The impacts of schema building activities on efl learners listening learning m a 60 14 10

THE IMPACTS OF SCHEMA-BUILDING ACTIVITIES ON EFL LEARNERS’ LISTENING LEARNING A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts TESOL Submi

THE IMPACTS OF SCHEMA-BUILDING ACTIVITIES ON EFL

LEARNERS’ LISTENING LEARNING

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by BÙI THỊ KIM LOAN

Supervisor

LƯU TRỌNG TUẤN, PhD

Ho Chi Minh City, April 2011

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 research purpose, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of thesis

Ho Chi Minh City, April 2011

research Without their participation and support, this research couldn’t have been completed and I couldn’t have applied my new ideas for the research I thank my students for completing the questionnaire and giving me the chances to do the experimentation

I also thank my colleagues for all their time and helpful suggestions They were Nguyen Thi Ly Da and Tran Quoc Thao, who observed my class a few times and marked all the posttests, Nguyen Thi Bich Thuan, from whom I had borrowed few of her ideas to design the questionnaire

Besides, I wish to thank all of my teachers in and outside the USSH who taught

me during the 2008-2011 TESOL course for their enthusiasm and instruction Their encouragements as well as comments helped me follow this research I give my thanks to the library and post-graduate office staff for their kindness and support

Moreover, during the years of studying in Ho Chi Minh City I would like to thank my family for their sacrifice I am grateful to my parents-in-law for taking care

of me when I gave the birth to my little son I also thank my father, older and younger sisters, who are now looking after my baby, for their sympathy and love I give my thanks to my husband, who always supports me Especially, I would like to say sorry

to my little son, who I spent a little time rearing him when I was busy writing the last pages of the research

Last but not least, I would really like to thank my supervisor, Dr Luu Trong Tuan for his valuable guidance, encouragements as well as comments through my research completion His support to my research and feedback on content preparation and all drafts of the study facilitated the successful completion of the research I hope

I can become a passionate researcher like him a little, which showed me during this research writing

impacts schema-building activities EFL learners’ listening learning at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)

The participants in the research were 123 EFL learners among 296 students from different faculties of this university They all took the same the pretest for the assessment of their listening proficiency, and then two classes with the rather analogous listening competence level and background were selected as two classes such as the control group and experimental group During the first two weeks, they were delivered the questionnaires and invited to complete them during the class meeting During 15 weeks, the experimental teaching was applied, and the students in the experimental learned listening skill with the approach of schema-building activities while there were no schema-building activities adopted in the control group After 15 weeks, the both classes took the same posttest for the comparison of the level

of listening improvement between the two classes

The data analysis indicated that the students in the experimental group got higher mean scores than those in the control group This means that the schema-building activities have impacts on EFL learners’ listening learning at HUTECH Besides, the findings from the observation on students’ interaction and motivation in the experimental group substantiated that participating in some activities before listening to the texts to trigger their schemata made the learners interested and motivated to learn listening in particular and acquire second language in general

The research therefore suggests applying schema-building activities to the teaching, and some suggestions for teaching listening were made regarding the schema-building activities for teachers and EFL learners at HUTECH

Retention and use of the thesis i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of tables viii

List of figures viii

List of abbreviations x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

Background of the study 1

Aims of the study 6

Significance of the study 6

Organization of the study 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8

2.1 Listening 8

2.1.1 Defining listening 8

2.1.2 The teaching and learning of listening 9

2.2 Schema 10

2.2.1 Definitions of schema 10

2.2.2 Characteristics of schema 12

2.2.3 Types of schema 13

2.3 Foundations of schema 13

2.4 Schema theory 15

2.5 Benefits of schema-building 18

2.5.1 Schema and second language acquisition 18

2.5.2 Schema and classroom participation/ interaction 22

2.5.3 Schema and motivation 23

2.5.4 Schema-building and listening comprehension 24

2.6 Summary 27

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research questions 29

3.2 Subjects 29

3.3 Instruments 33

3.3.1 Questionnaire 33

3.3.2 Tests 33

3.3.3 Observation 34

3.6 Summary 38

CHAPTER 4: FINDING ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 38

4.1 Finding analysis for Research question 1 38

4.2 Finding analysis for Research question 2 54

4.2.1 Listening test scores 54

4.2.2 Findings from observation 57

4.3 Discussions 59

4.4 Summary 61

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 62

5.1 Summary of the findings 63

5.2 Implications 65

5.2.1 Implications for teachers 65

5.2.2 Implications for administrative staff 66

5.3 Limitations 67

5.4 Suggestions for further research 68

REFERENCES 69

APPENDIX A: Vietnamese version of the questionnaire 76

APPENDIX B: English version of the questionnaire 80

APPENDIX C: Pretest 84

APPENDIX D: Posttest 86

APPENDIX E: Observation instrument 88

APPENDIX F: A lesson plan for the control group 89

APPENDIX G: A lesson plan for the experimental group 92

APPENDIX H: Transcripts and answer keys for tests 97

APPENDIX I: Test scores of the control group 105

APPENDIX J: Test scores of the experimental group 107

Chapter 1

Table 1.1: Characteristics of effective and ineffective lecture 3

Chapter 2 Table 2.1: Techniques to activate stored schemata 21

Chapter 3 Table 3.1: Profile of students in control group and experimental group 31

Table 3.2: Group statistics for pretest mean scores 32

Table 3.3: Independent samples t-test analysis of the pretest listening scores 32

Table 3.4: Experimental teaching outline 36

Chapter 4 Table 4.1: Group statistics for posttest mean scores 55

Table 4.2: Independent t-test analysis of the posttest listening scores 55

Table 4.3: Classroom observation summary 58

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1: A diagram of someone’s possible schema for the concept of egg 12

Figure 2.2: Speech Reception framework by Celce-Murcia and Olshtain 17

Figure 2.3: Conceptual framework 28

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1: Teaching listening by asking students to look at listening parts in the book and listen to the tape 39

Figure 4.2: Pre-teaching some new words 40

Figure 4.3: Teachers introduce topic of the incoming listening text 41

Figure 4.4: Teachers involve students in group discussion on the topic 42

Figure 4.5: Teachers offer other activities to lead students to the listening text 43

Figure 4.6: Preferred ways of English listening learning 45

Figure 4.7: Some preferred activities before listening to the listening text 46

Figure 4.8: Students participate in some activities after listening 47

Figure 4.9: Activities used by students to present one’s own opinions on listening text 48

Figure 4.10: School materials for listening contain pre-listening activities 49

Figure 4.11: Pre-listening activities 50

Figure 4.12: Listening topics are relevant to students’ life 51

Figure 4.13: Listening texts in materials are difficult 52

Figure 4.14: Reasons for difficult listening texts 53

Figure 4.15: Pretest and posttest score classification in the control group 56

Figure 4.16: Pretest and posttest score classification in the experimental group… 56 Chapter 5 Figure 5.1: The impacts schema-building activities have on EFL learners' listening learning 63

OHP Overhead Projector

TESOL Teaching of English to speakers of other language USSH University of Social Sciences and Humanities

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This study seeks to investigate factors influencing listening learning and whether schema-building activities have impacts on listening learning of EFL learners

at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), which then give some possible suggestions to improve EFL learners’ listening teaching and learning The first chapter aims at providing the below the background of study, aims of the study, research questions, significance and organization of the study

1.1 Background of the study

Learners of English receive messages English mainly through two skills (listening and reading) among the four skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing With regard to reading skill, there has been a wealth of studies on how to facilitate EFL learners to learn English reading better However, there still has been a limited amount of research on activities in improving listening learning of EFL learners (Long, 1987; Mendelsohn, 1998, Vandergrift, 2007)

In Vietnamese context, teaching and learning listening still has not been highly focused on This may result from objective and subjective factors Objective problems are related to course syllabus or study facilities such as tapes, CDs, cassettes, headphones, and lab rooms, while subjective factors belong to students and teachers

It is possible that they think it is unimportant or difficult to learn and teach listening in English classrooms, as reflected in the following researches

Vandergrift (2004) asserts that “listening is probably the least explicit of the four macro language skills, making it the most difficult skill to learn” (p 3), and Khanh (2006) maintains that “listening has always been presumed to be the most difficult and boring skill to practice” (p 51) Do’s (2007) research finds out that

“teachers concentrate on presenting vocabulary and structures so much that they may

not have enough time to organize other necessary activities or they cannot recognize the importance of the other ones” (p 115) Indeed, presenting some new words to students before listening is to some extent necessary However, the question is how teachers present or introduce them to students Should the teacher himself/herself introduce new words students are going to listen to while all students are receiving these new words passively? Or should the teacher give students chances or tasks through which they themselves can retrieve previous knowledge in their mind to learn new words actively? These are the matters that teachers of English should think them over There is one idea that the listener needs to be considered as an active processor who brings their prior knowledge to the context of listening

Moreover, Do (2007) emphasizes that “teachers should improve their ways of performing the first stage in order to make their students well-prepared for their listening” (p 115) As usual, teachers get accustomed to the traditional lecture method; which is “a passive, one-way method of transferring information” (Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996, p 1) and “lecturing is frequently a one-way process unaccompanied by discussion, questioning or immediate practice, which makes it a poor teaching method” (McIntosh, 1996, p 1 cited in Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996, p 1) In addition, “lack of interaction is considered one of the major limitations of the traditional lecture” (Munson, 1992 cited in Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996, p 1) In fact, majority of students in Do’s (2007) research gave an idea that “the solution that teachers should improve their methods of teaching listening skill is more essential than the solution that the school should equip more facilities for listening practice” (p 122) More importantly, Edlich (1993, cited in Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996) argues that “the lecture format for large classes is outdated and ineffective” (p 1)

Characteristics of the Effective lecture Characteristics of the Ineffective lecture

- Educator-student interaction - 100 % educator talk, with limited or

no interaction

- Two-way communication - One-way communication

- Educator-student questions - Few if any questions (educator or

student)

- Shared responsibility for active - Students depend on educator for all

learning information

- Small group, problem-solving activities - No student activities

- Variety of supporting media - No supporting media

- Limited note-taking required - Extensive note-taking required

(students have copies of lecture notes)

Table 1.1: Characteristics of the effective and ineffective lecture (adapted from

Renner, 1993; Ruyle, 1995, cited in Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996)

Table 1.1 shows that there is some specific differences between effective and

ineffective lectures Therefore, it is urgent for both Vietnamese teachers of English

and EFL learners to change their mind to have more appropriate teaching methods

and learning styles in listening classrooms so that there would be no longer the fact

that “teachers were attempting to teach them only the pertinent information that they

would need to pass a test” (McMahon, Lytle and Smith, 2005, p 180) Do (2007) also writes that “it seems that the teachers only tried to cover the listening tasks in the textbook with a focus on linguistic content, and the students pretended to listen by

‘picking up’ as many answers from teachers as possible” (p 124) Basing on the findings, Hoang (2006) alleges that teachers still thought pre-listening and post-listening stages are of little importance and that

“consequently, when teaching listening, they just played the cassette tape, asked the learners to listen and then checked answers without any pre-listening activities It is likely that with this way of teaching, these teachers think that listening is the easiest skill to teach (p 85).”

One possible solution to the above mentioned drawback is the application of a variety of schema-building activities which make listening classes become more enjoyable and especially involve learners in their own listening learning Long (1987) asserts that activities in pre-listening and post-listening stages play a crucial role in facilitating EFL learners’ listening learning because these activities offer the learners lots of chances to use their schemata, what they have already known before, to learn and build new knowledge or new schemata Mendelsohn (1995, cited in Mendelsohn and Rubin, 1995) finds that pre-listening activities need “to activate the students’ existing knowledge of the topic in order for them to link this to what they comprehend and to use this as a basis of their prediction and inferencing” (p 124) That is, listening learning will be improved if learners generate meaning by activating existing knowledge (Goh, 2002) In his research on reading, Nguyen (2009) contends that

“schema-building is an essential approach to link new information in the topic to the students’ prior knowledge to activate the students’ interest and curiosity in reading comprehension” (p 66) and it can hence work for listening comprehension Besides, Hoang (2006) adds that the lack of practicing bottom-up or top-down processing will

hinder learners from listening effectively Therefore, the role of students needs to be changed “from passive observer to active participants” (Sullivan and McIntosh, 1996,

p 2) and Brown (1990) also hopes that “active listeners will use all relevant background knowledge” (p 11) for learning listening in particular and acquiring second language in general What’s more, Richards and Renandya (2002, p 239) assert that

“These days, it is generally recognized that both bottom-up and top-down strategies are necessary In developing courses, materials, and lessons, it is important to teach not only bottom-up processing skills, such as the ability

to discriminate between minimal pairs, but also to help learners use what they already know to understand what they hear If teachers suspect that there are gaps in their learners’ knowledge, the listening itself can be preceded by schema-building activities to prepare learners for the listening task to come.”

Nonetheless, there still has been a controversy over the role of schema-building activities as an aid to L2 listening learning Some studies denoted that schema-building facilitated learning process of L2 listeners (Schmidt-Rinehart, 1994; Long and Macian, 1994; Brown and Smith, 2007) On the contrary, some studies reported that schema-building tasks did not improve listening comprehension (Chiang and Dunkel, 1992; Jensen and Hansen, 1995) At HUTECH, the teachers of English and students have different opinions about teaching and learning listening skill using schema-building activities in listening classes

Among 10 English teachers of HUTECH who were interviewed, eight of them say that they often teach listening comprehension by asking students to look at the requirements of the tasks, listen to the tape and give answers They often ask students

to work individually but not in pairs and groups, only use the listening in the

textbooks and rarely tailor the listening materials to create schema-building activities because of time constraint, students’ listening proficiency and other objective reasons

It means that teachers employ what has in the listening materials and don’t pay attention much to the activities that help learners build their schemata In addition, among 30 first-year English non-majored students interviewed , 22 students of who were asked about how they learned listening skill reveal that find listening difficult to learn , listening classes really stressful and themselves got burdened with listening tasks in the textbooks

It can be seen from the actual English teaching and learning situation at HUTECH; therefore, this study was conducted to verify the impacts schema-building activities have on EFL learners’ listening learning at HUTECH

1.2 Aims of the study

The aims of this study are to find out the factors influencing EFL learners’ listening learning and mainly the impacts of schema-building activities on EFL learners’ listening at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) In order to attain the above purposes, the study was guided by the two following research questions:

(1) What are the factors that influence listening learning?

(2) What impacts do schema-building activities have on EFL learners’ listening learning?

1.3 Significance of the study

The findings of the study are expected to make contribution to L2 research on teaching L2 listening skill using the schema-building activities The results of this study serve as guidelines for both teachers and learners in teaching and learning listening skill at HUTECH, for administrative staff to prepare materials for listening courses

1.4 Organization of the study

The study is organized as follows:

Chapter 1 “Introduction” introduced an overview of research background,

aims, significance and organization of the study

Chapter 2 “Literature Review” introduces relevant literature for theoretical

framework of the study and reviews the literature of listening, schema and benefits of schema-building activities on listening learning

Chapter 3 “Methodology” describes methodological procedures including

description of research questions, research design, participants, instruments, and data collection and analysis procedures

Chapter 4 “Finding Analysis and Discussion” shows the results of data

analysis and discussions of research findings

Chapter 5 “Conclusion and implications” provides summary of the findings,

implications for teaching listening skill, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

Finally, references and appendices are attached at the end of the study

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The present study investigated the impacts schema-building activities have on listening learning For the sake of providing an overview of the research that has been done in the area of second language listening concerning the purposes of this study, this chapter begins with a review of the two constructs “listening” and “schema” followed by review on benefits of schema-building on language learning as the major theoretical framework for the study Then, findings of research on the link between schema-building and listening comprehension are presented briefly

2.1 Listening

2.1.1 Defining listening

Listening has been defined from different points of views Listening is “the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings” (Purdy, 1991 cited in Purdy and Borisoff, 1997, p 55) According to Rubin and Meldelsohn (1995), listening is also seen as “an active process in which a listener selects and interprets information which comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express” (p 151) Imhof (1998) views listening as an “active process of selecting and integrating relevant information from acoustic input and this process is controlled by personal

intentions which are critical to listening” (p 83) Buck (2001) argues that “listening involves both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge” (p 247) In others words, linguistic knowledge relates to “knowledge of phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, whereas non-linguistic refers to

“knowledge of the topic, the context and general knowledge about the world and how

it works” (p 247) What is more, listening is said to be equal to ‘experiencing contextual effects’; that is, ‘listening as a neurological event (experiencing)’ overlays

a cognitive event (creating a change in a representation) (Rost, 2002, p 3) Finally, Jeon (2007) explains listening in detail that “listening has been characterized as a set

of activities that involves an individual’s capacity to apprehend, recognize, discriminate, or even ignore certain information It has also been considered to contain complex and active processes that are involved in linguistic knowledge, personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, and world knowledge Listening involves interaction and negotiation with a speaker and requires prior experience of a

listener to best understand and interpret what a speaker says” (p 50)

2.1.2 The teaching and learning of listening

In spite of the fact that “listening is the most frequently used language skill in

everyday life” (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000, p 102), it is found to be overly difficult to be taught by teachers of English Traditionally, a teacher plays a tape, asks his/her students to listen and then checks the students’ answer whether they are correct or incorrect It means that the teacher controls the listening class all the time while the students meekly do what the teacher tells them to do Furthermore,

“teachers often overlook the process of helping students learn to listen” (Meldelsohn, 1994; Sheerin, 1987; Vandergrift, 2004 as cited in Chen, 2009, p 55); and “moreover, students passively rely on teachers’ instruction, and seldom realize that they themselves must be active in their listening and learning to listen (Goh and Taib, 2006; Vandergrift, 2003 as cited in Chen, 2009, p 55) This should be changed

because Harden and Dent (2005) insist that “the purpose of teaching is to facilitate learning” (p 209) They also maintain that “the teacher needs to ensure that the teaching/learning session is not given over solely to the providing of information and

the building knowledge; it is not only knowing that or what, but knowing how and

why which is important to the student” (p 208) Chen (2009) suggests that teacher in

listening classes should “shift the attention from test-oriented teaching toward more student-oriented instruction, in which the key focus is on helping students to develop their listening strategies and learn how to actively listen” (p 55) Listening actively means that the students are responsible for their listening learning, i.e., bring their interest, their life experience, what they already know, and so on and so forth into the listening class Zeidler (2003) contends that “the teacher’s role is to be aware of the diversity in student understanding (based on how well students integrate new ideas into existing schemas1) and to provide the range of learning activities that allow for differences in conceptual understanding” (p 126) so that he/she helps them to be

‘actively involved in listening’ instead of ‘passively receiving input’ (Chen, 2009, p 73) As for Anderson and Lynch (1988), it means that the student becomes an ‘active model builder’ (p 11), rather than a ‘tape recorder’ (p 9)

Thus, “it is important for the student to be thinking about the material It is the responsibility of the teacher, as facilitator of learning, to encourage students to be thinking about the material presented and attempting to relate it to what it is already known, to work out what it means in their own context, and to think about ways in which it might prove to be useful future application In so doing students are not only creating meaning and constructing knowledge but are actually strengthening their own learning skills” (Harden and Dent, 2005, p 208)

2.2.1 Definitions of schema

Researches have given a large number of different definitions of schema (plural of schemas or schemata) Rumelhart (1980) defines schemas as “building blocks of cognition” (p 34) and “skeleton around which the situation is interpreted” (p 37) “A schema is a cognitive structure that consists in part of the representation of some defined stimulus domain The schema contains general knowledge about that domain, including a specification of the relationships among its attributes, as well as specific examples or instances of the stimulus domain” and “the schema provides hypothesis about incoming stimuli, which include plans for interpreting and gathering schema-related information” (Taylor and Crocker, 1981, p 91) For Alba and Hasher (1983), schema is “general knowledge a person possesses about a particular domain” (p 129) Brewer and Nakamura (1984) explain that “schemas are the unconscious cognitive structures that underlie human knowledge and skill” (p 136) Cohen (1986) defines schemas as “packets of information stored in memory representing general knowledge about objects, situations, events, or actions” (p 27) Cook (1997) regards schema as “a mental representation of a typical instance” (p 86) The following is an example of schema for “mall”:

For example, the statement “We went to the mall” would activate one’s

schema for “mall” Mall is an abstract concept that has several

characteristics: it is a very large, enclosed structure containing stores, movie theaters, and restaurants; it has a large parking lot, etc Each of

these properties has a particular slot in the mental schema for “malls.” These are arranged hierarchically, so that the slot for “stores” is

subdivided into department stores, specialty shops, clothing stores, and

so on Each time an individual goes to a mall, instatiation occurs

through the matching of experience with schema (…) Finally a person’s schema for “malls” comes from personal experiences of

shopping in them through a process of induction A person who has

been to many malls or who shops at them frequently will have a more developed schema than someone who has only been once or twice

(Wolvin and Coakley, 1993, p 63) Another example is the following relatively detailed visual representation of an

“egg” schema:

Figure 2.1: A diagram of someone's possible schema for the concept of "egg."

(Source: http://www.solidstateux.com/)

2.2.2 Characteristics of schema

The following are some special features of schema according to Anderson, (1997, pp 418-419):

 Schemata are always organized meaningfully, can be added to, and, as an individual gains experience, develop to include more variables and more specificity

 Each schema is embedded in other schemata and itself contains subschema

 Schema change moment by moment as information is received

 They may also be reorganized when incoming data reveals a need to restructure the concept

 The mental representations used during perception and comprehension, and which evolves a result of these processes, combine to form a whole which

is greater than the sum of its parts

2.2.3 Types of schema

Schemata are classified into two types: content schemata and formal schemata (Carrell, 1983) The former refers to “background information” on the topic and the latter relates to “knowledge about how discourse is organized with respect to different genres, different topics, or different purposes (e.g., transactional versus interactional), including relevant sociocultural knowledge” (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000, p 102) Besides, Juan and Flor (2006) insist that “content schema are networks of knowledge on different topics and formal schema are derived from our knowledge of the structure of discourse is being listened to make it easier to engage in top-down processing strategies, such as predicting and inferencing” (p 93) Carrell and Eisterhold (1988) assert that listeners lack culture-specific content schema seriously

It is of importance that “in English listening, the content schema must be activated for the learners to access their prior knowledge” (Lingzhu, 2003, p 9)

2.3 Foundations of Schema

Schema is considered as one of the most important elements of cognitive theories of learning and “schema theory is one of the most intellectually exciting areas

of current cognitive psychology” (Brewer and Nakamura, 1984 as cited in Wolvin and Coakley, 1993, p 64) Schema is greatly used in cognitive psychology, and there still hasn’t been a consensus about the father of schema theory However, it has been said that “the idea of schema is one of the most important concepts in cognitive science” (Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland and Hinton, 1986 as cited in Xie, 2005, p 67) Hui (2005) says that “schemata are abstract cognitive constructs where knowledge is processed, stored and activated” (p 18) Thus, a lot of researchers have applied schema to study reading and speech Xie (2005) writes that

Modern schema theorists believe that schema, a data structure of general structure of general ideas stored in memory, consists of variables and slots According to such a principle, meaning exists neither in oral nor

in written language itself, but in the reader’s mind, depending on the activation of his or her brain schemata whose controlling structure or basic moving pattern is navigated through bottom-up data-driven-processing and top-down concept-driven-processing (p 67)

He also adds that “top-down processing facilitates the assimilation of new information into the information already stored” (p 68) In fact, cognitive psychologists have opinion that “all of a person’s prior knowledge was stored in the cognitive structures of the brain Therefore, in order for acquisition of new knowledge

to take place and to be meaningful, prior knowledge or schema needed to be activated within these structures by means of an introductory instructional strategy (Ausubel, 1987; Ivie, 1998; Joyce and Weil, 1986; Kalmes, 2005; Postrech, 2002 as cited in Daniel, 2005, p 1) From bottom-up and top-down perspectives, Rost (2001) shows that “listening involves ‘bottom-up’ processing, in which listeners attend to data in the incoming speech signals, and ‘top-down’ processing, in which listeners utilize prior

knowledge and expectations to create meaning” (p 7) Moreover, Vandergrift (2004) argue that

listeners use top-down processes when they use context and prior knowledge (topic, genre, and other schema knowledge in long-term memory) to build a conceptual framework for comprehension; listeners use bottom-up processes when they construct meaning by accretion, gradually combining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-level features (p 4)

Research from the two cognitive processes suggests that it is necessary for listeners to learn how to use these processes effectively based on different listening purposes It is agreed that “bottom-up processing is applied to gather information on phonology, lexis, syntax and grammar to build up an understanding of what is perceived Top-down processing, however, makes use of previous knowledge and experience (schema) to predict, filter, analyze and interpret the information received” and top-down processing emphasizes the importance of listener’s background knowledge” (Nunan, 2007, p 32), and “in top-down processing we rely on what we already know to help make sense of what we hear” (Juan and Flor, 2006, p 93) More importantly, Eysenck (2001 cited in Nunan, 2007) asserts that “both top-down and bottom-up processing occur at the same time in what is known as parallel processing.”

Lastly, spychologists have done a number of experiments in order to prove that human’s cognition is related to schema and is affected by knowledge stored in one’s mind (Brewer and Treyens, 1981) “Schemata, the relevant packages of prior knowledge and experience that we have in memory and can call on in the process of comprehension” (Juan and Flor, 2006, p 93) From this point, it may be inferred that listening comprehension are more or less influenced by prior knowledge (see Diagram 2.2)

“the schema theory highlights the fact that more than one interpretation of a text is possible The schema that will be brought to bear on a text depends on the reader’s age, sex, race, religion, nationality, and occupation In short, it depends on the reader’s primary cultural reference group” (p 34)

Top-down processing

Discourse knowledge and sociolinguistic knowledge (formal schemata)

Metacognition

Edwards and McDonald (1993) showed that “schema theory details how people store and use knowledge about a domain The theory predicts what

Interpretation of Spoken Discourse (input)

Language knowledge:

(phonology, vocabulary,

information people will select for memory storage, that information will be abstract, and that the information will be interpreted in light of existing knowledge and integrated into the existing network” (p 60) Indeed, the existing knowledge significantly affects listening learning as well as listening comprehension of students

2.5 Benefits of schema-building

2.5.1 Schema and second language acquisition

Underwood (1989, cited in Osada, 2004, p 62) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening learning:

1 Listeners cannot control the speed of delivery Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension, as apposed to reading comprehension, is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks

2 Listeners cannot always have words repeated This is a serious problem

in learning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not

to replay a recording or a section of a recording is not in the hands of students Teachers decide what and where to repeat listening passages; however, it is “hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular section of what they have heard

3 Listeners have a limited vocabulary The speaker may choose words the listener does not know Listeners sometimes encounter an unknown word, which may cause them to stop and think about the meaning of that word and thus cause them to miss the next part of the speech

4 Listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker is moving one point to another, giving an example, or repeating

a point Discourse markers used in formal situations or spontaneous

conversations, signals are more vague as in pauses, gestures, increased

loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can easily missed especially by less proficient listeners

5 Listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing knowledge and common context makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, nods, gestures or tone of voice, can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures

6 It can be difficult for listener to concentrate on the text In listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension Concentration is easier where students find the topic of the listening passage interesting; however, students sometimes feel listening very tiring even if they are interested because it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning

7 Students may have established certain learning habits, such as a wish to understand every word By tradition, teachers want students to understand every word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading the language to suit their level, by speaking slowly and so on Consequently, students tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and they will be discouraged by the failure It is thus sometimes necessary for students to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding

From observing the difficulties students often have, it is suggested that schema building activities help them overcome these troubles Goh, (2002) and Nunan (2007) argue that “comprehension relies on listeners’ successful activation of their prior

knowledge (schemata)” (p 35), and suggest some following techniques to activate stored or existing schemata as displaced in Table 2.1:

Brainstorming Call out related words or phrases

to be put on the board or OHP

Those knowledge-oriented activities aims

to prepare students by encouraging them to activate stored schemata

or acquire relevant types

of world knowledge, which will facilitate top-down

processing

Mind-mapping Write down words or draw

simple pictures in a web Discussion Discuss similar or related issues

based on prompt questions or pictures

Games Simple word or information-gap

games Guided-questions Guess answers to question on the

text Picture/Diagram Complete illustrations with

simple drawings or words Prediction Predict contents, characters,

setting or sequence of events Elimination Identify the odd one out from a

group of pictures or words/phrases Skimming Read a related short text for gist

Table 2.1: Techniques to activate stored schemata

Furthermore, Underwood (1989, pp 35-43) suggests some more activities in order to activate listener’s prior knowledge and help them acquire second language,

especially listening learning and comprehension more easily and effectively as follows:

 looking at pictures and talking about them;

 looking at a list of items, thoughts, etc.;

 making lists of possibilities, ideas, suggestions, etc.;

 previewing the language which will be heard in the listening text;

 informal talk and class discussion

Thanks to the activities, second language acquisition becomes easier and quicker in that schema-building stimulates listeners to use what they already know and integrate the previously achieved knowledge into acquiring new knowledge In fact, “when a schema already exists for the topic, the “new” information becomes indishtinguishable from the “old” information” (Wolvin and Coakley, 1993, p 64), which indicates the important role of schematic knowledge in second language listening learning Because of this, Fitch and Hauser (1990 cited in Hargie, 1997) state that “another way of examining the acquisition of information in spoken messages may involve the use of schemas (p 245) “A schema is an individual’s collection of prior knowledge that provides a context for meaningful interpretation of new information” (Anderson, 1984 in Hunt and Touzel, 2009, p 57) and “schemas change with the accretion of new knowledge and the tuning and reconstruction of prior schemas” (Carlo and Edwards, 2005, p 148)

More importantly, Edwards and McDonald (1993) observed that schemas

“help process information by reducing processing load’ (p 60) They also highlight that the richness of a schema affects listening positively for messages that add new

information to an existing schema and schemas are particularly helpful for listening during conversation and when a message is complex since they aid in reducing processing load Thus, Nasida (1999) argues that “the more often a person repeats a schema-based behavior, the more likely the schemas will be stored in the person’s memory” (p 746) Nunan (2007) states that “it is beneficial for listening course teachers to bear in mind that activating students’ stored knowledge structure (schemata) to enhance comprehension and creating new schemata are far more important than imparting new knowledge of the language system” (p 33)

2.5.2 Schema and classroom participation/interaction

Brown (2006) suggests that “it is just as important to give the students the opportunity to use what they already know – their prior knowledge – to help them do the task” (p 4), which means that schema-building involves learners’ participation and interaction It can be said that the more a teacher uses the above schema-building activities, the more positively and actively listeners participate and interact during pair-work and group-work tasks What’s more, it is claimed that class discussions which focus on topics “offer English learners rich exposure to new vocabulary and use, along with opportunities to interact in a variety of academic situations - reporting information, summarizing, synthesizing, and debating" (http://www.austicc.edu) Therefore, the students need to be stimulated, and given the opportunity to apply acquired knowledge in such activities as analysis, synthesis, evaluation and problem solving Outcomes relating to attitudinal and emotional aspects to be performed also need to be remembered; interaction between students in an exchange of views often needs to be fostered by the teacher so that conflicting views can be considered and resolution achieved” (Harden and Dent, 2005, p 208)

2.5.3 Schema and motivation

Successful listening learning is partially determined by motivation to be most likely achieved due to schema-building Brown, (2000) states that “a listener will be successful with the proper motivation” p 143); “the role of motivation in the successful acquisition of the target language” is studied by Richard and Nunan (1990,

p 53) It is, therefore, rather essential for listeners to be stimulated and encouraged to learn by the teacher and them Brother (1978) finds out that "motivation is a basic principle of all kinds of teaching - the language student is best motivated by practice

in which he senses the language is truly communicative, that it is appropriate to its context, that his teacher's skills are moving him forward to a fuller competence in the foreign language" (p 47)

“Students will find their English lessons more stimulating if some of their English work is concerned with the things that interest them, so teachers will have to find out what these things are” (Underwood, 1987, p 27) “The motivation for listeners should be pleasure, interest and growing confidence at being able to understand the spoken language” (Byrne, 1976, p 15) Brown (2006) “it is just as important to give the students the opportunity to use what they already know-their prior knowledge - to help them do the task.” Furthermore, “it really doesn’t matter whether the words actually will appear in the listening task because activating prior knowledge, in addition to helping comprehension, motivates students by bringing their lives to the lesson” (p 4)

Harden and Dent (2005) assert that “It might be that the new material to be presented will need activation of more than one set of existing knowledge structures”, which means “pulling together previously acquired knowledge from several different areas of experience” (p 207) Hence, this schema activation is “important in the learning experience that teachers need to consider much more carefully how to help learners prepare for the session and how to begin the session to ensure maximum readiness for the new material to be presented” (p 207) Moreover, Brown and Smith

(2007) suggest that listeners need to be active; and when they listen, remember to do these things:

(1) Think about what you are listening to

 What is the topic?

 What do you already know about the topic?

(2) Think about what you are listening for

 What do you need to know?

 What do you need to do?

(p 2) Lingzhu (2003) states that after the listeners answer the above questions, they themselves build their own expectations about the coming information and their prior knowledge on the topic is activated at the same time

2.5.4 Schema-building and listening comprehension

There have been relatively few empirical researches on the possible link between schema building and listening comprehension Researchers have claimed that schematic knowledge facilitates listening comprehension and helps listeners deal with barriers in listening learning Rost (2002) states that the listeners have numerous sources of information which make listening comprehension easier In other words, listening comprehension is influenced by the information that an individual has in the mind or from stores of memory; therefore, schematic knowledge is overtly beneficial

to listening comprehension and “relevant schemata must be activated” (Carrel, 1988,

p 105)

O’malley and Chamot (1989) shows 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” (p 420); and Long’s (1989) idea that

“comprehension that are based on learner’s ability to draw on their existing

knowledge” (p 32) helps a lot to do this research “Listening comprehension is regarded theoretically as an active process in which individuals concentrate on selected aspects of aural input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge” (Fang, 2008, p 22); therefore, appropriate schemata need to be activated during text processing so as to facilitate efficient comprehension (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1998)

Jeon (2007) writes that “Markham and Latham (1987) conducted their research to assess the influence of religious-specific background knowledge on listening comprehension of adult ESL students” (p 90) Sixty five ESL students who were classified as Muslim, Christian, and neutral, participated in the study The analysis of recalled data from Markham and Latham’s research demonstrated that the

“students adhering to a specific religious group recalled more ideas, and produced more appropriate elaborations and fewer inaccurate distortions regarding passages associated with their particular religion” and she emphasizes that “background knowledge does significantly influence ESL students’ listening comprehension” (p 90)

Long (1990 as cited in Jeon, 2007) highlights the need to investigate how background knowledge influences auditory comprehension in second language Results from her survey and recall protocols which were collected from 188 students taking a Spanish courses show that background knowledge could help L2 listening comprehension, and that linguistic knowledge played a prominent role in comprehension when appropriate background knowledge was not available to L2 listeners (p 92)

Schmidt-Rinehart (1994) carried out a research to find out whether there was

an interaction between topical knowledge and L2 listening comprehension Because the effect of background knowledge on listening comprehension is not clear cut when

it involves L2 listening ability, she expanded the research of Long (1990) by adding proficiency level as a variable, the results collected from ninety university students of

Spanish classes of different levels of proficiency, taking immediate recall-protocols showed that topic familiarity had impacts on the scores of the recall measures and that there was an a consistent increase in comprehension scores across the different levels Nevertheless, the results also demonstrated no relation between such two variables as topic familiarity and course level; i.e., L2 listening proficiency, which disclosed that all students of different course levels scored higher on the familiar passage

In addition, the effect of prior knowledge was examined by Jensen and Hasen (1995) They hypothesized that students’ prior knowledge could bias the tests After having studied the results of 128 university level L2 learners, they concluded that prior knowledge does not dramatically contribute to L2 listening comprehension, and that more investigation would be needed to investigate whether schematic knowledge really facilitates listening comprehension

Recently, Hohzawa (1998 as cited in Jeon, 2007) “found, by studying 58 Japanese English learners, that listeners with high prior knowledge understood more familiar text than unfamiliar text and more proficient L2 listeners understood more than less-skilled listeners in either familiar or unfamiliar text Students were assigned

to a information group (experimental group) and to a no information group (control group) A proficiency test was given to measure their prior knowledge about the topics of three new stories Students in the experimental group discussed the content of the stories briefly after the introductions of the new stories were provided Collected scores from a written recalled-protocol and a comprehension test revealed that students who lacked background information tended

background-to produce more instances of inaccurate recall of the text or disbackground-tortions, which was similar to findings of Markham and Latham (1987)” (p 94)

2.6 Summary

As presented in the above literature, the findings of L2 listening researches on the impacts of schematic knowledge on listening comprehension are still rather controversial Some researches are for the fact that schema-building activities play a role in helping listeners to learn listening whereas other researches are against the impacts of schema-building activities on listening learning The findings of inconclusive role of schematic knowledge in listening comprehension supported the need and design of the present study, main purpose of which was to investigate to what extent schema-building activities have impacts on listening comprehension at HUTECH

Figure 2.3: CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Second language acquisition

Factors towards listening learning

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter displays the methodology employed in the study in detail It consists of the following parts research questions, research design, subjects, data collection, and analysis procedures

3.1 Research questions

As pointed earlier in Chapter 2, a lot of researchers support the fact that processing and understanding information are greatly facilitated through the activation of learner’s prior knowledge or pre-existent knowledge of the world and the use of this knowledge to get new input Indeed, Fang (2008) inserts that “listening comprehension is regarded theoretically as an active process in which individuals concentrate on selected aspects of aural input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge” (p 22) Sadighi and Zare (2006) emphasize that the listener is regarded as an active processor and that the type of knowledge that he/she brings to the context of listening is very beneficial for learning listening comprehension Hence, Brown (2006) inserts that “one very important idea for teaching listening is that listening courses must make use of students’ prior knowledge in order to improve listening comprehension” (p 2)

The study was guided by the two following research questions:

(1) What are the factors that influence listening learning?

(2) What impacts do schema-building activities have on EFL learners’ listening learning?

3.2 Subjects

The participants in this study were 123 first-year students among 296 students from different faculties of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology They all took

English as a compulsory subject After they had taken the same pretest, and completed the questionnaire in class time during the first two weeks The two classes 10DTP04 (60 students) and 10DQT09 (63 students) from 6 first-year classes at HUTECH were selected as control group and experimental group respectively since their students had nearly the same listening proficiency level and background The data collected from the questionnaires provided some features of the two groups as displayed in Table 3.1 including the number of students, age, gender, place of high-school study, English learning duration and studying at foreign language centers Because some of the students were absent from class when the questionnaire was delivered, there were 58 students in the control group and 60 students in the experimental group, who completed the questionnaires