A survey of teaching english listening skill to the tenth graders at tan ke high school ben tre province m a 60 14 10

35Table 4.1: Teachers' response to preparation of teaching listening comprehension 44 Table 4.2: Students' response to learning the listening lessons .... One of the primary aims of the

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

A SURVEY OF TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING

SKILL TO THE TENTH GRADERS

AT TAN KE HIGH SCHOOL – BEN TRE PROVINCE

Submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

A SURVEY OF TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL TO THE TENTH GRADERS AT TAN KE HIGH SCHOOL – BEN TRE PROVINCE

in terms of the statement of requirements for

Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the High Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2012

NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA

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RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, accept the requirements of the school for the retention and use of Master’s Theses 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 the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for care, loan or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2012

NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Lê Hoàng Dũng, who read my manuscript with great care and devotion, gave me thoughtful comments, and provided me with valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis Without his encouragement and constant guidance, I could not have finished this thesis

My thanks also go to the authors for the ideas quoted in the thesis Their books are a great source for me to produce my M.A thesis

I am also grateful to Mr Huỳnh Phong Nhuận, my dear classmate and also

my helpful monitor, who gave me useful ideas without which it would be hard for

me to find out the right way to develop my thesis

I owe my thanks to all teachers and learners who were willing to respond to

my questionnaires, especially to the teachers who offered favorable conditions for

my data collection

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Lê Thị Mỹ Lệ, for her love, support, and encouragement during the time I attended the course and did the thesis

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY II RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV TABLE OF CONTENTS V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS IX LIST OF TABLES X LIST OF FIGURES XI ABSTRACT XII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Purpose of the study 4

1.3 Research questions 5

1.4 Significance of the study 5

1.5 Limitation of the study 5

1.6 Overview of the thesis 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Understanding spoken English 7

2.1.1 Listening skills in English learning 7

2.1.2 Importance of listening skill 8

2.1.3 Process models of listening 9

2.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing 9

2.1.3.2 Top-down processing 9

2.1.3.3 Interactive processing 10

2.1.4 A skills-based model of listening-centered communication 10

2.2 Teachers’ role in developing listening tasks 12

2.3 Effective teaching of listening 13

2.4 Stages in teaching listening comprehension 15

2.4.1 Pre-listening stage 15

2.4.2 While-listening stage 16

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2.4.3 Post-listening stage 18

2.5 Some hypothetical problems in EFL listening 20

2.5.1 Listening problems that emerge from the pre-listening stage 20

2.5.1.1 Background knowledge of culture and context 20

2.5.1.2 Listeners’ limited word stock 21

2.5.1.3 Lack of visual support 21

2.5.2 Listening problems that emerge from the while-listening stage 22

2.5.2.1 Pronunciation 22

2.5.2.2 Speech rate 23

2.5.2.3 Accent 24

2.5.2.4 Listening in the passive position 24

2.5.2.5 Failure to concentrate 25

2.5.3 Listening problems that emerge from the post-listening stage 25

2.5.3.1 Memory 25

2.5.3.2 Shyness to present the listening ideas in front of the class 26

2.5.3.3 Receiving feedback 26

2.5.3.4 Combining listening with other skills 27

2.5.3.5 Fatigue 27

2.6 Strategies of listening comprehension 28

2.7 Previous researches concerning to listening and listening teaching 30

2.8 Summary 32

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 36

3.1 Research design 36

3.2 Subjects of the study 36

3.2.1 Students 36

3.2.2 Teachers 37

3.3 Data collection instruments 37

3.3.1 Questionnaires 38

3.3.1.1 Questionnaire for teachers 38

3.3.1.2 Questionnaire for students 38

3.3.2 Classroom observation 39

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3.4 Data collection procedure 39

3.5 Summary 42

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 43

4.1 Data analysis 43

4.1.1 Preparation of teaching listening comprehension 43

4.1.2 Teaching practices in a listening session 47

4.1.2.1 Teaching practices at the pre-listening stage 47

4.1.2.2 Teaching practices at the while-listening stage 51

4.1.2.3 Teaching practices at the post-listening stage 54

4.1.3 Difficulties in listening to English 58

4.1.3.1 Difficulties at the pre-listening stage 58

4.1.3.2 Difficulties at the while-listening stage 60

4.1.3.3 Difficulties at the post-listening stage 61

4.2 Discussion of results 63

4.3 Summary of findings 65

CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 67

5.1 Suggestions 67

5.1.1 Suggestions to the administrators at TKHS 67

5.1.1.1 Updates on knowledge of language teaching methodology and necessary equipment should be provided adequately 67

5.1.1.2 In-service training in pedagogical procedures related to the listening skills should be organized 68

5.1.1.3 Listening should be officially made one of the assessment criteria in English tests and exams 68

5.1.2 Suggestions to the students at TKHS 69

5.1.2.1 Students should have proper attitudes towards learning listening comprehension at TKHS 69

5.1.2.2 Students should have right ways to learn and practice listening skill 70

5.1.3 Suggestions to the teachers at TKHS 70

5.1.3.1 Teachers should improve teaching method of listening skill 70

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5.1.3.2 Teachers should alter their attitudes towards teaching

listening comprehension in a positive way 71

5.1.3.3 Teachers should help students change their attitudes towards English listening learning at TKHS 71

5.1.3.4 Teachers should really teach listening skills rather than test them 71

5.1.3.5 Teachers should spend a little time explaining the nature and processes of listening to their learners and guiding them how to listen to English 72

5.1.3.6 Some listening exercises need to be adjusted to suit students’ ability 73

5.1.3.7 Teachers should teach English listening strategies to their students 74

5.1.3.7.1 Pre-listening strategies 74

5.1.3.7.2 Finding out main ideas 75

5.1.3.7.3 Identifying the relationships of ideas 75

5.1.3.7.4 Determining word stress that is critical for successful communication 76

5.1.3.7.5 Note-taking 76

5.1.4 Summary of suggestions 77

5.2 Conclusion and recommendation for further research 79

5.2.1 Conclusion 79

5.2.2 Recommendation for further research 80

References 82

Appendix 1 QUESTIONNAIRE TO TEACHER RESPONDENTS 89

Appendix 2 QUESTIONNAIRE TO STUDENT RESPONDENTS 92

Appendix 3 PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT (Dành cho học sinh) 95

Appendix 4 OBSERVATION CHECKLIST 98

Appendix 5 Frequency of the observed actual teaching practices of listening 100 Appendix 6 Summary of the observed practices in five levels of frequency 101

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BA Bachelor of Arts

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ELT English Language Teaching

MA Master of Arts

TESOL Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages TKHS Tan Ke High School

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Summary of some listening teaching activities and expected output to

students 33 Table 2.2: Summary of some common hypothetical difficulties in teaching English

listening skill 35Table 4.1: Teachers' response to preparation of teaching listening comprehension 44 Table 4.2: Students' response to learning the listening lessons 46 Table 4.3: Teachers' and students' responses concerning the teaching practices at the

pre-listening stage 48 Table 4.4: Teacher's and students' responses regarding the teaching practices at the

while-listening stage 52 Table 4.5: Teacher's and students' responses about the teaching practices at the

post-listening stage 55 Table 4.6: Summary of findings from listening teaching activities 66 Table 5.1: Summary of some suggestions about listening teaching activities 78

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: The HURIER listening model (Brownell, 2010: 145) 11 Figure 3.1: Summary of research procedure 41Figure 4.1: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the pre-listening

stage 59 Figure 4.2: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the while-listening

stage 60 Figure 4.3: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the post-listening

stage 61

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ABSTRACT

Although listening comprehension is generally recognized as one of the most important skills in learning English, it has been one of the most neglected fields to senior high school students, which leads to a worrying result – learners’ failure in conversational exchanges with native speakers of English after seven years of learning English In this study, an attempt was made to investigate the classroom listening comprehension teaching practices of Grade 10 teachers in relation to a new textbook and the students’ difficulties

The required data for the study were collected using questionnaires and classroom observations All eight English teachers at Tan Ke High School (abbreviated to TKHS) were requested to complete the questionnaire To cross-check the information given by the teachers, a similar questionnaire was administered to 120 students Among the eight teacher subjects, four teachers teaching the tenth grade were observed (four times each) to see how the listening lessons were actually happening

After the data were gathered, descriptive analysis such as frequency and percentage was used to analyze the participants’ responses and classroom observation The analysis revealed that there has been a gap between the teaching practices implemented by the teachers and the pedagogical procedures favored by the course designers for teaching the listening sections of the new textbook Though the teachers said that they have been using the communicative approach, the students’ responses and the classroom observation results indicated a mismatch between what actually happened in the listening classes and what has been proposed in teaching the skill Accordingly, lack of in-service training on how the new textbook should be implemented and the introduction of the new textbooks, essential equipment for presenting the listening lessons, and motivation and commitment on the part of the teachers appear to be the major causes for the teachers’ failure to execute the suggested teaching approach and procedures

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Finally, it has been recommended that in order to develop teachers’ awareness of the communicative language teaching approach, officials at the Ministry of Education and Training, school administrators, and the teachers themselves should take responsibilities to organize practice-based in-service development programs and to assess learners’ listening competence Besides that, the students should also pay much attention to learning listening skills and realize its importance so that they are self-aware of practicing listening every day with the proper listening strategies Moreover, the listening materials should be adjusted for improving the students’ needs and ability Also, school libraries and audiovisual centers should be better equipped with current reference materials on language teaching methodology and equipment that are useful for teaching listening comprehension

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The thesis has carried out a survey of teaching and learning listening comprehension at Tan Ke High School and is intended primarily for the teachers and students here This introduction chapter presents the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims of the thesis, the research questions, and a discussion on the significance of the study

1.1 Rationale of the study

Since the academic year 2006-2007, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has released a new textbook1 for the study of foreign languages in senior high schools One of the primary aims of the new curriculum discussed in teaching English language with a communicative purpose in Vietnam is to require teachers to attend to speaking and listening skills in lessons (Teacher’s Book, Grade

10, 2007, 3-4) and to place greater emphasis on the communicative ability attained

by the learners As a result, effective listening becomes one of the determinants of the students’ success or failure

However, when the researcher of the study has clearly observed the problem

at TKHS, he finds out that the tenth graders’ abilities to listen to and understand English seem to be inadequate Some learners frequently feel bored and lack concentration in their listening learning, but they cannot know how to improve the difficult situation A manifestation of the problem is that there are often students absent from class, and even for those who come to class: Some of them are frequently absent-minded, and some even doze off in class The students, as explained by them, have found the listening class both boring and difficult to absorb knowledge Moreover, many satisfactorily unanswered questions such as “I don’t know how to improve my listening skills Can you help me?”; “I can get

1

Ministry of Education and Training (2009) Tiếng Anh 10 Edudcation Publishing

House

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better at speaking, reading, and writing but cannot enhance listening How to learn the skill better?” and “How can I listen to the native speakers effectively?” are regularly arisen from the learners Also, many students appear to be strange about listening to key information The students have difficulty in improving listening skills

Some other students are not equipped enough general knowledge of the listening work They are familiar with listening freely without thinking of a topic and without activating background knowledge Indeed, instead of paying much attention to the helpful factors besides a language to compensate for the lack of linguistic understanding, the learners just only wait to get information hastily from listening texts, and they seem to ignore the questions which are issued in the preparation process of listening However, it is the exercise information framework that assists them to predict effectively what they must face at the while-listening stage Moreover, when listening to English, the students often claim that they cannot keep up with speakers’ speed and frequently miss the next part because of desperately trying to get the meaning of every word spoken Besides that, the learners, at the post-listening stage, often try to complete the answers, but not find the reasons why they have just failed to listen to the message, and why their answers are not suitable for a certain case They do not know that in different contexts, the same words, phrases, or sentences can produce different meanings Therefore, it appears that the students’ listening ability does not develop to the extent they are able to productively extract relevant information from spoken lessons

The students have not also been provoked for listening motivation The serious problem worth concerning about is why a listening text is considered like a reading one and why the listening skill is not evaluated in the final graduation exams of grade 12 to positively motivate the students to learn, while the skill is thought not easy to Vietnamese learners of English in general and to high school students in particular Therefore, from the recognition of the above-mentioned problems, the inspiration for the study arises

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The students’ poor listening abilities are likely to lead to the assumption that the innovations in the syllabuses and teaching materials do not influence the necessary methodological changes into the listening teaching practices in class To cope with the aims of the new syllabus, teachers are expected to move in the direction of adoption of the communicative language teaching approach (Teacher’s Book, Grade 10, 2007: 7) Normally, behind innovations in syllabuses and teaching materials, there is an underlying desire for change in the teaching practices (Hall & Hewings, 2001: 4) Unluckily, most of the teachers in Tan Ke High School have been accustomed to the traditional grammar-translation method that focuses on vocabulary and grammar, and they have not paid much attention to communicative skills, particularly listening comprehension Thus, it is worth investigating the current practice of teaching English listening in class

There has also been a claim that Vietnamese English teachers focus on the structure of the language and tend to implement the traditional methods instead of adapting the new approaches and procedures for teaching English (Nguyễn Thị Nguyệt Ánh, 2009: 9), and they pay no attention to listening skills The teachers think that teaching English is simply teaching English grammar to students, and learning English means learning grammar and vocabulary of that language The reason for their viewpoint is that if students are not learning English grammar, they almost do not learn English at all They cannot communicate in English without grasping knowledge of grammar This problem results in the fact that the teachers only concentrate on teaching grammar to their students, leading to the unsuccessful results in communication, which is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning English or any foreign language However, to enhance learners’ communicative competence, it is necessary for them to mainly focus on not only the grammar and vocabulary but also skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Nguyễn Huy Cẩn, 2008: 82), in which listening is, according to Mishra (2011: 56), “one of the most important skills that play a vital role in the process of communication.”

Some teachers, though recognizing the important role of listening, still do not care about improving the skill to their students because, as explained by them,

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there are so many other things about English that are much more essential and central to teach than listening comprehension This means that listening is more or less ignored Nevertheless, the skill needs to be considered a critical means of language learning to allow learners to understand the speech they hear and take part

in any form of spoken communication successfully (Rost, 2001: 7)

In addition, as known by the researcher, local studies were conducted in the area of listening, but up to now they have not been carried out to investigate the actual teaching practices of listening in light of the listening materials and the pedagogical procedures incorporated in the new communicatively oriented textbooks Thus, such a study can be worthwhile to find out if the innovations bring the intended changes in the actual teaching practices for the attainment of the stated instructional objectives In other words, a classroom research like this will be helpful to investigate whether the planned language-teaching program has been put into practice

1.2 Purpose of the study

This study, therefore, attempts to investigate the actual teaching practices of listening in Grade 10 in relation to the introduction of the new textbook The thesis tries to explore whether Grade 10 English teachers apply the teaching materials and the procedures prescribed for teaching listening comprehension It aims at:

(1) Understanding the current practice of teaching listening comprehension

to the tenth graders at Tan Ke High School;

(2) Finding out difficulties the students are facing;

(3) Suggesting some possible ways of teaching and learning listening skill

It is hoped that the study will increase administrators’ and teachers’ consciousness of the importance and effectiveness of teaching listening skill, leading to adjusting the listening teaching activities of the current English curriculum as planned by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training in

2015 with the objective: reforming the English teaching for effective communication Also, presented in the thesis are some practical listening teaching

3 What can be some possible ways to overcome the problems?

1.4 Significance of the study

The research tends to solve the current listening problems that many high schools in Vietnam have encountered The thesis also helps the non-native English learners to reduce problems when learning listening comprehension Moreover, a learner can only be regarded as good if they listen to natural English of native speakers successfully enough to infer the proper meaning In other words, listening comprehension is an essential language skill as well as a prerequisite for oral proficiency so that the students can improve their communicative ability Harmer (2007: 133) has ever said: “It is worth remembering that successful spoken communication depends not just on our ability to speak, but also on the effectiveness of the way we listen” The survey, therefore, into the subject of how

to teach and learn listening comprehension to high school learners is a matter of great urgency Hopefully, the difficulties to be found and their solutions to be suggested may be regarded as a reference document to the teachers who target to help students enhance their listening skills for communicative purposes at Vietnamese senior high schools in general and Tan Ke High School in particular

1.5 Limitation of the study

Factors affecting the classroom teaching practices are many, but the thesis deals only with the immediate common problems occurring in classroom context that prevent high school students from listening to English successfully and

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suggests some solutions to the problems Due to the constraints of time and the lack

of resources, the research seems to be limited to an investigation for teaching and learning English listening of the teachers and a number of tenth graders at Tan Ke High School It cannot be seen as the best way to learn listening comprehension to everybody in anywhere and at any time, but the study may be applied in similar educational settings It is hoped that more researches on improving learners’ listening skill will be made for better generalization and comprehensiveness

1.6 Overview of the thesis

The research consists of five chapters Chapter 1 talks about background to the study, purpose of the thesis, research questions, importance for the research, and limitation of the study Chapter 2 mentions the viewpoint of the literature relevant

to the research Chapter 3 presents the methodology of the study consisting of research design, research subjects, as well as data collection instruments and procedures Chapter 4 analyzes data collected from the questionnaires and class observation as well as discusses the study findings Chapter 5 provides some suggestions and some English listening strategies for improving teaching and learning of listening comprehension skills

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Many famous scholars have studied a variety of different methods for teaching listening successfully; each has their views and reasons for their own choice However, a common purpose among their theories is to improve the listening comprehension The literature review presented in this chapter will draw a brief look into the history of teaching skills and related issues, which lays a theoretical foundation for the study

2.1 Understanding spoken English

2.1.1 Listening skills in English learning

There are many definitions of listening skills in language teaching books According to Howatt and Dakin (1974, quoted by Yagang, 1994: 189), “listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning.” Similarly, listening comprehension, as defined by Lewis (1999: 134), consists of not only recognizing words but also comprehending the meaning of sentences in a certain special context and remembering the things which is spoken long enough to work meaning out Moreover, listening makes sense of spoken language thanks to sound signals and visual input, with the assistance of proper background knowledge and the context where listeners are listening (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2002: 193) It can be thought as the process of right decoding the message and thus, it is different from hearing since listening is done with the head, eyes, heart, and guts whereas hearing is only done with the ears Wilkie (2001: 71) adds further support to this definition when he says that listening is a conscious activity which must be practiced actively and carefully for communicating effectively

All the views given above show that listening comprehension is a hard task, which demands a great deal of mental analysis on the part of the listener In order to understand the message the speaker intends, the listener must actively contribute skills and knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic resources These

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include having an appropriate purpose for listening, social and cultural knowledge, and background knowledge

2.1.2 Importance of listening skill

Listening, as generally believed by linguists, is the most important language factor in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English as a foreign language (abbreviated to EFL) learners Rost (1994: 141-142, quoted by Nunan, 1999: 200) claims that listening comprehension, which supplies input for learners, is extremely crucial and necessary in the language classroom If they do not understand input at the relevant level, their learning cannot begin Celce-Murcia

& Olshtain (2000: 115) make it simpler by saying that listening comprehension is the basic skill in improving oral communicative ability

Listening is actually related to spoken language Students cannot make speaking skills better unless they develop listening skills (Doff, 1988: 198; Lewis & Hill, 1992: 38) In addition, the listeners and speakers must collaborate together to keep up and manage a conversation (Buck, 2001: 12) Consequently, to succeed in interaction, students must rightly understand what is said to them, and in order to understand the spoken language, they must practice as much as possible in listening English at normal speed

Listening comprehension also plays an important role in acquiring knowledge bases of language Up to 80% percent of learners’ knowledge is collected through listening (Hunsaker 1990, quoted by Jalongo, 1995: 13), especially structures and vocabularies Listeners are likely to decode what speakers wish to convey when they use special words or phrases in special contexts, and not simply to interpret the words themselves (Underwood, 1990: 1) Unfortunately, the non-native students, who are not living in the countries where English is spoken as the first language, have so few opportunities to listen to consecutively exposed language that the students cannot develop the listening competence as effectively as those who live there Accordingly, teachers need to give the foreign students chances to listen to English as much as possible (Doff, 1988: 198-199) so that the

2.1.3 Process models of listening

Over the past 40 years, linguists have developed many views of listening process, but according to Wilson (2008), Flowerdew & Miller (2010), there have primarily been three listening processes: bottom-up, top-down, and interactive, which are applied in explaining the listening comprehension

2.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing

The bottom-up process is applied to interpret listening from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to the complete texts (Nunan, 1999: 200; Buck, 2001: 2; Wilson, 2008: 15) This approach focuses on sounds, words, intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language to decode information for creating ideas and concepts, and relationships between them (Flowerdew & Miller, 2010: 167) Therefore, this process is closely associated with the listener’s linguistic knowledge However, bottom-up processing has its limited points because understanding a text is an interactive process between the listener’s prior knowledge and the text Efficient comprehension that associates the textual material with listener’s brain does not only base on one’s linguistic knowledge

2.1.3.2 Top-down processing

Developed after bottom-up model, the top-down process tends to activate students’ background which is related to listening topics, speakers, situations, or contexts to integrate messages rather than depending on individual sounds and words (Nunan, 1999: 201; Buck, 2001:3) The words spoken in isolation make the listeners more confused to identify meaning than the ones used with the surrounding context (Flowerdew & Miller, 2010: 167) However, it can be seen that

if the incoming information the listeners hear is strange to them, it cannot evoke

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their previous knowledge, and they can only depend mainly on their linguistic knowledge in listening comprehension Besides, although the listeners can activate background knowledge, they might not have the suitable understanding expected by the speaker Thus, only relying on top-down processing may result in the failure of comprehension

2.1.3.3 Interactive processing

Recent researchers have studied the third so-called interactive model which

is the combination of bottom up and top-down processing Establishing the integration is not only necessary but also beneficial because without understanding individual details, students have difficulty in accessing the general picture of a listening text; without assisting of total knowledge, they do not also go to the details easily (Harmer, 2007b: 270) In other words, the learners decode the information with the mutual interactive foundation of phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information like listening in real life (Flowerdew & Miller, 2010: 168)

In conclusion, listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up processing separately, but an interactive and interpretive process during which listeners use both prior social and cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding

To understand the relation of linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge in the process model of listening, it is essential to view the following model of listening comprehension, identified by Brownell (2010)

2.1.4 A skills-based model of listening-centered communication

The model of listening-centered communication emphasizes mainly on

‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ information when listeners decode the messages according to their cognitive structure, schemata, interest, needs, and other individual influences The more the listeners understand the verbal and nonverbal features, the more accurately they achieve listening goals or interpret their partner’s meanings

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Figure 2.1: The HURIER listening model (Brownell, 2010: 145)

The listening model (also called the HURIER listening model) shows the six components of listening tasks: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding for receiving information easily at each stage (Brownell, 2010: 144-146) The phases are influenced by the factors such as cultural orientation, past experiences, interests, attitudes, beliefs, and many other elements

in listening process Firstly, through hearing, listeners must decide what to concentrate on in the listening environment and process it like reading comprehension for understanding Next, mainly basing on the listening context, the listeners store information at one or at some stages in listening time In the interpreting process, they use not only verbal cues but also nonverbal ones including tone of voice, posture, facial expression, and contextual knowledge; they also make a judgment about the information that they have just received to examine the accuracy and validity by evidence, reasons, and emotional appeals Finally, at the response stage, the listeners always adjust the information according to both observing the speaker’s facial expressions and interpreting his voice tone

process of hearing or attending, they can guide students to do the things:

concentrating on the speaker, selecting a proper physical location where distractions are restricted, and participating in an activity to increase involvement

In the same vein, the teachers, if not observing the process of understanding, have

ways to test listening comprehension and also to teach activities that raise the observation such as asking questions, paraphrasing, and discriminating between main ideas and detailed information (Brownell, 2010: 147)

To conclude, the HURIER listening model helps teachers to assist their students to improve their listening skills like in real life, which is the final goal of teaching and learning listening to a foreign language Also, the model makes the educators active and useful since they recognize that providing students with background knowledge may upgrade students’ English comprehension

2.2 Teachers’ role in developing listening tasks

Generally, ‘to teach’ means ‘to facilitate learning’ (Underwood, 1990: 21) Then, the teachers’ role is to supply much useful guidance and support for their students They should create students the confidence of listening effectively by helping them listen better rather than by testing their listening competence (Field, 2005: 246) This means that the teachers are expected to organize listening activities in which different learning strategies can be used, to give opportunities for cooperative learning to reduce learners’ anxiety, to cultivate the culture awareness in students and to introduce some listening skills to the students (Ren, 2011: 319) The learners will become more proficient in listening to English if: (1) they apply the strategies they use naturally in mother tongue listening rather than trying to follow the spoken language word by word, (2) they increase their

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knowledge of the cultural context in which the language is spoken, and (3) they accept that partial interpretation of what they hear is often sufficient for understanding (Underwood, 1990: 22) Thus, it is necessary for teachers to provide good opportunities for their students to learn how to improve the complex but essential skills For example, taking a quick look at the question and analysis of four choices before listening can help them to predict the context, and the introduction of background information of material is necessary for students to do well in listening practice

A successful language teacher is likely to play many roles in class to develop listening skill Concerning the overall listening work, Underwood (1990) also suggests some general consideration: whether listening is a part of a general lesson

or a separate one, determining the location of the listening class, ensuring that the equipment is available and it can be handled well, allotting the amount of time for listening work and deciding when and how to test Some different linguists consider roles of the teachers under different headings, e.g a controller, a director, a manager, a facilitator, and a resource called by Brown (1994); an organizer, a machine operator, a feedback organizer, and a prompter labeled by Harmer (2007b); and a tailor, a stand-up comedian, a sleuth, an engineer, a spy, a doctor, a firefighter, and a tour guide named by Wilson (2008)

In conclusion, according to the scholars, teachers take on many roles in the listening class, and they frequently change or shift their roles when necessary They are not only sources of information but also play many other characters that can help learners to decode and to organize the provided message for teaching listening effectively

2.3 Effective teaching of listening

Listening comprehension has been considered as a complex process to master Many learners have a popular misconception that listeners are passive in receiving information and that the listening process is practically automatic (Jalongo, 1995: 13) Indeed, listening to the first-language is different from listening to the second language in any fundamental way because the second-

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language listeners have restricted knowledge of language as well as lack understanding of the socio-cultural content of the message (Buck, 2001: 48) Moreover, classroom listening is, according to Ur (1996: 107), not the same as real-life listening Therefore, the ability to understand the spoken English form might

not be acquired naturally; instead, it should be taught

Teaching listening comprehension is, as said by Djwandono (2006: 32), undoubtedly a challenge task for teachers The objective of the work is primarily to support learners function effectively in real-life listening contexts (Underwood, 1990: 21; Ur 1996: 107) Then, listening lessons in which teachers read aloud in front of class or tape recordings are played, then comprehension questions are answered by the learners, and right answers are supplied without giving clear explanation may be not helpful to enhance the effectiveness of the students’ listening ability According to Djiwandono (2006: 32), the teachers slip into testing the students’ listening comprehension rather than teaching them how to listen effectively When presenting such lessons, the teachers cannot fill the students’ knowledge gaps to improve their listening skills Furthermore, when hearing in real world, the listeners do not often respond by answering comprehension questions Therefore, the teachers’ duty is to “help students prepare to listen” (Harmer, 2007a: 135)

There are many things which teachers should do to help learners when presenting a listening class According to Underwood (1990), the teachers provide adequate preparation, full visual support, proper tasks together with positive feedback and mistake analysis for students Agreeing with the idea, Nation and Newton (2009: 19) add that listening teaching beginners need to remember the principles: (1) avoiding overloading learners with too much new language, (2) concentrating on meaningful and appropriate language, (3) keeping interest through

a number of activities, and (4) making classroom environment friendly, safe, and cooperative Moreover, effective teaching also involves in not only helping students use beneficial listening strategies but also integrating listening skills with other ones such as speaking, reading, and writing (Rost, 2001: 11)

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In general, the keys to success in teaching listening comprehension effectively depend on sufficient preparation of the teachers, provision of visual supports, and proper activities

2.4 Stages in teaching listening comprehension

Teaching listening skill effectively in general, as researched by many linguists, can be divided into three fundamental stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening (Underwood, 1990; Yagang, 1994; Lindsay & Knight, 2006; Wilson, 2008; Wang, 2011)

2.4.1 Pre-listening stage

The pre-listening phase is the time at which learners are helped to make preparations for what they are going to hear (Lindsay & Knight, 2006: 49), and the activities at the stage create them a successful opportunity in the given listening task (Wilson, 2008: 60)

The pre-listening activities are very valuable They provide students with vital background knowledge to contextualize the tape recorded listening text (Gaiyan, 2008: 3) Besides, the activities are useful to make students connect between old knowledge and new information (Wang, 2011: 360) Also, from the beginning suggestions, the students not only imagine the right frame of work in their mind to think about the topic and to predict what will be coming next but also have reasons to listen (Doff, 1988: 203; Harmer, 2007a: 135; Wilson, 2008: 75) Therefore, the students need to be given general introduction of what the listening

is about to

Students also need to be taught vocabularies and structures which they will listen to The items are important in helping the students to develop confidence as well as to gather necessary information about the topic (Wilson, 2008: 76) If they are not provided with a few key words or phrases, the listening work becomes difficult to understand However, it is not a good idea to teach in advance too many words partly because it takes a lot of time and partly because the work does not improve the students’ listening ability any more (White, 1998: 6) According to Gower et al (2005: 90), pre-teaching more than five words is probably too much for

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most classes Nevertheless, when feeling that it is worth pre-teaching vocabulary, the teachers should teach a word in a recognizable setting, check students’ understanding the definition, confirm the right pronunciation, and get them to use it

in a sentence or context (Wilson, 2008: 76) The words in the context can make the tasks of understanding easier Generally, teaching some words in advance may help students guess the topic and content of listening texts

Students, furthermore, need to be given clear instructions in order to understand what they are going to do next not only for getting a good result from the task but also for increasing motivation and interest (Underwood, 1990: 32; Ur, 1996: 110)

The pre-listening activities are so important that teachers must be selective in choosing which activities are relevant to the listening period Wilson (2008: 64-75) presents six practical ways: 1) brainstorming; 2) visuals; 3) realia; 4) texts and words; 5) situations; and 6) opinions, ideas, and facts to activate the schemata and

to make students guess what they are going to hear The choice of the activities, according to Underwood (1990: 33), will base on such the factors as: the material available, the ability of the class, and the content of the listening passage

The pre-listening work and texts should be realistic as much as possible The natural language can help students gain the listening experience which can be applied in the practical life, not merely done for class exercises (Underwood, 1990: 31) To do this thing, the work can be practiced with one of the skills: reading, writing, speaking, or all three; and this is also an opportunity for listening to be integrated with the learners’ other skills

Thus, it would be a good idea that learners are given some information about contents, situations, and speakers before they actually start listening The work should be prepared carefully since it will assist the students in understanding spoken English more easily in while-listening stage

2.4.2 While-listening stage

The while-listening stage comprises all of the activities that students are required to do while they are listening to a text (Underwood, 1990: 45), for

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example, filling in a chart, answering questions, making notes, etc (Lindsay & Knight, 2006: 49) As far as listening comprehension (i.e listening for meaning) is concerned, the purpose of the activities is to make learners improve the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language (Underwood, 1990: 45)

Teachers at the stage might let students listen more than once (Harmer, 2007a: 135) The students need to be given an opportunity to study and comprehend Besides, very seldom can the listeners catch up with the speech speed since they have many things to do Therefore, they need to have different tasks for every listening time At the first time which is extensive, listening for general information such as: who the speakers are, what they are saying, and why there are the conversations is not only necessary but also beneficial (Wilson, 2008: 82; Wang, 2011: 361), so that they can know the speaker’s attention and in order that they can get the listening text’s context At the later times which are called intensive process, the learners need to listen for detailed ideas, which aim at collecting the unclear things or missed information In the whole process, “taking notes is indispensable” (Wang, 2011: 361) to assist memory It is, generally speaking, better for the students to do different work every time they listen (Wilson, 2008: 60) They should only listen again to the parts which they have found difficult, and the teachers can stop and play the cassette recorder at various and important points rather than pass the listening with phrases by phrases of all listening texts because, if not, this easily makes listeners bored and frustrated

Apart from helping students listen many times, teachers also have to persuade students to respond to the contents of a listening text, not just to the linguistic knowledge The reason for this is that the eventual goal of a listening sequence is to draw out the meaning of what being said and to notice what is intended Moreover, hardly can language teachers be regarded as good if they fail to frequently exploit listening passages to the full (Harmer, 2007a: 136), both right pronunciation, beneficial vocabularies as well as grammatical rules and different meanings

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Furthermore, the listening work should be also organized at certain level which all the learners can carry out To the difficult exercises, it is worth being used with the limited manner to avoid demotivation Naturally, considered to be a hard work is listening and writing at the same time, especially in the form of writing anything more than two or three words to the students who have little knowledge and experience to write (Underwood, 1990: 48) However, the while-listening work which is too simple cannot supply a lot of chances and listening experience to the learners According to Ur (1992: 27), using the easy exercises causes much less difficulty than utilizing the complicated ones Generally speaking, both too difficult and too simple tasks make listeners demotivated and frustrated, leading to an unexpected failure of not only the activity but of the whole lesson Therefore, to have the right balance of challenge, a good teacher is likely to be tactful and careful

in choosing while-listening activities which are proper to students’ listening competence Some examples of the while-listening activities are: checking items in pictures, detecting differences or mistakes, filling in blanks, information transfer, storyline picture sets, and following a route (Yagang, 1994; Underwood, 1990)

In conclusion, at this stage teachers should engage students in concentrating

on comprehension, whether they have understood important information from the text The understanding is examined in post-listening stage

2.4.3 Post-listening stage

The post-listening phase consists of all the work concerning to a particular listening text which is done after the listening is finished (Underwood, 1990: 74) The task offers an opportunity not only to assess learners’ comprehensive competence which is required in the while-listening part, to find out why some learners misunderstand and leave some sections undone in the task, but also to provide some feedback as well as to review the learnt things (Lindsay & knight, 2006: 49) Moreover, the students are expected to recognize functional language such as apologizing, inviting, refusing, suggesting, and so on; and inferring the meaning of new words is also necessary (Wang, 2011: 361) In addition, widening

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the topic or language of the listening passage into another situation is also the work

of the stage (Underwood, 1990: 77)

From the above objectives, it can be seen that the nature of the post-listening activity is intrinsically motivating As asserted by Underwood (1990: 78), the pre-listening stage has provoked the listening expectations and the while-listening stage has satisfied these expectations, but it is not easy to maintain the students’ interest

at the post-listening stage Accordingly, it is a good idea to do something more interesting and curious than only to answer comprehension questions or to do word-finding exercises

To attract the considerable interest, the best method is using a variety of different activities such as: problem-solving and decision-making, interpreting, and role-play (Yagang, 1994) With problem-solving and decision-making, students are asked to collect information from a listening text, and then, to use the information for solving a problem or giving out a decision; the interpretation is frequently established in order to understand the actual meaning which the speakers intend to convey; role-play is demonstrated by the learners for applying the language knowledge of a listening conversation

Normally, the three above-mentioned tasks are often performed orally or sometimes in writing (Wilson, 2008: 61) The working forms help students not only have experiences in listening comprehension but also, according to Underwood (1990: 92), Lindsay & Knight (2006: 54), and Bruce (2005: 20) move on from practicing listening to practicing the other skills

The choice of the post-listening activities may be affected by three following factors (Underwood 1990: 80): (1) teachers must know how much language they wish students to practice in the part and whether there is enough time to finish the lesson; (2) they need to choose the skill (speaking, reading, or writing) to develop appropriately after the while-listening; (3) the teachers must decide the relevant working form such as pair work, group work, or individuals If the post-listening task is unattractive, the students not only feel bored and confused but also misunderstand the listening text

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Accordingly, at the post-listening stage, the teachers are not there simply to check answers, but they should actively guide learners through the processes of listening, monitor their listening difficulties, and reshape classroom tasks to provide maximum opportunities for learner involvement and to develop a better awareness

of how to listen

Generally speaking, the aim of teaching listening skills is to provide comprehensible, focused input and purposeful listening tasks that develop competence in particular listening abilities A good teacher not only creates conditions for meaningful learner involvement, outcomes, and evaluation but also predicts what difficulties may happen at every stage when non-native students practice listening to English in class

2.5 Some hypothetical problems in EFL listening

Many foreign language learners, no matter how hard they try, cannot improve their poor listening competence because, as explained by them, listening comprehension is too difficult and complex to master Therefore, the difficulties can be grouped according to the three listening teaching stages to facilitate learning Also, when there is the classification, teachers can easily adjust the content of listening texts and activities in the textbook to suit the students’ abilities Furthermore, school administrators are likely to base on the results in order to invest for the listening comprehension improvement

2.5.1 Listening problems that emerge from the pre-listening stage

2.5.1.1 Background knowledge of culture and context

At the pre-listening stage, learners are often provided with background knowledge for listening, but they frequently have difficulty in understanding socio-cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language The kind of knowledge is not the same as theirs (Fang, 2008: 28) Underwood (1990: 19) agrees, for most part, claiming that the different cultures, which lead to the different meaning of non-verbal clues – facial expression, nods, gestures, tone of voice – can cause the great problems of interpretation to listeners For instance, to express

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embarrassment, the Japanese frequently laugh as a signal; in contrast, Americans would never laugh in such cases, so they can misunderstand this action as showing the unconcerned attitude (Buck, 2001: 51) Another example is provided by Lindsay & Knight (2006: 48) that “in Bulgaria a nod of the head means no, in Britain it means yes” Therefore, many foreign students feel so strange to the native speaker’s background knowledge and cultural contexts that they only grasp the

‘surface’ meaning of words, and this creates a trouble for comprehension in the English listening process

2.5.1.2 Listeners’ limited word stock

Another problem for preparing listening concerns the learners’ limited vocabulary in the new language They can hear the words clearly but do not know their meanings (Amri, 2003) Moreover, the word demonstrated is under the control

of the speakers, not of the listeners, leading them to frequently mishearing the sound and misunderstanding the lexical items Indeed, the listeners need to hear both correct word and right meaning (Buck, 2001: 15) For instance, when hearing

“the printer needs toner”, listeners refer that the printer is a machine; nonetheless, when hearing ‘the printer is sick’, they think that the word is a person because people get sick but machines do not In addition, listeners not only necessarily confirm the speech signal quickly but also struggle for comprehension against sound distortion (Rost, 1992: 51) Occasionally, an unrecognizable vocabulary may force the learners to pause and find its meaning, so next information is missed in the listening process Accordingly, lexical ignorance in the listening preparation phase is the main obstacle to the advancement of the foreign language learners

2.5.1.3 Lack of visual support

Another barrier of listening comprehension which teachers need to help their students overcome at the pre-listening stage is lack of visual support According to Yagang (1994: 191), if listeners do not see speaker’s gestures and facial expressions, they have problems in grasping the speaker’s meaning The visual material (pictures, diagrams, maps, and so on) presented at the pre-listening stage helps learners have advantages in understanding English in situations because it

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shows the relationship of linguistic and paralinguistic Consequently, it is difficult

to concentrate on spoken material that is heard “blind” as called by Ur (1992:30) In other words, it is hard for a learner, when listening to English without visual support, to follow what a speaker is trying to convey

In conclusion, at the pre-listening stage, learners usually have difficulties in different context and culture, limited words, and lack of visual aid This means that the students are able to recognize or understand the information of listening texts if the contexts and cultures are presented well For some listeners who do not know all vocabulary used by the speaker, listening can be very stressful as they start to listen to English

2.5.2 Listening problems that emerge from the while-listening stage 2.5.2.1 Pronunciation

At the while-listening stage, one of the most common problems encountered

by students is the way English words are pronounced, but unfortunately this aspect

of English cannot be overlooked

Firstly, some sounds cause learners troubles: failing to recognize or to distinguish certain sounds, even failing to hear them The reason for this is that the sounds, in some cases, do not exist in their native language (Lewis & Hill, 1992:

64; Ur, 1992: 11): for example, /θ/ in “think” does not appear in French as well as

in Vietnamese Besides that, some vowel sounds of English e.g /ɪ/ and /i:/ in

“fit/feet”; /ʊ/ and /u:/ in “foot/food” also seem to be problems to learners

(Underwood, 1990: 9) because the substitution of one vowel for the other makes no difference to meaning in their mother tongue Furthermore, the consonant clusters may make them worried because of dropping the consonant in the middle (Underwood, 1990: 9; Ur, 1992: 12), e.g ‘exactly’, in which /t/ disappears completely

Secondly, learners can encounter a difference between sound and spelling

As there is a difference between the spoken and written form of words in English,

1995) e.g when to is said in isolation, it is pronounced as /tu:/, but on the other

hand in connected speech the pronunciation changes into /tə/ Another factor of connected speech is called elision This means the delete of sounds appearing in natural speech (Buck, 2001: 33; Roach, 1991: 127; Willy, 2008: 11) e.g the word

probably is pronounced /probli/ The third factor of connected speech is called

assimilation Assimilation means that a pronunciation of a letter can be influenced

by the letter before or after it so that it changes its sound (Avery and Ehrlich, 1995:

87; Wilson, 2008: 11) e.g ten bikes can be pronounced /tem baiks/

Finally, students can deal with the intonation of English English belongs among intonation languages with “the way the voice goes up and down in pitch” (Kelly, 2007: 86) This means that a statement with different intonations can make

a considerable difference to the meanings (Nguyễn Thành Nghĩa, 2011), and thus, foreign listeners fail to receive the right signal of speech

In conclusion, when listening to English, non-native learners have many difficulties to understand the meaning of an utterance, so the phonology system should of course be learned

2.5.2.2 Speech rate

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The English non-native learners also, according to Brown (1994: 240), face the problems of speech rate during listening The learners often initially think that native speakers speak too fast and vaguely, leading to listeners not to hear pronunciation clearly (Amri; 2003; Flohr & Paesler, 2010: 5) Supporting the idea, Buck (2001: 38) asserts that “the faster the speech is, the more difficult it is to comprehend” Besides that, the function words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, or pronouns, which do not convey the main information, are not frequently enunciated fully in continuous speech by native speakers (Underwood, 1990: 11), but the words are expected to demonstrate clearly in utterances like the printed form by the non-native learners (Yagang, 1994: 190) Moreover, the speakers in the tape are different from those in the real life since the tape speakers cannot be asked to reduce the speed when necessary, and they hardly recognize whether or not the listeners have understood the message Consequently, the fast speech frequently creates bad conditions for learners during listening to English

2.5.2.3 Accent

Another problem connected with the while-listening stage is the fact that listening to the strange accents can also make foreign language learners confused The learners tend to be familiar to their teachers’ accent or to the standard variety of British or American English but not to other accents (Buck, 2001: 34; Ur, 1992: 20; Yagang, 1994: 191) Buck (2001: 34-35) adds that the students, if listening to unfamiliar voices, will face the problem of words pronounced in a non-standard way According to Ur (1992: 20), to satisfy many learners’ listening developing need, it is a good idea for teachers to present the two most helpful English accents (the British and American standard varieties) and to give some simple chances of practicing others to their students for getting more accent knowledge (Fang, 2008: 28) It seems reasonable to say that an unfamiliar accent can cause problems and may disrupt the whole comprehension process

2.5.2.4 Listening in the passive position

While listening to English, classroom listeners are often put in “the position

of passive overhearers” (White, 1998: 6), and this can cause difficulties in

In conclusion, some common problems that listeners encounter at the listening phase are the English pronunciation, the speakers’ speed and accent, and the listeners’ passive position and inability to focus It is important for teachers to recognize the features of spoken language and to understand how they influence language learners in order to select and use listening activities properly

while-2.5.3 Listening problems that emerge from the post-listening stage 2.5.3.1 Memory

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After listening to a tape, a difficult task to students is to remember the details

of what is said, especially to answer to the type of language in questions (Anderson and Lynch, 1991: 46) According to Gilakjani & Ahmdi (2011: 984), “Listening is receiving, receiving requires thinking and thinking requires memory; there is no way to separate listening, thinking, remembering”, and this is not easy for any learners to remember much information Moreover, no one can peer into a student’s brain and know exactly what is stored there (Brown, 1994: 245) and how long it remains after heard To improve the ability to listen and to remember, there are two ways that a teacher can support the students: firstly by presenting visual things and gestures to aid in memory; secondly by guiding how to take notes in a way in order

to remember key points from the listening text (Hamaguchi, 2010: 224) Generally speaking, storing too much information, especially to long listening texts, to answer the questions with how, why…, or to summarize spoken ideas is a problem to learners

2.5.3.2 Shyness to present the listening ideas in front of the class

Many students, in spite of remembering what is heard, are so shy that they cannot speak out their idea when standing in front of the class (Wilson, 2008: 97) Perhaps, they are afraid of being laughed when saying something wrong To solve the problems, pairwork and groupwork helps to remove some of the feelings of isolation and anxiety, and can make listening into a more pleasurable activity stage (Underwood, 1990: 27) Failing to tell the heard message loses a chance to confirm

it

2.5.3.3 Receiving feedback

Another common difficulty often happens to listeners at the post-listening stage is that some teachers tend to focus on what the correct answers are to a listening passage, rather than why students fail to get them (Shuqin & Jiangbo, 2008: 6) They do not spend much time on analyzing what goes wrong (White, 1998: 5) According to Gilakjani & Ahmdi (2011: 984), the learners should be taught, not tested to listen It means that they need to have opportunities to find out how they have done and how they are progressing If there is pass/fail attitude

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associated with correcting the exercises but without providing positive feedback, the learners can fail to achieve an experience of success, which helps remove the mental barriers Repeated failure can lead to a panic and a real psychological block

to effective listening Thus, only providing the right or wrong answers to listeners certainly causes obstacles to listening comprehension

2.5.3.4 Combining listening with other skills

Another problem with listening is that it is difficult for learners to develop listening without involving other skills (Field, 2005: 244) The roles of hearers and speakers can change quickly in conversation and listeners can become speakers at any moment (White, 1998: 6) Listeners will lose the information resources without speaking; speaking will lose its objective without careful listening and, as a result, listening and speaking rely on each other and regulate each other Similarly, without reading the listening exercises well, students cannot predict what is presented in the next listening part, and they also need to practice reading aloud among themselves after listening Underwood (1990: 48) adds that listening and writing at the same time makes learners difficult, especially to find the long answers Sometimes, some students may listen well but find it hard to write their ideas Therefore, the fact that there is a need to link the development of listening competence with the development of other skills: speaking, reading, writing is considered difficult to students

2.5.3.5 Fatigue

Since the learners are expected to spend much time listening to and remembering what is said, as well as practicing other skills for long enough to be able to produce the answers (Underwood, 1990: 74), they often feel too tired at the post-listening phase (Ur, 1992: 19) and failure arises According to Gilakjani & Ahmdi (2011: 982), in listening comprehension, “even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension”, so it requires an enormous amount

of effort to follow the meaning In other words, the listeners feel overloaded with information Therefore, listening passages should not be too long (Flohr & Paesler, 2010: 5) Furthermore, to reduce the listeners’ stress, the teachers at the stage need