyen (2008, p 2) showed in her study that pre-listening strategies are not exploited sufficiently and appropriately

to prepare students for some ideas of what they expect to hear

Looking back to some recent studies done in the Vietnamese context on the topic of listening, the researcher found that for the importance and difficulty of listening, there have been several studies on listening learning in general However, very few studies focus on pre-listening stage for high school students This reality stimulates the researcher to conduct a study on the employment of pre-listening strategies in high school

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1.2 Aim of the study

The aim of this study is to investigate the educational value of employing listening strategies in the teaching and learning of listening Two objectives in relation

pre-to this aim are about students’ achievement and their feelings pre-towards these strategies

2 What are students’ attitudes towards pre-listening strategies?

1.4 Significance of the study

This study focuses on using pre-listening strategies as a means to facilitate the process

of teaching and learning listening comprehension Hopefully, the findings of the study and its teaching suggestions may contribute to the improvement of high school students’ listening ability

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In addition, it is hoped that this study may encourage teachers to provide various, appropriate and interesting pre-listening strategies to make sure that students are engaged with the topic and are made ready to listen (Harmer, 1998, p 100)

1.5 Organization of the study

This study consists of five chapters Followed by an overall introduction in Chapter 1, the second chapter presents a review of literature relevant to the present study It specifically deals with theories of schema and theories in listening comprehension, their principles for language teaching and implications for listening teaching The third chapter justifies the methodology including participants, instrumentations and data analysis method The findings of the study are presented and some discussions provided in the fourth chapter The last chapter of the study contains conclusions, limitations of the present study, recommendations for English language practitioners and suggestions for future research

According to Howatt and Dakin (1978), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This process involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his or her grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously Pearson and Fielding (1983) define that listening involves the simultaneous orchestration of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics, and knowledge of text structure all of which seem to be controlled by the same set of cognitive processes Coakley and Wolvin (1986) suggest that listening comprehension in a second language is the process of receiving, focusing attention on, and assigning meaning to

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aural stimuli It includes a listener, who brings prior knowledge of the topic, linguistic knowledge and cognitive processes to the listening task, the aural text, and the interaction between the two Similarly, O’Malley and Chamot (1989, p 420) present that listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement

Later, according to Buck (2001, p 2), listening comprehension is really a bidirectional process of acquisition This is a combination of both listening and exposing the information or data with comprehending-decoding the acoustic signals and then catching the content of the data and scoring in the long-term memory Listening, then,

is a complex, active processive interpretation in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know

From the above definitions, we can come to the conclusion that listening is a process which involves understanding speakers’ accent or pronunciation and their grammar and vocabulary It also involves activating schematic knowledge or bringing the listener’s prior knowledge to the comprehension of the listening text To offer a clearer understanding of the schematic knowledge, it may be necessary to have a closer look at schema theory

2.1.2 Schema theory

According to Carrell and Eisterhold (1983, as cited in Celce-Murcia & Olshtain,

2000, p 102) schematic knowledge is generally thought of as prior knowledge Thus before we come to schema theory, it is important to discuss prior knowledge

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There are many definitions of prior knowledge from the dictionary and from the theorists According to Farrell (2004), prior knowledge is the knowledge which the learner has prior to engaging himself or herself in the lesson, sometimes referred to as schema It is important to activate prior knowledge before the lesson This allows students to connect what they are learning with what they already know Additionally,

a discussion of prior knowledge alerts the teacher to gaps in their knowledge or misconceptions they have

As cited in Flippo and Caverly (2009), such theorists as Dochy, Grabowski, and Jonassen state that prior knowledge includes “the knowledge, skills, or ability” that students bring to the learning process and that it includes both “declarative and procedural knowledge” When the teacher links new information to the students’ prior knowledge, he or she activates their interest and curiosity, and infuses instruction with

a sense of purpose Therefore, providing students with strategies to activate their prior knowledge base is what the teacher has to do before the lesson This is one way he or she can have a positive influence on comprehension in the classroom

The term schema was first used by the psychologist Bartlett (1932) who studied the

role of memory and language processing in a natural context Schema refers to an organized structure of knowledge consisting of past experiences stored in our long-term memory Additionally, Carrel and Eisterhold (1983) define schemata as the structure of background knowledge that a learner has acquired previously According

to Nunan (1993), schema theory is viewed as a framework that organizes knowledge

in our heads into interrelated patterns “These are constructed from all our previous experiences and they enable us to make predictions about future experience” (Nunan,

1993, p 71) Also, Nunan (1999, p 201) claims that “schema theory is based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experience” Moreover, according to Wallace (1998), the listener

& Olshtain, 2000, p 103) The meaning of a text is the result of collision between learners’ world knowledge and the text’s information Many learners have wondered that they have no difficulty in understanding each word in a sentence, but they are not able to figure out the sentence as a whole unit The reason why listeners sometimes fail to understand a sentence or a passage as a whole unit even if they hear every word

in it is that they lack background knowledge, without which they can only get the superficial and literal meaning According to Nunan (1999), the activation of schemata is the preparing period of people’s understanding, which can not only help them predict the main content of a passage they are going to listen to but also improve the quality of listening In that light, Wilson (2008, p 15) points out that activating the students’ schemata allows them to tune in to the topic and helps them to develop their expectations of the input, a crucial factor in getting them to predict content

2.1.3 Listening as a bottom-up and top-down process

Nunan (1999, p 200) states that there are two views of listening that have dominated language pedagogy over the last twenty years These are the “bottom-up” processing view and the “top-down” interpretation view The following sub-sections are a discussion of these views As the study focuses on pre-listening activities, we will look more closely at top-down processing view

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2.1.3.1 Listening as a bottom-up process

The first model of listening to be developed was the bottom-up model It was developed by researchers in the 1940s and 1950s (Richard, 2005, p 24) Since then, several linguists and researchers have studied this model Nunan (1999, p 200) said that the process view of bottom-up listening comprehension is a linear one, in which

“meaning itself is derived as the last step in the process” Buck (2001, p 200) presented that bottom-up processing refers to the use of incoming data as a source of information about the meaning of a message It involves identifying and distinguishing sounds, words, structures, grammar, and other features of the message such as stress and intonation This process is closely associated with the listener’s linguistic knowledge However, bottom-up processing has its weak points If the listeners understand very few words from the incoming signal, they often revert to their knowledge of the topic and situation and use top-down processing to compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processing

2.1.3.2 Listening as a top-down process

Top-down processing view suggests that the listener actively constructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues (Nunan, 1999, p 200) The listener uses background knowledge or previous experience of the situation, context, etc to arrive at comprehension Moreover, Carrell and Eisterhold (1983, p 557) point out that in top-down processing, the system makes general predictions based on “a higher level, general schemata, and then searches the input for information to fit into these practically satisfied, higher order schemata” In terms of listening, the listener actively constructs (or reconstructs) the original meaning of the speaker employing new input as clues In this reconstruction process, the listener employs prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening occurs to understand what he/she hears Similarly, Nation and Newton (2009, p 40) state that

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top-down processing involves the listener in going from the whole – their prior knowledge and their content and rhetorical schemata – to the parts In other words, listeners use what they know of the content of communication to predict what the message will contain, and uses parts of the message to confirm, correct or add to this Buck (2001, p 3) has a well-known example to make it clearer If we hear the

following uncompleted sentence, ‘she was so angry; she picked up the gun, aimed

and _’ (adapted from Grosjean, 1980), we know what is going to happen, and we

probably need very little acoustic information to understand the final word, be it

‘fired’, ‘shot’ or whatever As we listen, we will expect a word such as fired, and we

will probably process only enough of the sound to confirm our expectations, or we may not even bother to listen to the last word at all Our background knowledge about guns and what angry people do with them helps us to determine what the word is

To sum up, there are two distinct processes involved in listening comprehension The bottom-up model emphasizes the decoding of the smallest units – phonemes and syllables – to lead us towards meaning The top-down model emphasizes the use of background knowledge to predict content However, researchers such as Buck (2001), Ellis (2003), Eysenck (2001), and Nunan (2002) state that listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up processing It is an interactive, interpretive process where listeners employ both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge to make sense

of the incoming message (Nunan, 2001) As presented in the introduction, the aim of the study is to investigate the employment of pre-listening strategies; hence top-down model should be considered as a focus of the study

2.2 Principles for listening teaching

Researchers have proved that there are some basic principles that apply to listening teaching They are encouraging top-down processing and the employment of pre-listening activities which will be discussed in the following parts/

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2.2.1 Encouraging top-down processing

According to Wilson (2008, p 15), the top-down process is based, at least in part, on the listener; much of the comprehension relies on what happens in the mind before the listening has ever begun He also states that recent research suggests that it is often the top-down approach that causes mistakes in listening tasks, a typical occurrence being that the students know the topic, hear some familiar vocabulary and make wild guesses about the content Therefore, top-down processing should be encouraged in the listening lesson, especially at the pre-listening stage That is to say, before students listen the teacher should activate their background knowledge by using pre-listening activities

2.2.1.1 Content

Very often we listen to something because it interests us – or at least we think it will interest us Thus the listening texts in the classroom should be interesting enough for learners to listen to Gower (1995, p 88) suggests that the teacher should choose a text which will interest the students and formulate aims that are suitable for their level and needs He also added that it is necessary to motivate the students by choosing texts that are interesting Before a listening activity, therefore, students should be encouraged to think about and discuss what they are going to hear Additionally, prompts such as realia, visual, questions, and reference to the students’ experiences should be used to arouse their interest and activate any knowledge they have about the topic

2.2.1.2 Predictive skills

According to Harmer (1998, p 183), listeners employ a number of specialist skills when listening and one of the most important skills is predictive skill Efficient

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listeners predict what they are going to hear; the process of understanding the text is the process of seeing how the content of the text matches up to these predictions Consequently, one of the main functions of the pre-listening stage when teaching listening is to encourage predictive skills

2.2.1.3 Purpose and expectations

According to Harmer (1998, p 182) when dealing with listening we need to address the issues of purpose In real life people generally listen to something because they want to and because they have a purpose in doing so Similarly, Ur (2000, p 107) added that the listener almost always knows in advance something about what is going to be said, for example, the speaker or the basic topic Another characteristic of listening outside the classroom is that people will have expectations of what they are going to listen to before they actually do so (Harmer, 1998, p 182) And they expect

to hear something relevant to the purpose

We have just mentioned that people usually listen to something because they have the desire to do so and some purpose to achieve In teaching listening, therefore, Harmer (1998, p 188) stated that the methodology must reflect these facts about real life, and the task we ask students to perform must be sufficiently realistic and motivating for them to perceive a useful purpose for listening

We all know that classroom listening is not real-life listening However, in order to provide students with training in listening comprehension that will prepare them for effective functioning outside the classroom, activities should give them practice in coping with at least some of the features of real-life situations (Ur, 2000, p 107) First, a purpose for listening must be established so that students know the specific information they need to listen for and/or the degree of detail required Second, learners should have in advance some idea about the kind of text they are going to

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hear Thus the listening tasks given should activate their relevant schemata and enable them to use their previous knowledge to help comprehend the listening text That is to say the top-down processing strategies must be employed at the first stage of the listening lesson

2.2.2 The employment of pre-listening activities

As presented in the introduction, the aim of the study is to focus on employing listening strategies Therefore, in order to help learners practice these strategies, pre-listening activities should be exploited sufficiently in teaching listening

pre-2.2.2.1 Definition of pre-listening

This is a stage when the context of the listening text is established, the task explained and assistance offered as necessary (Underwood, 1989, p 28) According to him, it is unfair to plunge students straight into the listening text as this makes it extremely difficult for them to use the natural listening skills (which we all use in our native language) of matching what we hear with what they expect to hear and using their previous knowledge to make sense of it So, before listening, they should be ‘tuned in’ so that they know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks This kind of preparatory work is generally described as ‘pre-listening work’ or just ‘pre-listening’

Similarly, Harmer (1998, p 100) holds that 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, to be in a position to predict what is coming Teachers should do their best to get them engaged with the topic and the task so that they really want to listen

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2.2.2.2 The importance of pre-listening

Pre-listening is a very important stage for it aims to generate interest, build confidence and to facilitate comprehension (Berman, 2003) Many students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something that they have little understanding of and interest in So pre-listening firstly aims to spark interest and motivate students to do listening tasks from the spoken message When they are able

to relate the listening experience to their own lives, they are more eager to listen actively to what the speaker has to say Secondly, pre-listening aims to build their confidence For them, a large number of unknown words will often hinder listening, and certainly lower confidence Therefore, they need to brainstorm language beforehand, and then perform the scene Additionally, according to Lindsay and Knight (2006, p 49), pre-listening helps focus students’ attention on the topic, activate any knowledge they have about the topic and make it clear what they have to

do while they listen

Similarly, Underwood (1989) claims that pre-listening is extremely essential for the teaching and learning of listening A language teacher needs to be creative and flexible not only to form the activities appropriate with the purpose of listening, but to exploit the learners’ prior knowledge and language competence as well They feel more confident when they are aware of what they are hearing and why they are hearing Pressure of listening is decreasing and the listeners become active in thinking and using their insights It is helpful to focus at first on providing considerable pre-listening activities so that the students can achieve a high level of success and thus become so confident that they can listen effectively

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2.2.2.3 Pre-listening activities

Pre-listening is a stage at which the learners prepare before listening, so the activities used at this stage are considered to provide an opportunity to gain some knowledge which will help them follow the listening text According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening activities usually have two primary goals: (1) to bring to consciousness the tools and strategies that good listeners use when listening, and (2) to provide the necessary context for that specific listening task The pre-listening activities help to activate students' prior knowledge, build up their expectations for the coming information and sometimes even give them a framework of the coming passage In this way we can help our students to comprehend the listening text better

As emphasized by Johnson (2001), pre-listening activities play an important role in teaching listening as a way of developing the habit of activating schemata to assist understanding Rost (2000) also states that pre-listening activities can not only motivate students and change them from passive to active participants but also increase language input efficiently and facilitate foreign language listening comprehension if well-designed As displayed in Table 2.2.2.3 on page 17, pre-listening activities are suggested by different researchers However, these researchers have many activities in common In a listening lesson, teachers usually employ these activities in the pre-listening stage

According to Underwood (1989, p 33), the choice of these activities depends on a number of factors such as the time available, the material available, the ability of the class, the interest of the class, the interest of the teacher, the place in which the work

is being carried out, and the nature and content of the listening text itself Of these factors, the nature and content of the listening text are very important When choosing pre-listening activities, therefore, the teacher needs to be creative and flexible to select activities appropriate to these factors, especially to the nature and content of the

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listening itself Additionally, he or she needs to prepare the activities of pre-listening step as carefully as possible Learners have to be equipped with a variety of activities which can bring advantages for the next steps Moreover, the pre-listening process should not last longer than the actual listening activity Finally, the activities should not be too demanding; otherwise, the students will lose their interests

Table 2.2.2.3: Pre-listening activities

The current study focuses on pre-listening strategies and activities, so the following section is a more careful look on these pre-listening activities

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 Brainstorming: Underwood (1989) states that brainstorming some vocabulary

for students to study before listening helps them concentrate on the overall meaning because they know the meaning of vocabulary Wilson (2008) presents that the first goal of brainstorming is to generate large numbers of ideas based on a topic or a problem Initially, all contributions are accepted without criticism The next stage involves whittling the ideas down to those which may be practically applicable Brainstorming is a particularly useful thing to do before listening to factual passages with one main topic (Wilson, 2008) It is also considered that brainstorming is a good way to activate students’ schemata Wilson suggests a few ways to do brainstorming in class in order to activate students’ schemata

 Poster display: This activity involves students in groups making a

poster based on a given topic A time limit on this activity tends to keep them focused The logical conclusion to the exercise is to do what we usually do with posters: Stick them on the wall The teacher and students then wander around the classroom looking at the posters The listening passage will touch on many of the words/ideas in the posters and, of course, the students will be prepared for these words/ideas, having thought about them, written them down and read them

 Board writing: The 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 If the students are all brainstorming the same topic, they first 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 An alternative is to give the students different questions based on the same topic They may then work in groups to formulate ideas first or

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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

 Shout to the scribe: A variation of the above is for the students to call

out ideas which the teacher writes on the board This saves time and ensures correct spelling and grammar, which the students may choose to copy down (p 65)

 Informal teacher talk and class discussion: According to Underwood (1989,

p 43), this is a very common form of pre-listening activity Teachers generally give their students some background information, begin to talk about the topic and indicate what they should expect to hear A pair-work or group-work discussion will bring them into the topic, and make them more willing to listen Additionally, teachers can use this activity to motivate them by making them feel that the actual listening text is really interesting / exciting / amazing To carry out informal teacher talk and class discussion, Lindsay (2006) suggests teachers give students information about the context, for example, who is talking and where they are

 Visuals: Wilson (2008, p 65) states that used in pre-listening activities, visuals

have many advantages: They are immediate and evocative; hence there is an axiom: ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ Furthermore, many students have

a visual learning style; they learn better when seeing images that correspond to the things being taught Visuals can help activate the schemata relating to any theme and any type of a listening passage

 Looking at pictures before listening: According to Underwood

(1989), looking at pictures may raise students’ interest or remind them

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of something relating to the topic Furthermore, Wilson (2008) states that pictures can be used to help them recognize the lesson theme He also adds that in a coursebook there may be no overt reference in the rubric to any pictures on the page, but a picture still sends out a message about the topic of the lesson The students can simply look at the picture and guess what the listening text will be about

 Looking at diagrams before listening: Wilson (2008, p 68) points out

that looking at a chart, table or graph provides a conceptual framework for students’ listening Their task is to complete it or change incorrect information

 Discussion: According to Field (2002), an extended discussion of the topic can

result in much of the content of the listening passage being anticipated It is important for students to be able to relate what they already know to the speaker’s content When their prior knowledge about the speaker’s topic is activated or built by the teacher, they begin to predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information

 Giving some background information: Underwood (1989) states that

teachers can provide the appropriate background information including information about the speaker, topic of the presentation, purpose of the presentation, and the concepts and vocabulary that are likely to be embedded in the presentation

 Pre-teaching vocabulary: Wilson (2008, p 76) states that if the teacher thinks

that there are a number of words that will be unknown to the students, and that these words are essential to the meaning of the passage or to the completion of

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the set task, it is probably better to pre-teach them Besides being an essential step towards an understanding of the passage, pre-teaching words may also give students confidence as well as potentially useful information about the topic

 Speculating on what students will hear: According to Underwood (1989)

students can be told something about the speaker(s) and the topic and then asked to suggest what they are likely to hear in the listening text He also adds that this is a useful activity with adult students who are perhaps more interested

in speculating on the likely behavior of individuals in particular situations Besides, Berman (2003) states that predicting the themes and vocabulary of a lecture before listening can help to improve students’ comprehension of difficult listening segments When we are listening, we generally have an idea about what we are going to hear, whether it is the answer to a question we have asked, or part of a talk or lecture in an area we are studying

 Following the instructions for the while-listening activity: Underwood

(1989) states that the instructions may provide an overview of the presentation, its main ideas, questions to be answered while listening, a summary of the presentation, or an outline In addition, Lindsay and Knight (2006) suggests making sure learners understand what they have to do while they are listening:

Do they have to do something, write something, draw something, and so on? If teachers give them some comprehension questions to answer, they need to read them and check they understand them before they hear the text

2.2.3 Empirical studies in the employment of pre-listening strategies to teach

listening

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As mentioned in the introduction of the thesis, although there have been several studies on listening learning in general, very few studies focus on each listening stage, especially pre-listening stage In the English Resource Center of DELL, only two studies on pre-listening can be found

The first study was done by Nguyen Thi Thuy Loan at Vietnamese Australian Educational Alliance Program – Ho Chi Minh University of Industry The aim of this study is to explore the impact of pre-listening strategy instruction on improving non-English-majored students’ listening skill The experiment was carried out with the participants of two business administration classes The data collected through the questionnaire, the pre-test and the post-test revealed that pre-listening strategy instruction positively influenced students’ consciousness in strategy use and pre-listening strategy use improved their listening skill

The second study was done by Tran Thi Dung to examine how to improve the competence of first-year students’ listening comprehension at the Faculty of Economics, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City in the light of applying pre-listening activities at the preparatory stage in the listening process (Tran, 2010)

On this purpose, the researcher collected data through the analysis of two sets of questionnaires for 203 first-year students of BE2 and all of the teachers in charge of BE2 Additionally, the interview was conducted for the students sample and the informal interview was also conducted for 5 teachers From the data collection, it led

to the findings that pre-listening activities helped the students become active participants, facilitate their comprehension, activate their background knowledge and increase the input

As such, the two studies presented were carried in the context of university Being different than them, the present study focuses on the employment of pre-listening strategies in the context of high school

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2.3 Implications for listening teaching

On the basis of the above analysis, we will discuss some suggestions on how to improve the teaching and learning of listening comprehension Studies carried out on listening strategy used suggest that students could indeed be instructed in strategy use

to enhance their performance on listening tasks Hence the following sub-sections will present strategies in teaching and learning listening They are learning strategies, top-down strategies and pre-listening strategies

2.3.1 Learning strategies

There are several definitions of learning strategies in the literature Firstly, Tarone (1983, p 67) defines them as “an attempt to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language” Weinstein and Mayer (1986, p 315) define them broadly as “behaviors and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning” which are “intended to influence the learner’s encoding process” Mayer (1988, p 11) more specifically defines them as “behaviors of a learner that are intended to influence how the learner processes information” O’Malley and Chamot (1990, p 1) state them as

“techniques, approaches or deliberate actions that students take in order to facilitate the learning, recall of both linguistic and content area information” Oxford (1992/1993, p 18) defines them as:

specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques that students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing L2 skills These strategies can facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use of the new language Strategies are tools for the self-directed involvement necessary for developing communicative ability

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Researchers hold the view that good listeners need different sub-skills according to different kinds of text they are listening to and the reasons for listening to it Of course, no one will be very good at these skills to begin with, it is teachers who need

to teach students strategies for coping with what they have missed or misunderstood (Euck, 2001) The teachability of strategies has also been proved by some researchers They have come to realize that language learning will be facilitated if learners are more aware of the range of possible strategies that they can select during language learning and language use

2.3.2 Top-down strategies

Traditionally, the listener was regarded as a tape-recorder and the listener took in and stored aural messages in much the same way as a tape-recorder (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) According to this view, the bottom-up processing played a key role in listening comprehension However, it is believed that in understanding a listening text a lot more is going on than just passively decoding the sounds, then the words, and then the sentences Our mind works actively to interpret the text and uses a large amount of non-textual information to do so Since the mid-20th century, research into the listening process has led to our recognition of the importance of top-down processing

According to the top-down processing, the listener employs background knowledge in comprehending the meaning of a message This background knowledge activates a set

of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next In that light, in order to help the listener activate the background knowledge, top-down strategies should be used effectively Brown (2001) and Peterson (1991) suggest top-down strategies include predicting, recognizing the topic, drawing inferences, and getting the gist

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It can be said that the key to listening comprehension lies in the activation of the students’ stored knowledge Teachers can easily help them achieve this through pre-listening activities In order to use pre-listening activities effectively, appropriate strategies should be taken into consideration in the listening lesson In teaching listening, three types of strategies are suggested, namely pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening strategies (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Harmer, 1991; Lee & VanPatten, 1995; Richards & Renandya, 2002; Underwood, 1989) The following section is a discussion of pre-listening strategies

2.3.3 Pre-listening strategies

Pre-listening is a stage at which the learners prepare before listening, so the strategies used at this stage are considered to indirectly influence listening to the text Researchers investigated various pre-listening strategies which second language learners use when listening In general, these expressions overlap and can be summed

up in the five main pre-listening strategies that the researcher of the current study mainly focuses on Table 2.3.3a on page 26 presents the researchers and their pre-listening strategies

The first strategy is being comfortable and self-confident before doing a listening task (Chamot, 1995; Fujita, 1984; Oxford, 1990; Vandergrift, 1992) Fujita (1984) found that before doing a listening task, successful listeners felt comfortable and self-confident Listeners need to be attentive and put distractions and problems aside

The second strategy is setting purposes for listening (King, 1984; Oxford, 1990) When students set purposes for listening, they become active listeners who listen for something, not to it This enhances their comprehension and retention