SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE 12 STUDENTS listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

Making students aware of the purposes of listening 11 2.3.. INITIATIVE: “SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE 12 STUDENTS' listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER SECONDA

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGES

1 Students’ psychological characteristics in learning Englis 4

2 Importance in stimulating participation of students in

1.1 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation 7

1.3 Using visual aids in teaching listening 9

1.4 Raising students’ awareness of the usefulness of English 10

2 Training students to become efficient listeners 11 2.1 Making students aware of the nature of the listeninging process 11 2.2 Making students aware of the purposes of listening 11 2.3 Teaching students different listening strategies 11 2.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit 12

3 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques and subject background

2 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 19

INITIATIVE: “SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE GRADE 12

STUDENTS' listenING SKILL IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT LE LOI UPPER

SECONDARY SCHOOL”

PART 1: REASONS FOR TOPIC CHOICE

No one can deny the importance of listening skills in foreign language learningbecause the key to acquire a language is to receive language input Krashen, Terrell,Ehrman, & Herzog (1984) claim that acquisition takes place only when students absorbenough comprehensible input The same claim was supported by Rost (1994) whoconfirmed that listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input forlearners As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’languagedevelopment Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language byunderstanding the linguistic information they hear Thus language acquisition is achieved

mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the criticalcomponent in achieving understandable language input Without understanding inputs atthe right level, any kind of learning simply cannot occur Thus listening is a fundamentallanguage skill, and as such it merits a critical priority among the four skill areas forlanguage students As an English teacher, with her own knowledge and experience inteaching, the author finds interested in studying the difficulties in learning the listening

skill in English She would like to present the thesis “An investigation into difficulties

in learning English listening skills at Leloi high school" She chooses this matter due

to the following reasons

PART 2: CONTENT

I THEORETICAL BASIS

1 Students’ psychological characteristics in learning English.

Students own age characteristics and innate skills which help them in learninglanguage process Teachers must fully understand and take full advantages of themeffectively These specific characteristics are: They learn a foreign language naturally asthey learn their mother tongue They learn it through encouragement, which depends oneach teacher’s methods If they are effectively motivated, they will perform better andmore enthusiastically Besides, they learn through their listening and repeating, throughcooperation and reciprocation in reliable atmosphere; and through interesting activitiesfrom which they gain their aims

One of the things that makes teaching a source of endless fascination is the fact that

no two classes are ever the same There always exists the complex interpersonalchemistry between teacher and students and between student and student In any given

classroom, the factors such as position attitudes and individuals’ personalities will be inconstant interaction creating a dynamic, unstable environment that can either facilitatethe learning process or seriously impair it The role of expectations of both teachers andlearners will be conditioned by individual personality factors such as introversion,cognitive style, prior learning and teaching experiences, and cultural factors.

Real-life observation also tells us that even if language learners can be shown to befollowing a common developmental route, they differ greatly in degree of ultimatesuccess which they achieve As a teacher, one should be aware that learners differ inways that careful thought when making decisions about what to be taught and how toteach Social psychologists have argued consistently that differences in learningoutcomes must be due to individual differences between learners, and many proposalshave been made concerning the characteristics which supposedly cause these differences

Gardner and MacIntyre (1992, 1993) divided what they saw as the most importantlearners’ traits into two groups, the cognitive and affective Cognitive factors includestudents’ intelligence, language aptitude and language learning strategies Mostdiscussions have limited affective factors to personality characteristics, languageattitudes, motivation and emotional responses to the language learning process orlanguage anxiety

Krashen (1985) has suggested the notion of the affective filter This is arepresentation of the way in which affective factors such as attitudes, anxiety,competitiveness and other emotional responses can help or hinder language learning Alearner who has generally negative attitudes towards learning A learner who hasgenerally negative attitudes towards learning English will have a high effective filter andthe task for the teacher will be sustantial The precise functioning of this filter highlightsthe role of the teacher in creating beneficial conditions for language learning

The degree to which any of the factors discussed will become significant in aparticular learning and teaching situation will depend partly on the reasons why learnersare learning English Any individual may be influenced by a variety of motivations whichwill affect such things as anxiety, attitudes or willingness to try new learning strategies

In short, there exist individual differences among learners and these differencesplay a significant role in language learning For a teacher, the challenge must be how toenable each learner according to his or her individual characteristics and culturalbackground

2 Importance in stimulating participation of students in English lesson.

Students’ participation is very necessary for learning process to occur Lack ofparticipation will have negative influence on all the learning process Through

interacion in the target language students learn to communicate Hence, speaking skill isquite important.

3 Listening skill

First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the real life.Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication They are closelyinterdependent We are only able to talk sensibly when we understand what is said to us

If we fail to understand spoken language, we may miss important information andrespond in a funny way Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means ofproviding learners with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of thewhole language learning process And teaching listening skill in classroom helpslearners make transition from classroom English to real- life English more easily andeffectively Therefore, the author would like to do this research so as to help teachersand learners pay more attention to this skill

Secondly, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreignlanguage Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most daunting forlearners When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to the text

to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in most listening contexts such as

TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures or conversations As Harmer said:

Whereas the written word stays on the page and can be looked at more than once, thespoken word, unless recorded on tape or record cannot be repeated Of course in aconversation it is possible to ask someone to say something again, but the fact remainsthat while a reader can look back at something as many times as he wants, the listenercannot

(Harmer, 1991)

What is more, in teaching and learning English listening skill in Vietnam ingeneral and in TanKy in particular, teachers and learners cope with a lot of problemsand difficulties because of both objective and subjective reasons Thus, the authorchooses this topic to point out the main difficulties which the learners have met and tofind the reasons for them

The last but not least reason for choosing this thesis title is that many learnersare not interested in learning the listening skill They find listening classes boring On theother hand, practicing listening skill is difficult and it takes long time It is necessary for

teachers to foster the passion for regular listening and to cater for some learners’ need tolisten for relaxation and pleasure That is the reason the author would like to work outsome suggestions so as to help teachers motivate their learners to study listening skillmore excited and better.

II THE REAL STATE OF AFFAIRS

1 Researching method.

This research is conducted through qualitative methods The data is collectedthrough the questionaire for students, the interviews for teachers and the obeservationsfor several classes

2 Researching questions.

As it has been stated, this study was carried out to gain insights into the areas ofdifficulties in listening skills encountered by the 11th grades at Le Loi high school andthe causes of their unsuccessful listening comprehension Thus, it was designed in anattempt to seek answers to the following questions:

1 What are the students’ difficulties in learning English listening at Le Loi highschool?

2 What are the causes of those difficulties ?

3 What are the possible pedagogical implications that can help to reduce thosedifficulties ?

3 Results of the survey.

At the beginning of the school year, before applying the new teaching ideas, Iconducted a survey and the following are the results In terms of students’ attitude, theyshow a very negative one to the current teaching method 37% disliked listening toomany notes when learning English 72% indicated that they had few opportunities tounderstand because there are too many difficult words Only 25% said that they likedEnglish listening lessons

The majority of the interviewees are experienced teachers in teaching English.They all agreed that the difficulty they regularly met was the listening comprehensionand stratagies to listen Table of how often students participate in different activities

Activities Never Rarely Occsionally Usuallyindividual work ( 2 teams / class) 28,7 54,3 16,8 1,2

Group work ( 4-5 students / group) 12,4 41,5 45,1 0

From the above real situation, the participation in English class in Le Loi uppersecondary school is not high and should be paid attention to Only a small number ofstudents are interested in class activities such as pair work, group work, compared withindividual activities It proves that the interaction among students is rather limited.Consequently, listening skill is also limited This reality urged me to find some ways toimprove my teaching and applying them to my everyday lessons

III SOLUTIONS

1 Suggested solutions to learn English listening skills at Le Loi high school

The study has shown that the mastery of listening skill was a problem for manystudents at Tan Ky high school The listening difficulties fell into three categories:language problem, listening skill problem and subject background knowledge problem.The major causes include the students’ limited linguistic and background knowledge, andunsuitable teaching methodology This part suggests some possible ways to reduce thestudents’ difficulties in listening lessons and improve the quality of teaching and learningEnglish listening These suggested solutions include: increasing students’ interest andmotivation; training students to become efficient listeners; improving teachers’ classroomtechniques and subject background knowledge

1.1 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation

According to the results of the research, one of the causes of English listeningdifficulties is that a considerable number of students in our school have negative, lowinterest and motivation in learning listening Therefore, to reduce the difficulties inlistening, the teachers should arouse students’ passion for listening by making English

listening lessons more interesting and useful

1.2 Making English listening interesting

As we have found from the questionnaire and from the small talks with thestudents, listening lessons turned out to be boring and not motivating enough forstudents This is because the lessons contain long texts with too many new words andabout unfamiliar professional topics Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to makethe materials interesting enough to draw the students’ attention

Firstly, teachers should provide easy listening lessons by simplifying, adapting thematerials to suit the students’ level of proficiency so that the students can find themselves

at ease and listen to Then, teachers should have a well-prepared pre-listening stagebecause this stage plays an important role and affects largely the effectiveness of thelearning process In this stage, the teachers can utilize different techniques, for example:pictures, real objects, charts and diagrams, flash cards to stimulate the students Afterthat, teachers can apply other various techniques to help students deal the listening tasks,for instance: pair work, group work, discussion, role play, interview Finally, teachersshould create different activities or tasks in each lesson so that the students can avoidboredom Teachers can utilize a variety of techniques to draw students’ interest, thetechniques are discussed herebelow

1.3 Using visual aids in teaching listening

Visual aids not only are very helpful in motivating students but also so helpstudents to understand the meanings of words clearly and memorize them quickly,especially in the vocabulary Most vocabulary are terminologies which are highlyspecialized, therefore it is advisable for teachers to use visual aids in teaching ESPvocabulary Visual aids can be: pictures, real objects, flash cards, charts, maps, diagrams,blackboard… Visual aids are better than any other explanations when introducing a wordbecause it can give what exactly what students need to know without translating intotheir mother tongue Here below are some pictures that the teachers can use whenteaching vocabulary

fed up (adj) with : chán điều gì

Africa jungle jungle (n): rừng rậm /ˈdʒʌŋɡl/

Unit 15: Space conquest

They are doing the experiment

experiment

/ ik'speriment /(n, v):

ĐƵҾҾc ƚŚşŶŐŚŝҵŶŐŚŝҵҵ m, ƚŚşŶŐŚŝҵŶŐŚŝҵҵ m

What are they doing?

They are experimenting

It’s a Congress

What can you see from the picture?

Congress/ 'kɔηηgres/

(n): Nghị viện, Quốc hội (ở Hoa Kỳ)

This fish challenge itself and try to overcome this challenge.

1.4 Raising students’ awareness of the usefulness of English

In order to enhance the students’ listening interest and better motivate the students

to listen, it is important for the teachers to help the students realize how useful listening

is Firstly, listening is one of the four language skills which are integrated So, listeningwell will help the students pick up vocabulary, structures or ideas to speak and write.Secondly, once the students become proficient listeners, they can find listening the mosteffective way to get information and increase their professional knowledge and the mostmeaningful way of relaxation When the students have high motivation to listenmaterials, they will be more studious and will manage to overcome difficulties

2 Training students to become efficient listeners

2.1 Making students aware of the nature of the listeninging process

It is the teachers who should help their students realize that listening is an active processwhich involves the use of a number of skills and strategies and the drawing on socio-cultural knowledge, knowledge of the language of the text and strategies for accessingmeaning such as predicting information, sampling, deducing meaning or other listeningtechniques like bottom-up processing and top-down processing This understandingenables the students to actively take part in the listening process and overcome theirproblems such as vocabulary difficulties, lack of listening strategies and limitedknowledge of the subject, to comprehend the text in the most effective way It may also

help students to develop a positive attitude towards English, which is one of the factorsthat determines the success of the listening process.

2.2 Making students aware of the purposes of listening

When the students have purposes in the mind, they know how to channel theirenergy in the right direction Thus, helping the students to identify the purpose of alistening text is an useful aid in their listening process Glancing at titles, subtitles,headings and subheadings can give students the clues for the listening purposes.Moreover, the teachers should teach the students to look for purposes in the light of thesituation and the type of materials Effective listening involves clearly identifying thepurposes of listening with which the students know what they are looking for and caneleminate potential distracting information

2.3 Teaching students different listening strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that support the listening comprehension

by providing how the listening input is processed by the listeners Researchers have

categorized them into two types of strategies such as bottom-up processing and top-downprocessing

Bottom-up technique is text based The listeners catch the meaning based on the

language in the message such as the combination of sounds, words and grammar.According to Rubin (1994: 210), the listeners make use of “his knowledge of words,syntax, and grammar to work on form” This process is in the close relation with thelisteners’ linguistic knowledge Therefore, we can ask students to listen for specificdetails, recognize cognates or recognize word order patterns Listening for exact phrases

or words, individual grammatical structures or sentence structures would be considered abottom-up listening

However, bottom-up technique has its own weakness To understand the text, the

listeners must have an interactive process between their previous knowledge and the text

Top-down processing is listener based The listeners use the knowledge inside the

head which is not directly encoded in words While few English learners would havelittle trouble in comprehending the sounds, words and clauses in the given messages, it isunlikely that they can demonstrate comprehension by listening to the text and writing aprécis or providing a verbal account If we apply this technique, we can ask students tolisten for the main idea, predict what is happening, draw inferences and summarize

Top-down processing requires listeners’ background knowledge about the text.

However, the listeners may fail to understand unfamiliar information unless they onlydepend on their background knowledge They need the linguistic knowledge in listening

comprehension Top-down processing refers to how we use our world knowledge to

attribute meaning to language input; how our knowledge of social convention helps usunderstand meaning

To deal with the disadvantages of both processes, the interactive processing that is

a combination of both techniques has been given out since the early 1980s In thisprocess, listeners use both their background knowledge information, contextualinformation and linguistic information to create comprehension and interpretation Thelisteners will employ the background knowledge to make predictions when the content ofthe material is familiar to them Otherwise, if they are unfamiliar with the content of thelistening text and lack of language proficiency, they are able to make sense ofinformation based on their linguistic knowledge especially the lexical and syntacticalknowledge Besides, students can have a chance to interact with each other before andafter listening to share the knowledge

2.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit

As shown in the study, most of the students reported that the most difficult part inlistening is vocabulary This means that they lacked necessary vocabulary related to thesubject matter and limited knowledge of the subject So, teacher should encouragethe students to form the positive and extensive listening habit Listening extensivelyoutside the classroom can help them enrich their vocabulary and knowledge of thesubject matter Teacher should provide students with the materials related to the topicsthey are learning, the source of these materials (from some books, websites ) andthe way to listen effectively

3 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques and subject background knowledge 3.1 Suggested Activities for English listening

3.1 -a Pre-listening Stage

During the pre- listening phase, the teacher needs to recognize that all the studentsbring different backgrounds to the listening experience Beliefs, attitudes, and biases ofthe listeners will affect the understanding of the message In addition, to be aware ofthese factors, the teacher should show students how their backgrounds affect the

messages they receive Before listening, students need assistance to activate what theyalready knew about the ideas they are going to hear Simply being told the topic is notenough The pre- listening activities are required to establish what is already knownabout the topic, to build necessary background, and to set purpose(s) for listening.Students need to understand that the:

Act of listening requires not just hearing but also thinking, as well as a

good deal of interest and information that both speaker and listener must

have in common Speaking and listening entail three components: the

speaker, the listener, and the meaning to be shared; speaker, listener, and

meaning form a unique triangle (King, 1984, p 177)

Some sample activities used for pre-listening stage:

 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs and (answering the questions,discussing as teachers’ requirement)

 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures

 words form

 reading something relevant and discussing in pairs or in groups

 playing a short game

 constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showinghow they are related)

 pairs or groups discussing to answer the guiding questions

 Predicting the topic/content of the listening text: Students predict what they expect

to hear from the listening, work in pairs, and feedback ideas to the board/teacher

(Make sure you read the typescript beforehand and you can then feed in

vocabulary in your introduction/lead in)

 Predicting vocabulary: Once the students know the topic of the listening, they

predict words or expressions that they think they will hear Again, write the

feedback of these predictions on the board As students listen, they should tick thewords they find Which pair predicted the most words?

 Vocabulary selection/sort: In this activity, the students are given a group of words,some of which are from the listening, others are not Students decide which onesare from the listening