Problems in learning english listening skill at high school and suggested solutions = những vấn đề trong việc học kĩ năng nghe tiếng anh ở trường phổ thông và các giải pháp gợi ý

She has chosen the topic about Problems in Learning“Problems in Learning English Listening Skill at High School and Suggested Solutions ” forseveral reasons.. Aims of the Study The stud

vinh university foreign languages department

- -ph¹m thÞ thu mai

problems in learning English

listening skill at high school and

suggested solutions

ë trêng phæ th«ng vµ c¸c gi¶i ph¸p gîi ý)

graduation thesis field: methodology

Vinh, 2009

In addition, I want to give my sincere thanks to the Dean and the teachers inthe Foreign Language Department for their precious support andencouragement.

I also cannot forget the support of the students from Nguyen Xuan On highschool Without them, I could not have carried out the survey

Lastly, I wish to thank my family and my good friends who have been veryhelpful and encouraged me during doing this graduation thesis

Vinh May 10th 2009 Pham Thi Thu Mai

TABLE OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……… 1

TABLE OF CONTENT……… 2

LIST OF FIGURES……….5

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 6

1 Reasons for Choosing the Topic 6

2 Aims of the Study 7

3 Scope of the Study 7

4 Methods of the Study 7

5 Design of the Study 8

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 9

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 9

1.1 What is Listening Skill? 9

1.1.1 Definition of Listening Skill 9

1.12 Importance of Listening Skill 9

1.1.3 Types of Listening 10

1.2 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 11

1.2.1 Characteristics of CLT 11

1.2.2 Teacher Roles in CLT 11

1.2.3 Student Roles in CLT 12

1.3 Teaching English Listening in CLT 13

1.3.1 Principles of Teaching English Listening Skill 13

1.3.2 Subskills in Listening 15

1.3.3 Types of Listening Activities 17

1.3.3.1 No Overt Responses 17

1.3.3.2 Short Responses 17

1.3.3.3 Longer Responses 18

1.3.3.4 Extended Responses 18

1.4 Summary 18

CHAPTER 2: REAL SITUATION OF LEARING LISTENING SKILL AT NGUYEN XUAN ON HIGH SCHOOL 19

2.1 Overall View about Real Situations of Teaching and Learning English Listening at Vietnamese High Schools 19

2.1.1 Some Comments on Listening Exercises and Activities in High School Textbooks 19

2.1.2 Difficulties in Teaching and Learning English Listening 20

2.1.3 Real Situation of Learning and Teaching English Listening at Nguyen Xuan On high school 21

2.2 Main Reasons for the Difficulties in Learning Listening Skill 22

2.2.1 Subjective Reasons 22

2.2.2 Objective Reasons 23

2.3 Survey on Learning English Listening Skill at Nguyen Xuan On high school 24

2.3.1 Aims of the Survey 24

2.3.2 Description of the Survey 24

2.3.3 Results of the Survey 25

2.4 Summary 35

CHAPTER 3: Suggested Activities to Improve Learning Listening Skill at High School 37

3.1 Introduction 37

3.2 Suggested Solutions 37

3.3 Some Suggested Kinds of Listening Exercises to Motivate Students into Listening 39

3.3.1.Chain Game- Retelling a Short Story 39

3.3.2 Drawings 41

3.3.3 Cross-words 41

3.3.4 Lucky Listening Topics 43

3.3.5 Guessing the Content of the Lesson 44

3.3.6 Rearranging the Order of the Conversation 45

3.3.7 Choosing the Right Topics 45

3.3.8 Making T/F Statements 46

3.3.9 Listening to Short English Songs 47

3.4 Summary 47

PART 3: CONCLUSION 48

3.1 Recapitulation 48

3.2 Suggestions for Further Study 49

REFERENCES 50

APPENDIX 52

LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Students’ Interest in Learning English ……… 25

Figure2.2 Students’ Opinions about Degrees of Difficulty of Listening Skill………26

Figure 2.3 Factors Affecting Students’ Listening……… 26

Figure 2.4 Students’ Amount of Time for Practicing Listening Skill…… 27

Figure 2.5 Students’ Frequency of the Guessing Habit………28

Figure 2.6 Students’ Ways of Listening……… ………… 28

Figure 2.7 Students’ Frequency of Distraction……….29

Figure 2.8 Students’ Times of Listening per Lesson……… 30

Figure 2.9 Influenceof Listening Equipments on Students’ Listening… 31

Figure 2.10 Students’ Opinions about Listening Topics and Exercises… 32

Figure 2.11 Students’ Favorite Types of Listening Exercises……… 33

Figure 2.12 Students’ Opinions about Extra Listening Activities…… 34

Figure 2.13 Motivating Factors……… 35

Part 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Reasons for Choosing the Topic

English Teaching Methodology is a very important subject for everyonewho wants to become teachers of English In this subject, students of Englishwho are being trained to become teachers will be provided with necessaryinformation about techniques and methods of teaching four language skills:listening, speaking, reading and writing Of all these four skills, listening skill

is considered to be one of the most difficult skills to teach and to learn Asstudents of English, the author herself and others have met a lot of difficulties

in learning this skill She has chosen the topic about Problems in Learning“Problems in Learning

English Listening Skill at High School and Suggested Solutions ” forseveral reasons

Firstly, listening skill is thought to be the most difficult in teaching andlearning a language in general and English in particular A lot of teachers andstudents meet many problems and difficulties in teaching and learning thisskill Therefore, the author studies this topic to point out the main problemsand difficulties which teachers and students have met and then can find outthe important reasons for these matters

Secondly, listening skill plays a very important role in teaching andlearning a language so it should be paid much more attention to However, itseems that this skill is not really focused on in many high schools in Vietnamand the qualities of teaching and learning this skill are not very good Thus,this topic is chosen to study in order to find out some suggested solutions topartly improve this matter

Moreover, although learning English listening skill is significant, the fact isthat not many students like learning this skill for many reasons such as the

purpose of studying this topic is to create some new and interesting listeningactivities to motivate students into listening skill

2 Aims of the Study

The study is conducted with the following aims: because teaching listeningskill is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher, the first aim is tofind out the problems and difficulties in learning and teaching Englishlistening skill at high school Additionally, the study is carried out so as to getmore information about the qualities of teaching and learning English

listening skill at Vietnamese high schools It is also necessary to find out themain reasons for these problems and difficulties Last but not least, the studysuggests some solutions to these problems to partly improve the qualities ofteaching listening skill and motivate students into listening lessons

3 Scope of the Study

The topic about “Problems in LearningProblems in Learning English Listening Skill at High

School and Suggested Solutions” is a broad topic and it cannot be exploited in

the study due to the limitation of a B.A thesis Therefore, the study onlyfocuses on the main problems which cause difficulties for both teachers andstudents and the real situations of teaching and learning English listening skillaccording to a survey done in three grades of a high school Besides, from thissurvey, some suggestions and solutions are given in order to partly improvethe quality of teaching and learning English listening skill at high school

4 Methods of the Study

Due to the scope and the characteristics of the study, the author followsthe procedures:

 Collecting and analyzing the materials

 Synthesizing the information First, some materials referring to the issue are collected and analyzedThen, basing on the theoretical background described and analyzed, thesurvey will be carried out Next, the information from the survey will beanalyzed in detail and the results will be categorized to synthesize From theresults collected, it will come to the general conclusion and some commentsand solutions will be given

5 Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three main parts: the first part is Introduction Thispart provides the information about the reasons for choosing the topic, theaims of the topic, the scope of the study, the method of the study and the

design of the study In the second part – Development, there are threechapters Chapter 1- Theoretical background discusses some main pointsrelating to the topic: definition of listening skill and its importance, CLT withteachers’ roles and students’ roles, the main principles of teaching listeningand the main kinds of listening activities This chapter focuses on the theoryabout the main types of listening activities and teaching it in CLT Chapter 2 -The real situation of learning English listening skill at Nguyen Xuan On highschool describes the whole picture about the real situation of learning English

listening skill of the students in this school through the survey done in threegrades In chapter 3 - Suggested activities to improve learning listening skill athigh school, some solutions to the problems students have when learninglistening are suggested and some listening activities are recommended to beapplied in teaching and learning this skill with the aim to motivating students

into learning this skill The last part is Conclusion This part summarizes the

main points discussed in the previous parts and offers some suggestions forfurther study The study ends up with references which are the materialscollected to find necessary information for the study and appendix which isthe questionnaire used in the survey

Part 2: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background

1.1 What is Listening Skill?

1.1.1 Definition of Listening Skill

Listening skill can be defined in different ways According to MC Milan

Dictionary, listening is to pay attention to a sound or to try to hear a sound or

to pay attention to what someone tells you and do what they suggest BabylonDictionary views listening as an attempt to hear something, an act of payingcareful attention to one who is speaking Similarly, in the New Era English-English-Vietnamese Dictionary, listening is to make an effort to hearsomebody or something

Thus, listening is the language modality that is used most frequently.Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, and television), a message, and areceiver (the listener) Listeners often must process messages as they come,even if they are still processing what they have just heard, withoutbacktracking or looking ahead In addition, listeners must cope with thesender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery The complexity

of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where thereceiver also has incomplete control of the language Listening skill isintegrated with the other skills in language use Like reading, listening is areceptive skill where the purpose is to comprehend or understand whatsomeone might be saying or writing

1.12 Importance of Listening Skill

In daily life, people spend a lot of time listening: officers listen to theirboss’ talks, students listen to their teachers, old people listen to news on TVand radio It has been estimated that adults spend almost half of theircommunication time listening

In language use, listening skill plays a very important role: it includesvarious kinds of listener’s knowledge: knowledge of phonology, vocabulary,semantics of the language in use, culture of its people, his life experience inthe topic, his ability to predict and respond It decides his comprehension,content and attitudes in response to the speaker’s speech as well Therefore, if

we are bad at listening, we will fail to communicate with others In addition,there is a very close relationship between listening and speaking skills: inlearning English as a foreign language, students cannot develop speaking skillunless they develop listening skill To have a successful conversation, they

must understand what is said to them Moreover, it is vital for them to be able

to understand native speakers in order to develop their study and communicatemore successfully Listening is an important way of acquiring the language orlearning new vocabulary and structures

1.1.3 Types of Listening

In real life, there are two main kinds of listening (Nguyen Thi Van Lamand Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007): The first kind is casual listening: we listen tosomething without any particular purposes in our mind and we often do notconcentrate on it much to get the information Usually, we hear it by chance.Therefore, we rarely can remember much of its content This way is oftenused in entertaining activities For example, we listen to a song while doingthe house work or talking to someone The second kind is focused listeningwhich is quite different from the first one: we listen to something with someparticular purpose in mind and pay much attention to it so as to get as muchinformation as possible However, we do not listen to everything with equalconcentration: we only focus on the important information for some purposes.For example, students listen to an English text to do the tasks given by theteacher or a customer listens to the instructions of the seller to use a computer

In language learning, students usually use the second way of listening andcasual listening is sometimes used for extra and further practice such asletting students listen to a song or a short story without any response required

1.2 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

1.2.1 Characteristics of CLT

The origins of CLT are to be found in the changes in the British languageteaching tradition dating from the late 1960s CLT has been used in languageteaching with two aims: make communicative competence the goal oflanguage teaching and develop procedures for the teaching of the fourlanguage skills At the level of language theory, CLT has a rich, eclectic andtheoretical base Some of the characteristics of this communicative view oflanguage are: language is a system for the expression of meaning, the primaryfunction of language is for interaction and communication and the structure oflanguage reflects its functional and communicative uses (cited in Nguyen ThiVan Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007) Nowadays, this approach has beenwidely used in many language schools in the world for its advantages such as:

an independent participant within the teaching-learning group Additionally,teachers can act as researcher and learner, with much contribution in terms ofappropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the

nature of learning and organizational capacities

Other roles assumed for teachers are needed analyst, counselor, and groupprocess manager The CLT teacher assumes activities which are responsiblefor determining and responding to learner language needs In the role as acounselor, the teacher is expected to exemplify an effective communicatorseeking to maximize the meshing of speaker intention and hearerinterpretation, through the use of paraphrasing, confirmation and feedback.Moreover, CLT procedures often require teachers to acquire less teacher – centered classroom management skills It is the teacher’s responsibility toorganize the classroom as a setting for communication and communicativeactivities

They are knowledge conveyers - supplying students language knowledge andskills, they are helpful helpers, helping students get English information andanalyze it, helping students to learn, and solve problems Moreover, they arecompanions- staying by students’ side; they are organizers-organizingactivities for students, and they are controllers, making sure students aredisciplined in the classroom

1.2.3 Student Roles in CLT

Students play a role as the main body in language teaching and learning.Furthermore, the emphasis in CLT on the processes of communication ratherthan mastery of language forms - these lead to different roles for learners from

those found in more traditional second language classrooms Breen andCandlin (cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2006) describelearner roles as negotiators - between the self, the learning process, and theobject of learning - emerges from and interacts with the role of jointnegotiator within the group and within the classrooms procedures andactivities which the group undertakes The implication for the learner is that

he should contribute as much as he gains, and thereby learn in an independentway

Thus, learners have the roles as negotiators, interactors, communicatorsand responsible managers of their own learning It is quite different from thetraditional method of learning; students nowadays are taught to learn on theirown and learn to use knowledge to communicate with others well These arethe important aims of teachers who use CLT to teach

1.3 Teaching English Listening in CLT

1.3.1 Principles of Teaching English Listening Skill

To teach any skill of a language, it is important for teachers to follow the

principles for teaching that skill so as to teach it more effectively andmethodically Forseth (cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong,2007) suggests seven principles for teaching listening skill:

First, the teacher should use authentic texts and present them as naturallyand realistically as possible Authentic texts can be taken from various radiobroadcasts or interviews such as VOA and BBC These texts are very usefuland necessary because they allow background noise or interruptions andcontain different types of voices and accents and natural conversations Thesewill help students get used to listening to daily life conversations of nativespeakers

Second, it is better to include different kinds of texts: conversations,

can get used to listening to different pieces of speech and it helps avoidboredom caused by listening to the same topic or the similar type of listeningtexts many times

Third, the teacher should use primarily meaning- based tasks for students to

do This is an example of a meaning- based task: Circle the definition for theword you hear:

a It is a pet that likes eating mice (cat)

b It is an animal that can fly (bat)

Students will have to listen very carefully and pay attention to their meanings

to distinguish two words correctly because they are a minimal pair so theymay confuse hearers These activities help them focus more on the meaning ofthe listening text

The fourth principle is that the teacher states a specific purpose for thelistening task It is necessary that students be given a purpose for listening to atext or they may not know what they should focus when listening and thenmiss important information In addition, being given the purpose beforehand,students will be motivated into the lesson more

Another principle is that the teacher introduces the listening task

beforehand Be sure to prepare for them what they will hear This can be done

in many ways such as asking questions relating to the topic they will listen to

or asking them to talk about their own experience relating to the main topic sothat students can think of the listening topic more carefully

The next principle is to avoid pre-teaching vocabulary unless necessary.This helps students get used to guessing the meaning of the new words fromthe context Besides, students should have the habit of understanding themeaning of a text without trying to know the meanings of all the words as thiscan make their listening lessons more difficult and stressful The only wordsthat should be pre-taught are those necessary for understanding the main idea

of the text

Moreover, after each time of listening, students should be allowed some time

to check their answers In fact, it is very difficult for students to be able tounderstand the text after the first time of listening If the text is repeated,students will have more chances to fill the missing information andunderstand the text fully

1.3.2 Subskills in Listening

Like the other skills, listening includes a number of different sub-skills(Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007): learners have torecognize differences between phonological sounds - the difference in a singlesound makes a new word with a different meaning These pairs of words are verydifficult to distinguish so they can cause confusion and misunderstanding Thus, it

is necessary to distinguish them correctly For example, the minimal pair bull and pull contain two sounds /p/ and /b/ which make these two words different

in terms of meanings Another subskill of listening is comprehension of

structures: For example, in the sentence “Problems in Learninghave you ever seen a fish walk?” , thelistener must understand that “Problems in Learningseen” is a verb and “Problems in Learningfish” is a noun and thismust be a question In addition, learners may guess the unknown words orrecognize words which are unnecessary for understanding Like reading skill,when listening to a text, it is not necessary to understand the meanings of all

meanings or even ignore them This helps them concentrate on catching thekey words of the text There are also some other subskills such as recognizingdiscourse markers and cohesive words which help hold discourse together, theability to infer information that is learners by hiding the direct answers andlearners have to search for the indirect answers carefully To do this kind ofexercises, learners are required to understand the listening text wholly Forexample, from the sentence “Problems in LearningToday is Thursday and I will go to Ho Chi Minh

in two days” , the listener must infer that the speaker will go to Ho Chi Minh

on Saturday Furthermore, skimming is a sub-skill for which listeners do notneed to understand every word they hear but they only need to catch the mainidea because if they try to focus on listening all words, they will miss theimportant information This is very helpful when they listen to news on radio

or TV By contrast, for scanning skill, listeners have to look for the specificinformation This skill is often used to do certain listening tasks such asanswering questions or choosing the best answer (multiple choices) For thesummarizing skill, listeners should summarize what they have heard afterlistening or they have to decide what they are listening to is true or false orthey agree with what they are listening or not- this is called critical listeningand especially used for advanced learners Rather than only understand themessage or the main ideas of the text, they have to make judgments of its.Recognizing different styles, emotional tones and varieties of language is aquite challenging skill It is very interesting to listen to different styles such asformal and informal, emotional tones such as anger, happiness and varieties of

difficult to recognize particularly varieties of language Two more sub-skills

of listening are predicting what a speaker will say next - this helps the hearerrespond more quickly and makes the conversation more cohesive and listeningfor total comprehension: The listener has to understand every thing thespeaker says This skill is used for a special purpose For example, a patient

has to listen to all the constructions the doctor says to drink the medicinecorrectly

1.3.3 Types of Listening Activities

There are four main types of listening activities mentioned in Nguyen ThiVan Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2007)

1.3.3.1 No Overt Responses

Students have to do nothing in response to the listening but teachers cancheck their understanding by their body language and expressions For thistype, teachers can use some different activities For example, teachers may tell

a story or play a recording of the story and students will be motivated toattend and understand in order to enjoy it or teachers let students listen tosongs: teachers may sing a song themselves or play a recording of the song.Another no overt response activity teachers can use is that they may letstudents see an interesting film and students will be motivated into trying tounderstand it These activities are usually very interesting and can attractstudents’ attention easily However, teachers have to make sure that studentspay attention to the content of the story, the song or the film and they shouldnot only enjoy them without understanding any words

1.3.3.2 Short Responses

For this kind, students have to do various listening activities For example,they are asked to perform actions or draw shapes or pictures in response to theteacher’s instructions, tick off words while hearing them from the text within

a list of items given beforehand, or a number of statements are given afterlistening and students are asked to point out which ones are true and whichones are false Also, there are some other activities such as detecting mistakes:the teacher may tell a story about something that students have known and thiscontains some mistakes and students have to point out these mistakes whenlistening to it, filling the missing information in the gaps, guessingdefinitions: the teacher gives students some definitions of something andstudents have to point out what it is, skimming and scanning: a listening text

is given and students are asked to look for the main content of the text or itsspecific information

1.3.3.3 Longer Responses

The listening activities for longer responses are often much more difficultthan the short ones Students have to do the tasks such as answering questions,taking notes-this is a quite difficult response- students are asked to write down

the main points of a listening text, paraphrasing a listening text after listeningwith their own words or translating it into another language, summarizing thelistening text and filling in the long gap-a long gap is left and students have tofind the missing information to fill in the gap

1.3.3.4 Extended Responses

These responses are called “Problems in Learningcombined skill” activities as they involve manyskills at the same time Some of these responses are: Problem-solving: for thisactivity, students are asked to discuss a problem which has been orallydescribed how to deal with it or to solve it and Interpretation: in this activity,

an extract from a piece of dialogue or monologue is provided with no previousinformation Listeners try to guess from the words, kinds of voices and otherevidence what is going on These activities are suitable for advanced studentsbecause they can practice and develop many skills together

1.4 Summary

In short, this chapter deals with some main points relating to the topicabout listening skill In the first place, it presents some definitions of listeningskill according to some dictionaries, its importance and two main types oflistening-casual listening and focused listening The next main point presented

in the chapter is a popular approach for language teaching calledCommunicative Language Teaching ( CLT ) with its characteristics, teachers’roles and learners’ roles At last, the chapter comes up with teaching Englishlistening in CLT This part includes seven principles of teaching Englishlistening skill, twelve sub-listening skills and four main types of listeningskills which are no overt responses, short responses, longer responses andextended responses

is one of the most frequently-used kinds of listening exercises in the textbooks

of three forms The number of T/F statements is often from 5 to 6 ones Therequirement in most of these exercises is not too difficult: students only have

to decide whether the statement is true or false and they do not have to correctthe false information For this kind of listening exercises, students can do theexercise more easily but sometimes their answers cannot show theirunderstanding as they can guess the answers without understanding thelistening text The next type is comprehension questions: like T/F exercises,comprehension question exercises are also used in many listening lessons inthese textbooks The number of questions is about five to six ones Thesequestions are used for more specific information In fact, the questions are nottoo difficult for students to answer but they need to understand the specificinformation of the text This kind of exercises both requires muchconcentration of students and helps them pay more attention to the detail ofthe text It also can check students’ understanding more exactly Multiple-choice exercises are much used in many lessons of different language skills

especially in reading comprehension skill They are also often used in manylistening lessons of these textbooks particularly in 11th and 12th formtextbooks These exercises are very useful for students to distinguish thedifferent information but they cannot check students’ understanding exactlybecause they can guess the answers with no need to understand the text.Another type is gap-filling exercises: this kind of exercises is very much used

in many listening lessons The passages or sentences with missing information

in the textbooks are not too long but some of them are quite difficult Theseexercises are very useful as they can check students’ understanding and helpthem follow the content of the listening text better But for the low level oflistening skill of high school students, it will be better if the missinginformation does not contain too many words

Those are the most frequently-used exercises in the textbooks of threegrades However, it is thought that there should be more types of exercises so

as to avoid boredom and evoke students’ interest in learning more

2.1.2 Difficulties in Teaching and Learning English Listening

It cannot be denied that listening equipments such as listening tapes,cassette players play a very important role in learning listening skill.Therefore, good and modern listening equipments are vital for teaching andlearning listening However, there are not many high schools in VietNamwhich can meet this requirement: even some schools do not have normallistening equipments such as cassette players and the teachers have to read thetext themselves Additionally, using cassette players is not a good way ofteaching listening and this can make the listening text more difficult to hear tostudents because the volume of the cassette players may not be loud or goodenough for students to hear or the noise outside classroom may affect theirlistening But most of Vietnamese high schools use cassette players as mainlistening equipments

Moreover, for many university students, listening is the most difficultskill to learn and they often get stressed or bored when they cannot understandany thing in the listening text This situation is even worse for high schoolstudents The followings are the popular problems they often meet whenlistening: The first challenging difficulty is linking sounds Native speakersalways use linking sounds when speaking and it is very difficult for foreignstudents to distinguish these sounds: they may think it is a new word and try

to guess its meaning Fast, natural native speech is also a hard problem to

solve Most of native speeches are too fast for students to follow.Consequently, they may miss much important information In fact, it is easierfor them to listen to a foreign speech than a native speech Furthermore, thefact is that they need to hear a listening text more than once Because theycannot understand fast natural speech at the first time of hearing, they usuallyhave to listen to it again and again They even have to spend most of the timelistening to a short passage but they still cannot catch the main idea As aresult, they get bored or disappointed and this can affect their interest inlistening next time It is that many students are very bad at focusing on thekey words or catching the main idea of the listening text This problem israther popular Perhaps, they are able to hear what the speakers are speaking

or understand many words in the text but they cannot catch the main content

of its Another difficulty is that some students cannot concentrate on thelistening task While listening, they often think of the other things or they lettheir mind wonder somewhere outside the classroom Even though they try tofocus on listening, they are still distracted from it

2.1.3 Real Situation of Learning and Teaching English Listening at Nguyen Xuan On high school

Nguyen Xuan On high school is a rather famous school in Nghe Anprovince It was founded in 1946 It is well-equipped with a lot of modernequipments: four labs with projectors, one lab for studying biology, one labfor studying physics and many cassette players for learning English Inaddition, it has a room with a lot of computers for teaching and learninginformatics This school is really a good teaching and learning environmentfor teachers and students During two months of teaching practice in thisschool, it was realized that the teachers and students have made much effort toenhance the quality of teaching and learning English However, there are stillsome problems such as: the modern teaching and learning equipments havenot been used very effectively, some teachers do not have really creativemethods of teaching so they cannot attract their students to learning.Moreover, the number of students in this school who are good at English isnot high Many of them do not pay much attention to learning English Thereare only a few of them in some classes such as 12B, 10C10, 11C10 who canlearn English well while a lot of other students have difficulty in learning thissubject Therefore, they meet many difficulties in learning the skills especiallylistening skill According to them, this is the most difficult skill of all A large

number of students cannot understand any thing in a listening text The result

is that this skill is neglected In other words, it is ignored by many teachersand students Some teachers do not teach this skill very carefully, they just letstudents listen to a listening text in the textbook for a few times and ask them

to answer the questions without checking their understanding For students,most of them use reference books to answer the questions in spite the fact thatthey do not really understand the lesson

2.2 Main Reasons for the Difficulties in Learning Listening Skill

2.2.1 Subjective Reason

We cannot blame bad listening equipments for the low quality of teachingand learning listening because most of those difficulties are caused byteachers and students themselves

Firstly, it is undeniable that not many students really pay attention tolistening skill They only focus on learning grammar, vocabulary and ignorethis skill Without spending time practicing, how can their ability of listeningimprove? “Problems in LearningPractice makes perfect” , they cannot distinguish linking sounds orfollow fast speaking speed of native speakers if they do not often practicehearing them

Bad methods of teaching listening of some teachers are another importantreason They do not spend much time teaching this skill to students: they maypass some part that students cannot hear and move to another one or the waythey teach listening lessons is not effective Interesting extra topics with newlistening activities for further practice are very important to motivate studentsinto lessons and improve their listening ability but some teachers do not paymuch attention to these They only teach the listening lessons in the textbooks Additionally, it is the bad ways of learning listening of many students thatcause trouble They may be able to hear what the speakers are talking aboutbut they cannot catch the main content or ideas This is the result of the badhabit of listening: they listen but they do not try to summarize what is goingon

Lastly, repeatedly used activities contribute boredom to learning listening

of students As it can be seen from three high school English textbooks, some

gap-filling exercises This may reduce students’ interest in the lessons and causethe boredom of doing the same exercises many times

2.2.2 Objective Reasons

As it was mentioned above, the quality of listening equipments in most ofVietnamese high schools is not good and this has bad affect on the quality ofteaching and learning listening

Noticeably, the importance of listening skill has not been appreciated inmany schools so it does not receive enough attention so that the necessaryequipments which are used for teaching and learning this skill are notimproved

In addition, many schools are not rich enough to pay for modern listeningequipments Clearly, it is the best for students to study listening in a languagelab but not many schools in Vietnam have a language lab Even someuniversities have a few language labs for students of foreign languages tostudy listening skill

many chances to listen to native speakers in real life They only listen to themthrough the recording tapes Therefore, they will find it more difficult to getused to listening to native speech

2.3 Survey on Learning English Listening Skill at Nguyen Xuan On high school

2.3.1 Aims of the Survey

To learning listening skill well is really a big problem for many students.Naturally, because they cannot learn this skill well, they often get bored oreven ignore it This situation is very popular in most of high schools inVietnam In fact, not only do teachers have difficulties in teaching listeningskill but students also meet a lot of trouble when learning it Thus, the firstaim of doing this survey is to check the ability of learning listening skill ofstudents and find out the main problems or difficulties they have whenlearning this skill The second aim is to know what can motivate them intolistening lessons: interesting listening activities, new listening topics or goodmethod of teaching The third but the most important reason of doing thissurvey is to give some suggestions to motivate students into listening lessonsbetter based on its results

2.3.2 Description of the Survey

The survey is conducted with a questionnaire which consists of 16questions including both open and closed questions so as to check students’listening ability and their interests in this skill better It was given to 135students of three classes from three grades: 10C10, 11C10 and 12B All of the

us know whether listening equipments can affect students’ learning or not Inaddition, thanks to the answers of questions 11 and 12, we will collect theirideas of listening exercises and listening topics in the text books The aim ofquestion 13 is to find out what kind of listening exercises in the textbooksstudents like most Questions 14,15 give us the information about the extralistening activities given by the teacher and students’ attitudes towards thoseactivities The last question is used to analyze students’ ideas about somemain factors which can motivate them into the lesson.

2.3.3 Results of the Survey

The following pie chart presents the percentages of students who areinterested in learning English

70%

30%

yes no

Figure 2.1 Students’ interest in learning English

According to the chart, although these students are from the classes ofEnglish of the school, only 70% of them are interested in learning Englishwhile the rest do not like learning English at all (30%) This is one mainreason why they do not pay much attention to learning this subject Thus, howdifficult is listening skill in their opinion? The bar chart below shows usstudents’ opinions about the listening skill according to four degrees ofdifficulty:

Figure 2.2 Students’ opinions about degrees of difficulty of listening skill.

As can be seen from the chart, a lot of students find listening skill verydifficult (34.81%) and difficult (48.15%) In their opinion, this is the mostdifficult skill of all and they really do not like it Many of them even cannotcatch any information in a listening text in the textbooks (including the

than three times during a lesson On the contrary, a small number of thestudents think that listening skill is rather difficult (11.11%) and a few ofthem confirm it is not difficult at all (5.93%) In fact, these are the beststudents who are very good at listening Not only can they answercomprehension questions and exercises in the textbook but they also cananswer the extra questions given by the teacher

Thus, why do so many students find listening skill very difficult whereas onlysome of them do not meet any trouble with it? The bar chart below shows us someinformation about three main factors what make listening difficult to students: