Pre listening activities used in listening lessons = sử dụng hoạt động trước nghe trong các bài giảng

Students find it difficult to understand the listening task if they don’t know any thing about what they are going to listen to or they arenot ready to deal with a new listening task.. -

§Ëu ThÞ V©n

Pre-listening activities used in listening lessons

Graduation thesis

Field: Methodology

Vinh - 2005

Vinh University

Pre-listening activities used in listening lessons

Table of contentS

Page

AcknowledgementS

1 The Rationale for choosing the subject 1

2 The Aims of the study 1

3 The Scope of the study 2

4 The Methods of the study 2

5 The Design of the study 2

Part II: Development 4 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 4 1.1 Listening skill 4

1.1.1.Definition 4

1.1.2 The importance of listening skill 4

1.1.3 Stages of listening process 6

1.1.3.1 Pre-listening 6

1.1.3.2 While-listening 7

1.1.3.3 Post-listening 7

1.2 Principles and procedures for teaching listening 8

1.2.1 Principles 8

1.2.2 Procedures 10

1.3 Factors affecting the listening process 12 1.3.1.The nature of speech 12

1.3.2 The nature of listening task 13

1.3.3 The listener 14

1.3.4 The speaker 15

1.3.5 The visual support 15

Chapter 2: Pre-listening activities used in listening lessons 16 2.1 Pre-listening 16

2.1.1 Overview 16

2.1.2 The role of pre-listening tasks 17

2.1.3 The aims of pre-listening tasks 18

2.1.3.1 Motivating students 18

2.1.3.2 Activating or building related knowledge 19

2.1.3.3 Setting purposes for listening 20

2.1.3.4 Setting the context 21

2.2 Pre-listening activities and their procedures to apply

21 Chapter 3: The survey 34 3.1 Overview of the survey 34

3.1.1 Aims of the survey 34

3.1.2 Informants and their background 34

3.2 Description of the survey questionnaire 34

3.2.1 Survey questionnaire 34

3.2.2 Result and Findings 36

3.3 Suggestions of some typical pre-listening activities 39

3.3.1 What should be considered before applying a pre-listening activity into the class time

39 3.3.1.1 The teaching style 39

3.3.1.2 The time available 40

3.3.1.3 The content of listening text 40

T

I would like to express my deepest thanks to the many teachers at the FLD of Vinh university whose very interesting lectures on English, especially listening skill and methodology are useful for this study.

I would also like to give my thanks to those who took part in my small survey as well as my friends for their constructive opinions for the research.

Finally,I feel obliged to my parents for their spiritual support Definitely, I would not be able to do anything without their help.

§Ëu ThÞ V©n

Part I: Introduction

1 the Rationale for choosing the subject

Nowadays, English has been becoming an international language andbeing used in all fields of international exchange, between different people allover the world In almost universities, English is taught as a compulsorysubject and it will be examinable in the university graduation certificate.Nevertheless, the results of students were so far behind the expectation Thereason why students fail to achieve an acceptable competence level in thelanguage studying in spite of having studied it from the very first of school isstill a big question

Students have to cope with many kinds of problems in learningEnglish However, listening skill is considered to be the most difficult one.Now, it is being taught as one of basic language skills in many schools butmany problems still remain Students usually find it tiring and difficult tolearn and teachers have many difficulties in motivating their students to learnthis skill effectively Students find it difficult to understand the listening task

if they don’t know any thing about what they are going to listen to or they arenot ready to deal with a new listening task So, activities before listening arevery necessary and important They help students feel more confident,interested and active and thus, help them to study more effectively I myselfhave been studying listening subject more than 3 years at university but I findthe results of English listening tests often not very good and I also haveobserved many freshmen making a very little progress after much practice oflistening Now as a 4th-year-student of English, I wish I could do something tohelp students in lower courses in improving their listening skill This leads me

to the decision of choosing the topic “Pre-listening activities used in listeninglessons” for my study

2 the Aims of the study.

This thesis has been done with a wish that it could give a smallcontribution to the improvement in teaching English especially in teachinglistening Therefore, when deciding to do this thesis, I aimed at:

- Explaining why listening should be considered to be an importantpart in any English teaching programme

- Making teachers and students more aware of great learning value ofpre-listening activities and their procedures to apply them into listeninglessons in order to achieve a totally successful teaching and learning result.

- Introducing some typical activities that can be used for motivatingthe students to do their listening tasks

3 The scope of the study

In this thesis, I write about the pre-listening activities which only take

a few minutes before doing a listening task so that students can be motivatedand become interested in listening I especially concentrate on researchingactivities which can help the first year students to improve their listening skill.Such activities can be used to encourage them before they do their listeningtasks I also write about a small survey, which I have made to find out thefactual role of pre-listening activities and the real need for such activities ofthe teacher in motivating the students in learning listening

4 The methods of the study

With the aim to motivate the students when they do their listening task

by using pre-listening activities, during our studying process we have to usedifferent methods but the dominant ones are as follows:

- Collective method

- Investigative method

- Analytic and systematic method

- Illustrative method

5 The design of the study.

The thesis consists of 3 main parts:

Part I is the introduction of the thesis in which we present the

rationale for choosing the subject, the aims, the scope, the methods and thedesign of the thesis

Part II is the development with 3 main chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background

Chapter 2: Pre-listening activities used in listening lessons.

Chapter 3: The Survey

Part III is the conclusion of the thesis.

Besides these 3 main parts, the thesis also consists of theacknowledgements, the table of contents and the references

Part II: development

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1 Listening skill

1.1.1 Definition

According to Ron Forseth and others (1994) in their “MethodologyHandbook for English teachers in Vietnam”, “Listening is a language skill ,which involves a wide range of sub-skills It is much more than simplyhearing, it is decoding sounds and understanding the meaning behind thosesounds”

Listening is different from hearing, which is psychological process.When listening we not only hear the words but also understand them.Listening involves the processes of selecting, understanding andremembering Therefore, students should pay attention to those processes

Listening is not a passive skill but an active one as Littlewood (1981)claimed, “In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker intends, thehearers must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources” Clearly, one cannot understand the speaker unless he orshe actively uses the language to decode a message based on linguistic andnon-linguistic cues

1.1.2 The importance of listening skill

As a rule, we always mention 4 main skills of studying English as well

as any second language in the following order: Listening, speaking, readingand writing It does not mean that in comparison with listening skill, theothers are less important, but it implies that listening is the fundamental skill

on which much attention should be paid first so that the process of improvingother skills can be better motivated

As far as the theory of second language learning is concerned,listening skill has dialectical relationships with other ones Obtaining a goodlistening skill enables one who is learning a second language to acquire othermastered skills faster

The first respect of learning English that has close relation withlistening must be vocabulary learning Before vocabulary can play animportant role in listening practice, listening is a condition for learners toremember words Let us think of a simple example: At the very first timewhen English learners learn nothing yet but some English words, they havethe teacher read the words and they imitate in mind Then they practicereading the words in the way of pronouncing that they listen to the teacherread That can make them remember the words much faster than only seethem on the book without reading out loud.

Listening is one of two main oral communicative skills together withspeaking, so it is understandable that there is a very close relationship betweenlistening and speaking Listening is an essential part of communicatingprocess Students of language spend majority of their time at school listening

to their professors’ lectures in target language Obviously, so much of whatstudents acquire during their studying process is through listening Listening

is considered not only the most difficult skill for our students of secondlanguage to develop but also one of the most important skills of which theproficiency is to be gained By developing students to listen well, we developstudents’ ability to become more independent listeners As by hearingaccurately, they are more likely to be able to reproduce accurately They will

be better at refining their understanding of grammar and developing their ownvocabulary

Listening is paying attention to what people are saying in order tomake sense of what they want to communicate When we praise a goodspeaker, we do usually not honor good listener Therefore, we often think thatlistening is not an important part of communicating process However, thetruth is that listening is indeed an essential skill How can a studentcommunicate successfully in the target language without ability to listen andunderstand what people are talking about? In fact, not every good listener is agood speaker, but to become a good speaker requires a good listening skill

Additionally, our students nowadays find that communicating toforeigners in general and working with foreign teachers who are Englishnative speakers in particular is a very good way to improve their English.However, only when they overcome the obstacles in listening to the nativevoice, will they feel confident and eager to do that Furthermore, having agood listening skill is very useful for students in using Internet, listening toEnglish programs on radio and television as extra activities for their study

In conclusion, listening is not only the most difficult skill for secondlanguage students to develop but also one of the most important and primary

skills in studying a second language A good process of listening skilldevelopment is a very crucial facility for students to improve their proficiency

in other respects of language studying

1.1.3 Stages of listening process

1.1.3.1 Pre-listening

Before listening, students should do pre-listening activities in orderthat they can listen more effectively It is enormously important that beforelistening students are motivated to listen Teachers should introduce the topicand make their students curious and interested in the coming listening text

When we listen in our everyday life, we actually hear language withinits natural environment and that environment gives us a huge amount ofinformation about the linguistic content we are likely to hear Listening to atape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process The text has beentaken away from its original environment and we need to design tasks thatwill help students conceptualize the listening and access their existingknowledge and expectation to help them understand the text

1.1.3.2 While-listening

When we listen to something in daily life we always do it for someparticular reasons Students also need the main objective to listen the task thatwill focus their attention To develop listening skill, students need to do a lot

of practice And in a classroom they also need 3-4 times listening to alistening text to get a required comprehension At the first time listening to atext many students feel nervous and have to tune into accent and the speed atwhich people are speaking

Ideally the listening tasks that the teacher designs for students shouldguide them through the text and should be graded into parts so that the firstlistening task they do is quite easy and helps them get a general understanding

of the text However, teacher should make sure that the task does not demandtoo much of a response When they listen, if they are required to give a longresponse, they will not have enough time to take notes and will get confused

So, teacher should keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort ofgraphical response

The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their ownanswer from the second task or could lead students towards some more subtleinterpretation of the text

Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demandingactivity and for this reason I think it is very important that students shouldhave “breathing” or “thinking” space between listening phases It is verynecessary to allow students to compare their answer between listening phases

as this gives them chances not only to have a break from the listening, but also

to check their understanding with their classmates and reconsider beforelistening again

Teachers can also ask learners to give their personal ideas orcomments on some details of the text to see if they agree or disagree, or evenbelieve what they have got from the listening text Teachers should letstudents discuss the problems in the text in pairs or in groups

Teacher can raise similar problems for them to solve or ask them to actthe dialogue that they have just listened to Teacher should make up and varythe activities for learners to do at this stage depending on their level ofEnglish

1.2 Principles and procedures for teaching listening

- When designing the listening tasks for learners, teacher shouldprovide a variety of types of text They can include:

+ Conversations / Dialogues

+ Humor (Jokes) + Lectures

+ News broadcasts + Songs

+ Stories and so on

With such many types of text, learners can feel not tired and eveninterested in the listening If they listen to only one type of text from thebeginning to the end of the lesson, they will soon feel tired of listening, andnot get good results Different types of text have different characteristics, sothey give learners chance to improve their listening skill more totally

- When listening, learners must not only hear sounds, they mustunderstand their meanings Only hearing the sounds means that the listenersare working like a machine and their listening skill cannot be improved As aresult, teacher should use primarily meaning-based tasks

- Teacher should set specific purposes for listening tasks Onceknowing well the specific purposes for each task, students will be able toconcentrate better on it in order to listen more carefully Obviously, differentlistening tasks have different purposes: If the students listen to get main ideas

of a text, they may ignore some specific information and just try to catchsome key words so that they can have an overview on the listening text withthe gist ideas If they are to listen for comprehending the whole text, they mayfail to catch the main ideas Knowing the purposes beforehand helps studentshave appropriate direction to listen This definitely makes the result oflisteners’ learning get better

Before starting working with the tapes, the purposes of the listeningtask can be given to students through some questions made by teacher, forexample:

+ What is the text about?

+ What happened to the man?

+ How did the girl like the house?

- Teacher introduces a listening task before presenting them Thestudents must know the listening task before they listen In a listening lesson,there are various kinds of listening tasks Each deals with a certain topic, so if

the students have been doing listening tasks with one topic and thenimmediately turn to another one, they will be disoriented This will cause badeffects on the listening learning result For example, if the listening task withwhich students start is about weather or fashion and the next is about studyingabroad, the second will probably not be carried out effectively The teachermust make sure their students are carefully prepared for what they are going

to listen to Teacher can introduce the topic, supply students with importantvocabulary or ask them questions, or even have them discuss about the topic

to help them recall their prior knowledge about the topic Also, teacher shouldinform them of the settings of the texts All those things will help the studentsfocus their attention on the text

- It is obvious that in real life, listeners have very few chance topreview the lists of expected vocabulary Therefore in listening class, it isoften very helpful for students to practise listening to and comprehending thetext without knowing the meaning of all words, especially in the texts withwhich students are expected to note gist ideas However, teaching vocabularyitems before listening is sometimes necessary in many other types of texts,particularly in those with which students have to take out more or less detailsgiven and the vocabulary seems to be the main obstacle for the students tomake sense of what is going to be played

- The text should be listened more than once The listeners need tolisten to the text several times At the first time listening, they cannot catchthe full meaning of the text It is easier for them to understand if the text isrepeated In each time listening to the text, students focus on some certaindetails After all, they will get the whole content of the text

1.2.2 Procedures

This thesis mainly focuses on listening lessons using cassette recorder

in class Thus, the procedures mentioned here are just for this kind of listeningclass With cassette recorders, students have much chance to listen to a variety

of voices apart from teachers’ They can listen to voices from different areasespecially native speakers’ voices This will make them find easier tounderstand other people’s voices, not only their teachers’ However, listening

to a cassette recording is much more difficult than listening to the teachers.Voices in cassette recording may be too fast or not clear enough because ofassimilation, so students cannot catch the content of the listening text clearly.When they listen to their teacher, apart from the teacher’s voice, there aremany visual clues such as gestures, lips’ movement which help them inlistening Such clues do not exist in a cassette recording

Although it is difficult to listen to a cassette recording, it can providegood listening practice But teacher should not make it too difficult, otherwise,

it will be frustrating Besides, using a cassette recorder is helpful for it cangive students chances to listen more than one time It can be stopped anddifficult or unclear phrases can be played over and over again

According to Ron Forseth, using a cassette to teach listening in classmust follow the procedures as below:

- Teacher introduces the listening before doing the listening tasks,gives the students one or two guiding questions in order that the students canpay attention to what they are going to listen on the orient suggested, and latertry to listen to find out the answers for guiding questions If the teacher doesnot introduce the listening topic, the students will not know anything aboutwhat they are going to listen to and what they are having to do This leads toineffective result

- After introducing the listening and giving the guiding questions,teacher plays the cassette one time without stopping At this first time,students can listen over the whole listening text and have some primary ideas

of the general content They then can make some group or pair discussionsabout the guiding questions to get a clearer imagination of the listeningcontext and its content

- Teacher should divide the cassette recording into some parts Thenthese parts of cassette recording will be played again one by one focusing onimportant points Teacher pauses the cassette and asks the students what thespeaker(s) said at each time Or teacher can give detailed comprehensionquestions and ask the students to give the answer for each question

- After having students listen to all parts of the cassette recordingcarefully, teacher must play the entire of the cassette again so that the studentscan see how they understand the content of the text after their teacher’sexplanations However, teacher should not get students go through thelistening text phrase by phrase They had better only focus on the mostimportant point

- Finally, teacher gives the class a follow-up activity At this stage,teacher may have students reproduce either some important details or the gistideas Alternatively, a role-play activity basing on what the students have justgot from the listening text can be a good class-ending activity

1.3 Factors effecting the listening process

Listening is considered as a demanding process, not only because ofthe complexity of the process itself but also due to factors that characterize thelisteners, the speakers, the content of the message and any visual support thataccompanies the message (Brown and Yule, 1983).

1.3.1 The nature of speech

Learners of English as foreign language find themselves in a lot ofdifficulties caused by the nature of speech, because in daily life, when peoplecommunicate “face to face” to each other, they are required to understand themeaning of what the speaker says on the spot and instantaneously They donot have any chance to rewind the tape to listen to a whole conversation again

as they often do when listening to a cassette recording The fleeting of speechrequires listeners’ constant attention The time element separates listeningcomprehension When listening, it is not the listener but the speaker whocontrols the space and the message in listening is transitory Whereas whilereading, it is the reader, not the writer, who controls the space and the material

is permanent

In addition, there are many ungrammatical, reduced or incompleteforms in an ordinary speech There are also hesitations, false starts,repetitions, fillers and pauses Besides, the topic of the speech often shifts soobstacles often appear and make listeners find difficult to understand

1.3.2 The nature of the listening tasks

The nature of listening task has great influences on listening process.There are different listening tasks and they require different kinds of listeningstrategies For example, when listening to find out specific details (such as theshowing time of films at the cinema), listeners must pay selective attention tothose details only and they can filter out anything that does not relate to theseparticulars Whereas, when listening to opposing argument, listeners have topay their attention in a very different way: they focus on the content,structures and the logic of the arguments They also must compare andcontrast facts to one another And when listening to a listening text to get themain ideas, listeners must synthesize a great deal of material into a generalconcept

When you listen to the instruction over the telephone, catalogs system,you are usually listening to learn something You listen to add to yourknowledge and to get information that will be of value in the future Whenyou listen to a mechanic explanation about what is wrong with your car, to adoctor describing various ways to treat our illness, you must be capable ofevaluating what you hear and making some decisions In the professional

fields, we listen to our customers or clients or co-workers in order to gatherinformation, evaluate what they need, and deliver something they would like.

We also listen for entertainment such as a song on the radio or on TV, to afriend telling a joke These kinds of listening tasks actually do not requiremuch concentration

In short, different listening tasks can just go well with certainstrategies And in our daily life, listening tasks do vary in many kinds.Therefore when teaching listening in class, teacher should not give thestudents only certain kinds of listening task but they should give their studentschances to listen to different listening situations so that they can practisedifferent listening strategies This will help them very much in dailycommunication

1.3.3 The listeners

Probably, listeners with their own characteristics should be seen as one

of the most influential factors in listening learning process The differentinterests in the topics, attitudes towards the speakers and what they talk about,knowledge and experience of learners can apparently differentiate their ownresult in listening

Firstly, when listeners are interested in the topic they are going tolisten, they will find easier to understand That is to say, interests in what thetopic is about is indeed a facility on increasing the listening comprehension.The listeners may cast themselves out of topics that are not of their interest

Secondly, listeners’ background knowledge is also an importanteffecting element A listener who is an active participant in a conversationgenerally has more background knowledge to facilitate understanding of thetopic than a listener who is, in effect, eavesdropping on a conversationbetween two people whose communication has been recorded on anaudiotape Furthermore, the ability to use negotiation skills, such as asking forclarification, repetition, or definition of points that they do not understand,enable listeners to make sense of the incoming information Besides, it is verydifficult to listen if listeners lack of vocabulary or if the topic is too technicalfor them The more listeners master about the subject, the easier it is tounderstand what the speakers are saying All these points may seem to beobvious, but most people overlook them

In addition, physical and psychological statuses of listeners at the time

of listening are also a strongly influential condition to have a resulful listening

lesson It is very difficult to listen well, if listeners are tired, hungry, orworried about something Then, the more efforts teacher and learners make,the more stressed they may get

Apart from these, the listeners’ motivation and attitudes in theirlearning listening is one of the elements that can make important contribution

to the outcome of the listening process Only when listeners are well aware ofwhat purpose they are learning for and how important the listening skill is,will they be eager to learn the subject

To sum up, listeners must be conscious of the fact that they, or in otherwords, their current physical and mental conditions, is one of the mostimportant factors deciding the result of listening process

1.3.4 The speakers

The speakers are a very important constituent part of listening processfor, most simply, without them, listeners have nothing to listen Differentspeakers have different accents and different speaking styles If the speakersuse colloquial language and reduced forms, they will make listeners feeldifficult in comprehending The extent to which the speakers use theselanguage forms impacts comprehension The more expose the listeners have tothem, the more greatly they are able to comprehend A speaker’s rate ofdelivery may be too fast, to slow, or causes too many hesitations for aspeaker’s corrections and use of rephrasing (like “er I mean that is ”) canassist the listeners Learners need practice in recognizing these speech habits

as clues to deciphering meaning

1.3.5 The visual support

Visual support such as video, diagrams, gestures and facialexpressions (in face-to-face listening) can increase comprehension if thelisteners are able to correctly interpret them Especially in listening classroom,the quality of teaching-learning devices such as tapes, recorders, headphones(if in a listening lab) also can effect on listening process Visual aids are notalways necessary, but they are good to be included in situations in which theycan enable the students to get the information more clearly and easily Thekey is to make sure if they will be suitable additions to the listening text.Apparently, it is just plain dumb, if the listening text is about a tree-savingcampaign and what the teacher whips out as a visual aid is a picture of anordinary tree Everyone knows how a trees looks like Similarly, it seems to berather useless and a little bit unfair to present a small but complicated diagramthat someone sitting in the tenth row can barely see After all, teachers should

be well aware that getting the listening lesson ready with in-good-conditionsteaching aids is essential to have good result, and that visual supports should

be simple and suitable for each type of listening task

Chapter 2: Pre-listening activities used in

so students require strategies for becoming accurate, effective learners Whenstudents are made aware of the factors that effect accurate listening, the levels

of listening, and the components of listening process, they are more likely torecognize their own listening abilities and engage in activities that preparethem to be effective learners Students can extend their listening abilities mostsufficiently when listening instruction is constructed as pre-listening, listeningand post-listening In almost listening tasks, pre-listening activities aresometimes neglected or carried out cursorily This has bad effects on theefficiency of listening tasks

As a matter of fact, it is unusual for people to listen to somethingwithout having some ideas of what is going to be produced by the speaker.When listening to a radio or television program, listeners probably knowwhich topic is going to be discussed When listening to an interview with afamous person, listeners tend to know some certain things about that personbeforehand Or when listening to a comment or news of a football match,people must have a certain number of concepts or terms concerned withfootball

In our first language (our mother tongue), we rarely have troubles inlistening In a second language, however, it is one of the hardest skills to bedeveloped When listening, listeners may have to deal with speakers’ speed ofspeaking with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures It would be even moredifficult if they do not know the topics under the discussions, or who is going

topic in which he or she has little interest or which is not familiar to him orher So, in pre-listening stage, teachers should not only explain newvocabulary but also give students chance to get familiar with the topic of whatthey are going to listen to The teacher must assess the students’ levels ofbackground knowledge on a particular topic before they listen to the text.Activities in pre-listening stage would help the learners to focus attention onwhat to listen for, to assess how accurately they succeeded, and to transfer thelistening skill to the world beyond the classroom.

2.1.2 The role of pre-listening tasks

Listening skill is hard to be developed Students can do a variety ofwork before listening to help themselves understand the listening text’scontent The pre-listening tasks play a very important part in helping thestudents get good result in doing listening tasks

Pre-listening tasks take a few minutes in each listening lesson but wecannot ignore it Effective listening requires the listeners’ participation Theeffective listeners want to understand what is said and actively try to assignmeaning to the speaker’s verbal and nonverbal language The meaninggenerated depends upon the listeners’ desire and ability to engage in thinkingand listening, as well as on prior knowledge of the speaker’s language use andtopic Pre-listening tasks help students have these requirements They will beprepared for what they are about to listen so that their listening goes beyondthe literal level Pre-listening tasks encourage students to listen moreeffectively The learners will feel more self-confident after they do pre-listening tasks

Pre-listening tasks bring to the consciousness the tools and strategiesthat good listeners use when listening and provide necessary contexts forthose specific listening tasks Studies show that the more the listeners arefamiliar with the text thanks to the experience or knowledge they have inadvance, the better comprehend the content of the listening text Pre-listeningtasks help to activate students’ prior knowledge, build up their expectationsfor the coming information and sometimes even give them a framework of thecoming passage Teacher can help students comprehend the listening textbetter

2.1.3 The aims of pre-listening tasks

There are certain aims that should be achieved before students attempt

to listen to any listening text

2.1.3.1 Motivating students

Motivation is very important to anyone to do well any thing Themotivation helps students to achieve the success in language learning.According to H Douglas Brown (in his Teaching By Principles), “Motivation

is the difference between success and failure If they (learners) are motivated,they will learn, and if not, they won’t.”

Motivation is some kind of internal drives that encourage somebody topursue a course of action In listening, students are encouraged to listen to thetext by some pre-listening activities which make them interested in the topic,self-confident and eager to listen People involved in language teaching claimthat students who really want to learn will succeed any circumstances inwhich they study Comparing a listener who does not take pre-listeningactivities and the one who does, we will definitely see that the second can dothe listening task better than the first one because she/he has motivation

Motivating students is a key task for teachers If they are to do alistening about sports, looking at some dramatic pictures of sport players orevents will raise their interest or remind them of why they like sports Whenthey are interested in the topic, they will be eager to listen to the text Teachercan also get students do pair-work discussion about the sport they play orwatch This may bring them into the topic Besides, when students are able torelate the listening experience to their own lives, they will be more willing tolisten actively to what the speaker is going to say

2.1.3.2 Activating or building related knowledge

Before listening, students should be encouraged to ask the question

What do I already know about the coming topic? From this, teachers and

learners can determine what information they need in order to get the mostfrom the message In listening lesson, if the teachers let students listenimmediately, they can hardly understand the text adequately because theylack background knowledge about the topic of the text It is important forstudents to be able to relate what they already know to the speaker’s content

It seems that students already know something relevant to the topic of the text,but when listening, they do not have time to recall that knowledge which theycan connect to the listening text As a result, they are not able to comprehend

it well

Therefore, it is necessary for teacher to activate the prior knowledge ofstudents Or if they do not know anything or have limited general knowledgeabout the topic, teacher should provide them with some necessary knowledgeinput It can include information about the speaker, topic of presentation, andthe concepts that are likely to be embedded in the presentation And this will