Luận văn fostering listening skills of chemistry majored sophomores in a university in hanoi by applying frequent dictation

Aim of the study This research is conducted in order to measure the efficacy of frequent dictation as ameans of enhancing listening skills of the second-year students majoring inChemistr

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LƯƠNG HUỆ PHƯƠNG

FOSTERING LISTENING SKILLS OF CHEMISTRY-MAJORED SOPHOMORES IN A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

BY APPLYING FREQUENT DICTATION

(Tăng cường kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên năm thứ hai chuyên ngành Hóa

tại một trường Đại học ở Hà Nội thông qua việc áp dụng thường xuyên phương pháp nghe chép chính tả)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

: Teaching English Methodology

: 8140231.01

HANOI - 2021

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

Major Code

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LƯƠNG HUỆ PHƯƠNG

FOSTERING LISTENING SKILLS OF CHEMISTRY-MAJORED SOPHOMORES IN A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

BY APPLYING FREQUENT DICTATION

(Tăng cường kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên năm thứ hai chuyên ngành Hóa

tại một trường Đại học ở Hà Nội thông qua việc áp dụng thường xuyên phương pháp nghe chép chính tả)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Major : Teaching English Methodology Code : 8140231.01

Supervisor : Dr Trần Thanh Nhàn

HANOI - 2021

Luong Hue Phuong, hereby state that, this minor thesis is the result of my ownresearch and all the material in this study which is not my own work has beenidentified and acknowledged I also state that the substance of the thesis has not,wholly or in part, been submitted for any degree to any other universities

institutions

Hanoi, 2021Luong Hue Phuong

my writings, this thesis would have never been completed.

I also would like to express my appreciation to the lecturers of the University ofLanguages and International Studies for providing me with comprehensiveknowledge which have laid the foundation for my thesis

This is a great opportunity to thank my beloved colleagues who have helped me with

a great source of literature for my research and encouraged me to keep going I ampleased to thank my leader who was willing to discuss the development of thisresearch with me, who has helped me predict and overcome adversity while doingthe research by sharing her studies and experience

In my study, it is inevitable that the ideas of many other writers in this field arereflected and developed Their ideas have stimulated my thinking on doing thisresearch My debt to the authors listed in the references is equally great To all thesescholars, I offer my sincere thanks

Last but not least, I owe my great gratitude towards my family, friends and myhusband-to-be for their best possible support, endless care and inspiration

sentences what the speakers have said, but they cannot listen clearly, which impedes their listening comprehension Especially in ESP course where students cope with a great deal of technical terms, their understanding is limited One of teaching technique used in teaching listening is dictation technique which requires students to focus on the sentences or words being dictated because they should listen and memorize what they have heard The participants of the study are 25 volunteering Chemistry-majored sophormores at a university in Hanoi The action research was conducted in 2 cycles, each of which includes planning, action, observation, reflection and revised plan All the quantitive data collected from the results of students in 3 distinct tests taken at 3 different stages in the research and the data collected from the questionnaires and students‘ journals were analyzed in order to examinine whether or not there existed the improvements in students‘ listening competency The results of the study show that students‘ scores increased considerably, which means they made a significant improvement in their listening competency In addition, most students adopted positive attitude towards this implementation as they saw the benefits of the new method The benefits of frequent listening dictation were recognized in terms of 5 major catagories namely advancing short-term memory, attentiveness, vocabulary, note-taking capacity and apprehension of entire discource

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES

vii LIST OF FIGURES

viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Scope of the study 3

3 Aim of the study 3

4 Research questions 4

5 Organization of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Listening skills in ESP 5

2.1.1 Definition of listening 5

2.1.2 Listening skills in English teaching and learning 6

2.1.3 Listening in ESP 7

2.1.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension in ESP 9

2.2 Listening dictation 13

2.2.1 Dictation technique 13

2.2.2 Types of Dictation 14

2.2.3 Benefits of dictation in improving listening comprehension 15

2.3 Previous studies 19

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 Setting of the study 22

3.2 Participants 22

3.3 Research Design 23

3.3.1 Cycle 1: 26

3.3.2 Cycle 2: 30

3.4 Data collection procedure 33

3.4.1 Tests 33

3.4.2 Listening dictation as a home-assignment 34

3.4.3 Questionnaire 34

3.4.4 Journal writing 35

3.5 Data analysis 35

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 36

4.1 The effectiveness of listening dictation 36

4.1.1 The frequency of listening dictation practice 36

4.1.2 Tests 38

4.2 Students‘ opinions on applying frequent dictation 43

4.2.1 Students‘ opinions on the suitability of dictation application 43

4.2.2 Effectiveness of dictation in improving listening comprehension 46

4.2.3 Student‘s preference of utilizing listening dictation in the next semester 49

4.3 Discussion 50

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 52

5.1 Major findings of the study 52

5.1.1 The effectiveness of applying frequent dictation on Chemistry-majored sophoremores 52

5.1.2 Students‘ opinions frequent dictation application to enhance student‘s listening comprehension 53

5.2 Implications 53

5.3 Limitations of the study 54

5.4 Suggestion for further studies 54

REFERENCES 56 APPENDICES I

APPENDIX I: PRE-TEST I APPENDIX II: PROGRESS TEST IV APPENDIX III: POST-TEST VII APPENDIX IV: DICTATION TASKS POSTED ON GOOGLE CLASSROOM X APPENDIX V: SAMPLE OF A DICTATION TASK XI APPENDIX VI: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE XIV APPENDIX VIII: PARTICIPANTS‘ JOURNALS XVII

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Course schedule for Phase 1 27Table 2 Course schedule for Phase 2 31Table 3 The relationship between the frequency of students‘ practice and thechanges in their scores 38Table 4 Mean scores of pre-test, progress test and post test 43Table 5 Student‘s opinions on how listening dictation affected their listeningcompetency 48

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 The Tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p 17) 8

Figure 2 Simple Action Research Model (MacIsaac, 1995) 25

Figure 3 Student‘s frequency of dictation practice 37

Figure 4 Result description of pre-test 39

Figure 5 Result description of progress test 40

Figure 6 Result description of post-test 41

Figure 7 Result description of pre-test, progress test and post test 42

Figure 8 Students‘ opinions on their involvement in listening practice 44

Figure 9 Students‘ opinions on the suitablility of dictation activity 45

Figure 10 Students' opinion on the frequency of dictation practice 46

Figure 11 Student's opinion on the effectiveness of listening dictation 47

Figure 12 Student‘s preference of utilizing listening dictation in the next semester .49

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Language is a media used by people to communicate in social environment Peopleusing language to comunicate with another consituting a society Fromkin (2003)states that the nature of language that makes us human is the crucial factor that helps

us to learn more about the humanity The symbols of language, spoken or written areused to express an idea or feeling Mastering the mother tongue as well as otherlanguages, accordingly, is considered essential for people to get merged into thesociety, especially at the current time of globalization

As a matter of fact, English recently is reputed as an international language widelyused in many countries all over the world and employed in many sectors such astechnology, trade, education, etc In order to master English communicativecompetence, learners are suggested focusing their attention on four main skillsnamely listening, speaking reading and writing Among those, listening appears to bethe most influential factor in acquiring a new language and to pose the greatestobstacles to language learners Vandergrift (1999) proved that listeningcomprehension plays a key role in facilitating in language learning In addition, healso indicated that it is the most frequently used skills compared to speaking, readingand writing since it occupies 40 - 50% of our daily communication while the threeothers represent less than 25% for each

As regard to the role of English listening skills in English learning at school, thecollege years recently involve significant challenges and opportunities for all peoplewho decide to pursue higher education, especially for those studying their major inEnglish - the second language The language barrier for Vietnamese students, whosefirst language is not English, was widely recognized in the 1900s Up to now,approximately 30 years later, the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Trainingreports that there are more than half a million Vietnamese native speakers in Vietnamhave to master English in order to pursue bachelor‘s, master‘s, and doctorate degrees

in a variety of areas The necessity of English as a second language and as a global

language helping undergraduates to seize their job opportunities has forceduniversity administrations to acknowledge the linguistic needs of the students.Therefore, many colleges and universities has conducted ESP programs in order tooffer their students additional support.

These programs are usually available in the first two or three academic years, and atthe university I am doing the research on, the undergraduates are required to attend atleast 6 ESP courses from year 2 to year 3 aiming at enhancing their communicativecompetence in the field they major in

My motivation for undertaking this research comes from my experience of teaching

in those ESP programmes According to the School Curriculum, listening is thelanguage skill that should be mastered by students with the learning materialsprovided including authentic audios and practice exercises However, in fact, through

my hands-on experience of teaching the Chemistry-majored sophomores (at levelA2), I have noticed that there were quite a large number of students who frequentlystruggled in listening sections in ESP course as well as in ESP tests In fact, inrecognition of the importance of English communication skills as prerequisites forthe students‘ successful performance at the workplace, the alternative method ofstudent‘s self-study vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing skills has beenemployed to make room for classroom-based speaking practice Online listeningpractice, hence, seemingly becomes a thorny issue to the nonEnglish majoredstudents due to the lack of teacher‘s guidance Students were stuck with bad listeninghabits that come in the way of effective listening They had a tendency of doingsomething else while listening, or getting distracted due to external factors At timesthey did not try to listen and understand something that they judge as difficult.Moreover, it has been also claimed that technical words in the authentic workplace-based recordings such as the names of substances, the laboratory equipment and thenames of various types of chemical reactions, which are quite challenging for those

at A2 level to capture the meaning without memorizing their spelling, also impededtheir comprehension

Therefore, I decided to apply several listening techniques with the hope that thestudents can enhance their listening competence While most of them seemed not to

be very effective, I got interested in the techniques of Listening dictation, which wasthoroughly discussed during a course on the method of teaching ESP by Ms Kettle(from University of Queensland - Australia) In addition, according to Montalvan(2006), dictation involves the whole class, no matter how large it is He alsoemphasizes that listening passages can be well-prepared in advance andadministrated quite effectively by an inexperienced teacher Sharing the same views

on listening dictation with Pappas (1977) who reported that dictation is a good means

of developing the learner‘s comprehension, Alkire (2002) also specified the benefits

of listening dictation such as reinforcing the spelling and sound correlations ofEnglish, uncovering comprehension and grammatical weaknesses in learners so thatthe teacher can analyze and address in the upcoming lessons

Based on the difficulties in listening skills most of my students in ESP coursesencountered and the explanations above, I am self-motivated to conduct a researchwith the title —Fostering listening skills of chemistry-majored sophomores in auniversity in Hanoi by applying frequent dictation.”

2 Scope of the study

Within a short time and with limited reference materials, it would be too ambitiousfor this small-scaled study to cover the outcome of the application of frequentdictation on all Chemistry-majored students in the university as well as all over thenation Therefore, the study is limited to investigating the effectiveness of thistechnique I only concentrate on examining the influence of frequent dictation onlistening comprehension of 25 Chemistry-majored students who are studying English

as non-major field as well examining their opinions on the application of thistechnique

3 Aim of the study

This research is conducted in order to measure the efficacy of frequent dictation as ameans of enhancing listening skills of the second-year students majoring inChemistry during their self-study practices in English for Specific Purposes courseand investigating their perspectives on listening dictation

The objectives of the research:

- To investigate the effectiveness of applying frequent dictation in second-yearstudents‘ listening skills in ESP course

- To examine the attitude of the second-year students majoring in Chemistry in auniversity in Hanoi towards frequent dictation.

More detailed explication as how the aforementioned objectives have beenformulated and how these objectives can be attained is specified in chapter 3:Methodology

(2) What are students‘ opinions about applying frequent listening dictation?

5 Organization of the study

The study is divided into five chapters:

- Chapter 1, Introduction, discusses the rationale, the scope of the study, theobjectives of the study and the research questions as well as the organization

of the study

- Chapter 2 is Literature Review which presents all related theoreticalbackground that precedes and necessitates the formation of my research: anoverview on listening skills, ESP and listening dictation

- Chapter 3, Methodology, describes the research procedures that have beenutilized in the study

- Chapter 4, Data Analysis, contains the core part of the study It presents,analyzes and synthesizes data collected and gives some findings anddiscussions

- Chapter 5 is Conclusion part summarizing the major findings on theeffectiveness of applying frequent dictation in second-year students‘ listeningskills in ESP course and suggestions for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, a range of fundamental theoretical concepts will be introduced All related theoretical background that precedes and necessitates the formation of my research will be presented: an overview of listening skills in ESP in 2.1; listening

dictation in 2.2, the effectiveness and suitability of dictate listening for ESP students, especially for those majoring in Chemistry in 2.3.

2.1 Listening skills in ESP

2.1.1 Definition of listening

There are different points of view on the definition of listening As defined inCambridge Learners‘ Pocket Dictionary, listening is a process involving givingattention to someone or something in order to hear them According to Howat andDaikin as quoted by Saricoban (2006), listening is the ability to identify andunderstand what others are saying by understanding a speaker‘s accent orpronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning”

Listening has often been claimed to be a passive skill However, Murphy (1991)proved this statement to be misleading since listening is an interactive, dynamic,interpretive process that requires students to construct the message actively.Littlewood (1981) also supported this concept by indicating listening demands activeinvolment from the hearer He explained that to reconstruct the message the speakersconvey, the hearer must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic source

In 1989, Charnot and Kupper (1989) defined listening comprehension as an activeand conscious process of using cues from contextual information and from existingknowledge to construct meaning Vandergrift (1999) also stated the same opinionthat in listening comprehension process, the listeners must understand vocabulary,grammartical structures as well as immediately interpret the discourses based on thesociocultural context of the utterance

To sum up, these definitions above clearly imply that listening is the skill which isrequired to listen well to somebody or something Listening competence is the ability

or power to relate the sound to meaning A student listening to a passage means that

he actively uses his listening competence to communicate with the passage byunderstanding the vocabulary, spelling, grammar and the meaning of the passage

2.1.2 Listening skills in English teaching and learning

As stated above, up to now listening skills has been paid the least attention to among

4 main skills of language learning This deliberate neglect may lie behind the factthat listening has been considered as a passive process On the contrary, in point offact listening is the most frequently used language skill in the classroom compared tothe other language skills (Ferris, 1998) Additionally, Rost and Ross (1991) statedthat progress in listening can provide a basis for development of other skills It can

be easily inferred that listening skill can support students to master other languageskills As a result, listening in a language teaching-learning process is of the utmostimportance that should not be ignored by students of all levels

In teaching listening, teachers must understand the process of listening Nation andNewton (2009) mentioned two distinct listening processes as follows:

a Bottom-up process

In this process listeners assemble the messages piece by piece from the speechstream going from parts to the whole According to Cook (1995), bottom-up parsingrefers to building up the meaning of the whole sentence in listener‘s mind bit by bit,combining sounds into words, words into phrases, phrases into the sentence.Therefore, Richards (2008) asserted that with this approach, the tasks assigned tostudents help them to recognize words and clauses, identify key words andtransitional words/ phrases in a discource

b Top-down process

Top-down process, on the other hand, is characterized as the procedure listeners usetheir background in predicting and understanding the message; therefore, the keyprocess is inference Nunan (1999) clarified top-down process as the listener activelyconstructs the original meaning of his partner‘s utterance using incoming sounds asthe clues As stated by Richards (2008), top-down process approach includes theexercies which help language learners to develop their ability to use keywords toconstruct the schema of a discource, infer the setting for a text and infer the role ofparticipants and their goals

2.1.3 Listening in ESP

Internationalization of education, business, technology and industry have led to thedevelopment of ESP and thus there emerged numerous definitions of ESP Mayo

(2000) claimed that it is not an effortless task to define ESP because it can be applied

to any situation and depends on what learners are facing with ESP stands for Englishfor Specific Purposes and refers to teaching and learning of English as second orforeign language where learners aim to use English for a particular career (likeengineer, doctor), or for a field in general (like Chemistry) Robinson (1989) definedESP as goal-oriented language learning that represents the student having a particulargoal that is going to be achieved Whereas, Hutchinson and Waters (1987)considered ESP as an approach to language teaching, to content and method aredependent on the learner‘s reasons for learning As for a broader definition, theypreferred defining what ESP is not, by presenting a tree of English language teaching(Figure 1) which allows us to see the relationship between English for generalpurposes and ESP

JESf*: approach not product

Figure 1 The Tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p 17)

According to Figure 1, ESP can be classified into three branches: English for scienceand technology, English for business and economics, and English for social science.Chemistry is classified into the group of Science subjects; therefore, English forChemistry can be regarded as an ESP branch belonging to the English as a ForeignLanguage or English as a Second Language

Described as two main branches of EFL, listening in ESP and in GE have manysimilarities as they share the same cognitive processes and requires the use of thesame macro skills in accordance with the purpose for listening In terms of

cognitive processes in ESP listening, ESP listening aims to develop active listeners

to construct interpretations on the basis of input and ask for the needed information

(Brown, 1990) Paltridge and Starfield (2013) also shared the same opinion that ESPlistening has a range of similarities as GE in terms of cognitive process To be morespecific, ESP listening, similarly involving bottom-up and top-down processes, canoccur in various forms of communications namely one-way listening or interactivelistening In interactive listening, the listeners practice bottom-up process in whichthey involve the dialogist in repeating and clarifying the message in their attempt toperceive the message conveyed By contrast, in one-way listening, such as listening

to a lecture or a talk, active listeners facilitate their comprehension by infering andpredicting as well as monitoring and evaluating their interpretation with the use ofbackground knowledge

The distinction between listening in ESP and GE is that ESP listening requires moreadditional skills and specific types of knowledge and vocabulary required for Englishfor academic purposes and English for occupational purposes In addition,developing ESP listening may require more high-level listening skills relevant to therequirement in English for academic purposes and English for occupational purposessituations than for General English (Goh, 2013)

2.1.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension in ESP

It is obviously discernible that almost all ESP students as well as foreign languagelearners are rather afraid of listening and face some uncertainties about theappropriate listening strategies to be applied to attain better listening comprehension

To some extent, the factors influencing listening comprehesion in ESP are proved to

be the same as ones to comprehension of GE In fact, these problems are the results

of the factors that strongly impede learners‘ comprehension The following would be

an overview of some main factors that make listening arduous including vocabularyreservoir, the speed of delivery, listener‘s concentration, memory as well asbackground knowledge

a Clusters, connected speech and accents in English

It is undeniable that Vietnamese learners frequently encounter difficulties withEnglish listening due to the various phonetic differences between English language

and their mother tongue One of the greatest obstacles is the feature of sounds Infact, in English words, there are consonant-clusters which cause difficulty for bothspeaking and listening From my personal experience of teaching listening, listeners,

my students, may get consonants in the wrong order and thus misunderstand themessage when they hear —parts” /pa I ts/ instead of —past” /pa I st/, or omit one ofthe sounds (crips for —crisps”)

Another problem that should be mentioned is connected speech It is defined as —aflow of sounds which are modified by a system of simplifications through whichphonemes are connected, grouped and modified” (Underhill, 1994) According toCrystal (1991), English native speakers are able to speak at a pace of approximately

450 words in informal context When the tongue has to move from one articulatingposition to another at this pace, an approximation of the phoneme can be produced.Thus, Underhill (1994) summarized that assimilation is "the natural result of thevarious speech organs 'cutting corners' as they perform their complex sequence ofmovements” A prime example for this phenomenon is —what are” /'watar/ changedinto /' WATƠ/ Secondly, elision refers to the omission of a phoneme in a speech like

—what are you” /'watarjui / is pronounced into /' WAtj'oZ (Underhill, 1994).Thirdly, the researcher also characterized the liaison as —the smooth linking orjoining together of words with a seamless quality” An example for this phenomenon

is —what is it?” described as /wat iz It/ is shifted to /watizit/ Examining theinfluence of these features of connected speech, Rubin (1994) concluded that theexistence of elision or the utilization of reduced forms such as assimilation, liaisonand vowel reduction makes the decoding process more challenging for Englishlisteners as the second language The result is the phonemic information missingfrom the input may obstruct the recognition of words and syntactic patterns

Another hindrance in phonetic complexity is different accents in the Englishlanguage Most language learners are dismayed when they find difficulties from thespeaker‘s accent In fact, the situation that English is not always delivered with anative accent makes adaptation become considerably more demanding to listeners

To be more specific, it is proved that accented speech affect both the listeners‘understanding of the message conveyed and the effort involved as listeners identifyspecific words in the message (Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009) According toGoh (1999), two thirds of English learners affirmed that accent is one of the mostproblematic factors to comprehension To sum up, familiar accents can supportEnglish learners‘ listening comprehension and unfamiliar accents can cause a huge ofproblems in listening comprehension.

b Vocabulary reservoir

It is evident that vocabulary is one of the most important part of the languageaccquisition and thus can be the most challenging for English learners In fact, thevocabulary acquired by English learners is limited, especially for the ESP learnerswhen the terminologies are normally considered as peculiar and thus hard-to-remember As a result, ESP vocabulary always presents a major linguistic barrier tonon-native English-speaking students

Brown (1974) indicated that the students who are about to enter the university oftenacquire limited vocabulary, compared to a five-year-old native speaker Thus, around

5000 most-frequently-used words must be fluently practiced by English learners sothat they can achieve successful listening comprehension at a certain level (Nation,2006)

Additionally, in listening, familiar words will make it much easier for listeners tounderstand a lecture or discourse, even if its topic is unknown to them In ESPlistening text, there seems to be certainly an occurrence of infrequent words orterminologies which the learners are less likely to be familiar with This contributes

to its complexity and may impede their listening comprehension and thus they mayneed to infer the meaning of any low-frequency words in the text (Bloomfield,Rhoades, Wayland, & Linck, 2010) As a consequence, restricted vocabularyreservoir is actually a problematic factor affecting ESP students‘ listeningcomprehension

c Speed of delivery

Most foreign language learners claimed that native speakers speak at a fast pace thatcauses their difficulties in listening comprehension Accordingly, Hayati (2010)

states that it is often less demanding for listeners to comprehend the speech of lowrate, compared to natural speech rate This lies behind the fact that a slower rate ofdelivery provides the listeners with enough time to think and process the stream ofinformation In other words, the more increased speech rate, the weakerperformances in second language‘s listening comprehension are (Rubin, 1994).Sharing the same thought, Underwood (1989) concluded that speed of delivery isconsidered one of the greatest obstacles in listening comprehension If speakersdeliver their speech at an exceptionally fast rate, listeners may be unable to keep upwith the content of the whole lecture or discourse.

d Background knowledge

It cannot be denied that listener‘s background knowledge of topic can be attributed tothe positive influence on their ability to understand the message conveyed There arealways gaps between the mother tongue (Vietnamese) and the target language(English) in terms of cultures, behaviors, beliefs, customs, etc.; hence, in order tobridge these gaps, enhancing background knowledge about the target language‘sitems is highly suggested According to Anderson & Lynch (1988), backgroundknowledge is essential for listeners to absolutely apprehend the message.Specifically, if English learners lack shared schematic or contextual information, itwill make listening comprehension more challenging or even impossible

e Memory

Memory or working memory mentioned here involves a set of cognitive processesthat all listeners use with varying degrees of efficiency as they process, temporarilystore, and retrieve information in memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) Therelationship between working memory and listening comprehension of secondlanguage learners is clearly demonstrated in various literature An experimentconducted by Miyake and Friedman (1998) emphasized that listeners with highermemory capacity would achieve higher performance when comprehending themessage in the second language

Moreover, as showed in some recent studies, there exist correlations betweenworking memory and listening comprehension performance, but the effect differed

depending on the task and the familiarity of the topic Leeser (2007) highlighted that

in listening comprehension process, the better working memory span especially inthe case of short - term memory is associated with the greater performance forfamiliar topics For that reason, the improvement of memory span has a positiveimpact on listening comprehension of a foreign language

While the problems facing English learners in listening process in GE has beeninvesigated with numerous studies listed above, there is a lack of empirical studiesthat examine those in ESP To address this gap in identifying the factors affectinglistening comprehension of ESP learners, this investigation was conducted using 25students majored in Chemistry in a university located in Hanoi

2.2 Listening dictation

2.2.1 Dictation technique

Originating from the increasing attention to listening competence, progressivetechniques to enhance listening comprehension have emerged Davis and Rinvolucri,(2002) illustrated a wide range of activities in relation to dictation techniquesdesigned to develop listening comprehension in their book —Dictation: Newmethods, new possibilities”

Oxford Learner‘s Pocket Dictionary (2003) gives the definition of dictation as an act

of saying words aloud for someone to write it down From the perspectives involvingEnglish teaching and learning, Richards and Schmidt (2002) defined it as a techniqueused in both language teaching and language testing whose process includes apassage being read aloud to students or test-takers, with pauses and students beingrequired to write down what they can hear as accurately as possible In other words,dictation technique involves the spoken input and written output (Nation & Newton,2009) In its most fundamental form, dictation can be characterized as a technique inwhich the learners are given the spoken input, keep it in their short-term memory,and then dictate what they hear (Nation, 1991) Oller (1971) supports it by clarifyingthe dictation process through a recurrent cycle of four dependent activities including(1) reading a passage aloud, (2) chunking the passage into smaller phrases suitablefor committal to short-term memory and rereading the phrase with gaps long enough

for subjects to record the preceding phrase in writing, (3) optionally re-reading eachphrase as it is being written, and (4) repeating the whole passage as in the first step.From these definitions, it can be concluded that dictation is a teaching technique thatrequires students to hear attentively and write down what have been said to them, sothat the students are able to comprehend the content of it Nation (1991) asserts thatkind of techniques is affected by three major factors including listeners‘ listeningskill, their command of language as well as their short-term memory.

In association with more traditional language teaching methodologies, dictation haswidely been employed as a suitable activity easily implemented in class Besides, theuse of dictation technique as a measure of testing has always been suggested because

it requires minimal preparation by teachers, and is suitable for student groups of anysize and at any proficiency level (Davis & Rinvolucri, 2002) As regards to takingadvantages of dictation on listening comprehension, the statistics analyzed by thesetwo reseachers also showed that more than half of European teachers admits usingdictation routinely or time after time in their teaching

2.2.2 Types of Dictation

According to Rost (2002), there are several types of dictation procedures that havebeen used in a variety of ways as testing techniques Those five ways are best knowntypes of dictation

a Standard dictation

Standard dictation is probably the best known one In this technique, students writeverbal sequences of authentic listening materials played back from a recording Thematerial should be presented at a normal rate of speed (in conversation) and is given

in sequences that are long enough to examine students‘ short-term memory

b Partial dictation

Known as spot dictation, this type is closely related to the standard dictation;however, the students are given the written version of the text (transcript) They arerequired to listen to the spoken material and complete the transcript with missingwords

c Dictation with competing noise

It seems to be demanding for students because the aural material is presentedimitating natural conditions with added noise The kind of dictation helps thestudents to get familiar to daily communication context where language is used inless-than-ideal acoustic conditions

d Dicto-Comp

This type of dictation is actually a combination of two forms, namely dictation andcomposition Here, the teacher read the whole passage three times and the studentsare only given a chance to write their work after the teacher has finished the thirdreading

e Elicited imitation

This is similar to dictation in the way the listening material is presented to thelearners, but dissimilar in terms of the response mode In this case, listeners arerequired to listen to material, then repeat them or recount what is said instead ofwriting them down

Due to the limit of time in class and the overwhelming school work students had tocomplete at home, the researcher attempted to apply standard dictation in take-homeassignments Students were allowed to listen to the whole recording for the first time,then they listened to that recording with clear chukings for the second time In thelast chance they listened, the whole recording was played in order that students couldcomplete their dictating tasks

2.2.3 Benefits of dictation in improving listening comprehension

a Dictation promotes short - term memory

As mentioned in the section 2.1, short-term memory is one of the key factorsnegatively impact on the performance of listening comprehension However, withrespect to the advantages of dictation, dictation practice is proved to be helpful byactivating short-term memory of foreign language listeners (Nation, 1991; Davis &Rinvolucri, 2002; Leeser, 2007)

Richards, Platt, and Platt (2000) described short-term memory as a part of thememory in which information received is stored for a short time while it is being

analyzed and interpreted Once the message or information in an utterance isunderstood, the data may become part of permanent memory The utterance itself is

no longer needed and may fade from short-term memory It can be inferred that it is amental process rather than a place in the brain

In fact, dictation can help better short-term memory since listeners are required tomaintain meaningful speech in their mind until they can write them down (Morris,1983) Nation (1991) also describes the mechanism of dictation as photocopying Inother words, the information is copied into the brain so that the listener is capable ofmemorizing the aural input before producing the written output

Additionally, handwriting as a way of dictation also promotes the development ofshort-term memory Based on brain imaging studies, Doctor Virginia Berninger,from the University of Washington, stated that —the handwriting group had greaterbrain activation in areas associated with working memory” (cited in Barnes, 2015)

In particular, while being written, an idea will be recast several times in the learner‘sbrain, thus encourages learners‘ brain to actively memorize the message and toconsolidate the memory span (Barnes, 2015)

b Dictation raises active listening

According to Davis and Rinvolucri (2002), dictation can motivate active listeningboth during and after the listening tasks

To begin with, to develop active listening, the attentive listening is an essentialrequirement that the foreign language listener has to pay full attention to his listening

so that his mind does not meander or be distracted by the surrounding This cognitiveawareness will guarantee whether the listener grasps the message conveyed correctly(Wajnryb, 1995) Dictation was traditionally employed as an effective strategy toimprove students‘ attention in a listening classroom In details, according to Davisand Rinvolucri (2002), these old-fashioned tasks allow students to be the —subject”since students are enthusiastically engaged in producing output text on the page,instead of being only the —objects” of the listening teacher’s flood Takingadvantage of this methods to achieve the best performance, applying dictation ingroups frequently (at least once a week) is highly recommended by these two

In addition, the listeners are increasingly active after dictation exercises with respect

to self-correction As being instructed by Davis and Rinvolucri (2002), teachers take

no responsibility on correcting dictation scripts Instead, the activity of correcting adictation text should be carried out by students or listeners themselves wherebyextending their activity from the dictation to the correction phase and additionallyproviding them with opportunities to cooperate with other students in the listeningprocess Such application is a great introduction to the habit of listener’s self-correction, particularly collaborative correction approach (Davis & Rinvolucri,2002)

c Dictation reinforces listening for details

Listening for details is a prerequisite of comprehensively listening to a foreignlanguage in which listeners must identify specific information such as numbers,names, objects and etc (Ahmed, 2015) It is apparent that this sub-skill plays anessential role in listening test performance Anderson & Lynch (1988) and Davis &Rinvolucri (2002) all agreed that ddictation practice is one of the most effectivestrategies to handle problems related to listening for specific information

Particularly, dictation practice requires listeners to remember and write down acomplete sentence, paragraph or even discourse Therefore, the listener has to fullyconcontrate on the recording and ensure the accuracy of all dictated details in terms

of lexicon, semantic meaning and syntax The listener’s concentration and listeningfor details skill will be constantly strengthened (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

A recent survey on problems of English learning and teaching in Vietnam conducted

by Nguyen & Kazantseva (2015) shows that listening for specific information isproblematic for Vietnam undergraduate students and they suggested utilizingdictation techniques to overcome this deadlock

d Dictation enriches listener's vocabulary

Limitations in vocabulary is always an obstacle for listening comprehension,especially in the case of unfamiliar topics and collocations Few linguistic reports

have demonstrated that dictation can help listeners develop vocabulary on particularthemes (Davis & Rinvolucri, 2002; Nation, 1991)

Tang (2012) indicated that with listening dictation, students are required to giveprime focus on the form, pronunciation and meaning of English words In dictationprocess, listeners dictate the words through their hands, pens and ears, utilize theaural input in order to make prediction, develop their understanding and memory ofnew English word The researcher draws a conclusion that dictation is an effectivequantization strategy, which can reveal English listeners‘ vocabulary

Besides, Tang (2012) also gave several recommendations for teachers toappropriately employ dictation strategy Firstly, listening teachers should take thewords that cannot be explained and spelled through pronunciation, formation rulesand stereotype mode, such as the words with double consonants and homophoneaffixes, as well as some confusing words These representative words that can revealEnglish pronunciation and formation rules should not be ignored Secondly, teachersshould put emphasis on the dictation frequencies of vocabularies that associate tolanguage proficiency level of students to make the students familiar with theirspelling and usages Thirdly, from the perspective of memory psychology, too manywords per time are not beneficial for memory Therefore, about 20 words areappropriate per time of dictation application Fourthly, instructors are advised toencourage independent learning and require the students to correct their phonetic andspelling mistakes independently under the guidance of teachers Last but not least,dictation scores should be counted as a part of listening scores to create a kind ofmotivation for daily practice

Based on all the theories listed above, it can be assured that students can benefit fromdictation technique in terms of vocabulary with the appropriate teacher‘s guidanceand application

e Dictation facilitates learning note-taking skill

It is a common knowledge that note-taking refers to jotting down the key ideas of alecture via making use of a huge range of abbreviation, short forms, symbols and etc.Dictation practice will help listeners make acquaintance with a sort of notetaking

Particular benefits of dictation for note-taking practice are summarized in Handbooktitled —Using dictation to develop pupils’ listening and writing skills” published byCurriculum Development Institute, Education Bureau in 2011 The list pointed out(i) helping listeners understand the meanings of keywords through demonstrationbefore engaging them in more demanding dictation activities such as dicto-comp anddicto-gloss; (ii) listening for keywords by distinguishing the roles of both functionand content words and word phrases; and (iii) identifying main ideas, supportingdetails and irrelevant or unnecessary information

2.3 Previous studies

In making the thesis entitled “Utilizing frequent listening dictation to improve listening comprehension of Chemistry-majored sophomores at a university in Hanoi”, the researcher was considering some previous studies to support the thesis.

However, the literature on the effectiveness of dictation in English languageacquisition is inadequate While most of the researchers chose to apply dictation as ameans of testing learners’ listening competence, some others focus on exploring thepotential effectiveness of dictation to enhance learner’s listening comprehension

In Vietnam, most researchers chose to apply this method to high school students orundergraduates to examine their improvements in GE listening skills Nguyen (2010)investigating the effectiveness of listening dictation on grade-10 students’ listeningcomprehension pointed out that after the period of 18 weeks implementing thisinstrument in listening class, participants achieved a considerable progress on theirlistening skills While at the beginning of the implementation, merely 22% of thestudents obtained mark 5 or above, the figures for those went up to 82.5% in the end.Similarly, Nguyen (2017) conducted a study on 150 randomly-chosen studentsutilizing dictation with a view to enhancing students‘ understanding of dictation andits effectiveness on English listening progression Through reconnoitering how longstudents have exposed to dictation, she concluded that listening dictation bringsabout satisfactory effect after a tiny period of time of constant utilization Theresearcher, additionally, highlighted five fundamental benefits of this methods

comprising advancing short-term memory, attentiveness, vocabulary, note-takingcapacity and apprehension of entire talks.

However, when it comes to ESP, there is few investigations examined how dictationcan be applied and benefited from in ESP listening class to improve ESP learners‘listening skills Since dictation techniques and its effectiveness in ESP listeningcomprehension are still a rather unexamined research area in Vietnam, most of thereferences in this study derives from international research

Firstly, Kavaliauskienẻ and Darginavicienẻ (2016) conducted a research entitled —Dictation in the ESP classroom: a tool to improve language proficiency” to examinehow helpful standard dictation practice can be The participants in this study were 1stand 2nd year full-time students who study English for Special Purposes forpsychology or law After the treatment, they draw a conclusion that employment ofthe dictation techniques in the ESP classroom showed a marked improvement instudent‘s listening comprehension as well as seft-correction Another researcher,Hirokazu Yonekazi from Nagaoka National College of Technology also carried out

an experiment in 2014 to figure out the efficacy of dictation in improving Englishlistening ability of Japanese college students The participants were divided into 2groups: experimental group using partial listening dictation and control group whichapplied the conventional method of listening The difference in gains between twogroups was statistically significant While the number of students whose scoresincreased in control group accounted for just more than 50%, that of whom inexperimental group occupied 75% The result of this study proved that the treatment

of dictation practices had a statistically profound effect Similarly, Fatimah MulyaSari in her research —Improving Student’s listening ability through DictationTechnique at the First Year Students” also deduced that the results of pre-test weremuch lower than those of post-test It can be inferred that listening dictation canimprove ESP student’s listening proficiency

Based on the previous findings, the researcher concludes this study is related to allthe research in aspects of dictation improving listening skills However, researchermade use of a different technique by applying standard dictation as an activity of

weekly listening practice and employing the format of gap-fill and short answers as ameasure of English language testing.

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Chapter III introduces all the methods and procedures applied in this study to answerthe research questions stated in Chapter I Based on theories reviewed in the previouschapter, this section will present and justify all the aspects of methodology includingsubjects, research instrument, and a series of steps taken towards the final findings

3.1 Setting of the study

The researcher conducted a research on a university located in the centre of Hanoi city,Vietnam The research was carried out in the second academic terms of the school year2018-2019, and the schedule of the research was equivalent to the school curricular Asmentioned in Chapter 1, students of this university are required to take part in sixEnglish courses and the materials composed by ESP instructors are authentic andnative-recorded passages or conversations The course book used in this semester arenamed —English for Chemical and Environmental Technology 4” including theauthentic materials taken from 4 main sources: English for the Oil Industry 2 (OxfordEnglish for Careers), Oil and Gas 2 (Pearson), Environmental Science (Career Paths),Chemical Engineering (Career Paths) It is also noteworthy that listening practices areall done at home to make room for speaking practice in class though it always appears

as a section accounting for 40% total mark in the mid-term and end-of-term test

3.2 Participants

The subjects of the study are second-year Chemistry-majored students in term 4 at auniversity The number of participants surveyed is 25 including 23 males and 2 femalesequivalent to the total number of students in an ordinary class at this school Theyexperienced 2 terms learning General English to achieve level A1 (CEFR), then spentanother term dealing with the first ESP course asymptotic to A2 level At the time ofthe survey, they were in term 4, known as the second term of ESP course

Most of them frequently claimed that they encountered enormous difficulties inlistening to Chemistry-specialized themes though they could perform very well whenlistening to recordings in the context of daily communication Moreover, they have

never used any listening strategies instead of the conventional listening approach listening for details.

-The students are consequently free to decide for themselves if they want to participate

in the research or not All of the students involved in the study are anonymous

3.3 Research Design

This research is conducted by applying Action Research It is an action researchconducted by the teacher as well as 25 students in this class with the procedure ofplanning, acting, observing and reflecting that has aims to improve the quality oflearning comprehension

According to Carr and Kemmis (1986), Action Research is broken down into —a form

of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations to improve therationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices andthe situations in which the practices are carried out” (p.162) Also concerning ActionResearch, O‘Brien and Dick have an agreement on the nature of action research Dick(2001) claims that as the reflection of its name, action research is aimed to achieve bothaction and research at the same time Similarly, O‘Brien (2001) asserts that it is trulyclarified as —learning by doing”: a problem emerges among a group of people; they dosomething to resolve it; they then see how successful they are or have another attempt

if they are not satisfied with the result For this reason, they critically advocate the use

of action research in educational situations where teachers wish to take action in thehope of changing or improving their teaching practices Acknowledging the role ofaction research in education, Hutchinson and Whitehouse (2006) also affirm that actionresearch concerns with broader curriculum issues, and often with the administrationand management of school and institutional change

In addition, from the researcher‘s point of view, action reseach is an optimal choice.First, it is carried out by practitioners (classroom teachers) rather than outsideresearchers, so the real problem can be identified unequivocally and the appropriateresolution can be a drastic solution to be implemented Another reason for choosingthis method lies behind the fact that it is collaborative It requires both the collaborationbetween students and their peers and that between students and teacher This co-operation is hoped to bring about the better interation of students in listening class Last

but not least, Lewin (1946), the father of action reseach, describes the steps to be taken

in this type of research as a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result

of the action Therefore, the circle is repeated until the better result is achived

From all the reasons listed above, the researcher decide to utilize action research in thisstudy so as to identify the problem of current teaching situation, plan the possiblesolution and consequently the teaching practice and student‘s performances can beprogressed

According to MacIsaac (1995), four steps to be implemented in an action research aredescribed as follows:

Figure 2 Simple Action Research Model (MacIsaac, 1995)

It can be clearly seen that the action research cover 2 cycles, each of which consists of

5 steps including (1) planning the action; (2) implementing the action; (3) observing theaction; (4) reflecting the observation result; and (5) revising the plan

(1) Planing the action: a problem or an issue is identifed and a plan of action isdeveloped in order to bring about improvement in specific areas of the researchcontext

(2) Implementing the action: The plan is put into action over an agreed period of time.(3) Observing the action: The effects of action are observed and the data are collected.(4) Reflecting the observation result: The effects of action are evaluated and becomethe basis for further possible cycles of research

(5) Revising the plan: The plan for the modifications is devised to be applied in thenext cycle

3.3.1 Cycle 1:

- Step 1: Planning

Identify the problem: The researcher‘s teaching experience, the identification oflearner‘s unwillingness to listen, the discussion with learners and the students‘ previous

listening scores helped to find out that (1) listening competence of the students was lowand (2) they did not have any habit of practicing listening skills.

Develop a plan of action: A plan of listening dictation assignment was developed in 10weeks following the academic schedule of school The researcher prepared a pretest inorder to assess students‘ level The test consisted of 2 tasks as described in the testspecifications and the same format were applied for the pre-test, progress test and thefinal test The first task requires test takers to complete 5 sentences with limited wordstaken from the recording In the other task, students have to answer 5 WH-questionswith short answers The test is graded Elementary (A2 - CEFR) and taken fromauthentic sources

- Step 2: Action

In the first lesson of the 10-week semester, students were introduced to the newtechnique of listening - listening dictation The procedure, the instrument and themethod of assessment were all clarified In details, students were required to register to

an online classroom in Google Classroom operated by the researcher Following theschedule of 10 weeks with 8 units lasting for 2 lessons for each, students dictated atleast 1 topic-related recording after each lesson then submitted the documents toteacher In other words, students had to apply listening dictation at least twice a weekexcept for the week they had the test Google Classroom automatically recorded theirparticipation for each assignment The materials for dictation were the native-recordedpassages and conversations with the topic-related content The procedure to carry outthe implementation, giving dictation, was as follows First, students were made aware

of the topic of the passage or conversation to activate their background knowledge inclass, and they were required to do dictation after class In the first turn, they listened tothe whole passage or conversation without any pauses Then the tape was replayed thesecond times and stopped after each meaningful chunk for 10 seconds so that studentscould write down what they heard In the third stage, they listened again to the wholepassage or conversation without interruption to check what they had written There wasalso a follow-up exercise designed in the format of either sentence completion or shortanswer to help students seft-check their comprehension of the listening discourse Theycould also check their writing against the tapescript handed out by the teacher in the

following face-to-face lesson The purpose of this activity was for students to revisetheir dictation, utilize the teacher‘s feedback and realize their own mistakes andlimitations.

Following is the schedule delivered to students at the beginning of the semester

Table 1 Course schedule for Phase 1

1 Orientation Listening dictation is introduced

No assignmentPre-test

2 Unit 1: Tools (Lesson

1)

Recording: Essential Tools:

HammerGenre: Short talk

Thursday28/2/2019

3 Unit 1: Tools (Lesson

2)

Recording: How to RepairDamaged Screw Heads UsingHand Tools

Genre: Short talk

Sunday3/3/2019

4 Unit 2: PPE and

Sunday10/3/2019

8 Unit 4: Periodic table

(Lesson 1)

Recording: Periodic tableGenre: Short talk

Thursday21/3/2019

9 Unit 4: Periodic table

(Lesson 2)

Recording: The organization of periodic table

Sunday24/3/2019

10 Progress test 1 (test

In order to see the efficacy of frequent dictation, the researcher collected the times oflistening assignment submissions in Google Classroom then analyzed them.Correspondents were also required to write journals after their practice of listeningdictation With the journals, students could note the difficulties they encountered orreflected on their practices Due to their low level of writing, the use of mother tonguemay give them more confidence when writing reflections and giving clearer and moreprecise explanations Apart from this, the researcher also looked into the results of pre-test and progress test and makes a comparison These 2 listening tests were designed

for learners with the aim to measure the effectiveness of listening dictation on theirperformance The first listening test was given to students in the first lesson of thesemester when listening dictation had not been employed It was used to assess theoverall listening competence of students and helps the researcher to assign appropriatelistening dictation tasks on the purpose of bettering their listening competency Thenext test on lesson 10 (week 5) was for checking the progress of students whenapplying the new technique.

- Step 4: Reflection

Based on the result of the test and what student reflected in their journals, someproblems were still found related to action research implemented in Cycle 1 Theywere:

1 Students‘ listening competence was still low

2 Not all students were involved in listening dictation practice due to the fact that

a few of them did not realize the significance and the effectiveness of the newmethod

3 Most of the students claimed that the frequency of listening dictation practicewas still low In the journals, they stated that they wanted to have more native-recorded recordings as the researcher had provided them and they desired toincrease the amount of time they spent on listening practice

4 Some students found it difficult to understand the recording owing to theirshortage of ESP vocabulary

- Step 5: Revised plan

After analyzing the results of the test, based on student‘s reflections and theimplementation problems found in Cycle 1, there were some recommendations forCycle 2 The revised action that would be implemented in Cycle 2, then be formulated

as follows:

1 Providing students with 4 listening dictation assignments per week

2 Asking students to highlight the new words in the dictation text then learn them

by heart

3 In class, taking advantage of 15 minutes at the beginning of the lesson (normallyused for homework or vocabulary checking) to have students discuss and share

what they learn from the recordings with their friends.

3.3.2 Cycle 2:

- Step 1: Planning:

The action planned was revised based on the problems occurring in the Cycle 1 Theproblems were: (1) Students‘ listening competence was still low; (2) Not all studentswere involved in listening dictation practice because they were not fully aware thesignificance and the effectiveness of the new method; and (3) the frequency of listeningdictation practice was still low

Therefore, in this cycle, the researcher decided to increase both the number of dictationhome assignments and the amount of time students spent on listening practice as well

In addition, the employment of sharing and discussing would be implemented in theface-to-face lessons in order to raise students‘ enthusiasm when doing homework, helpstudents to revise vocabulary as well as check students‘ understanding of thehomework recordings

- Step 2: Action:

The action implemented in cycle 2 followed the same procedure as in the first phase.However, the schedule as well as the number of dictation assignments were modified inorder to see whether there would be any breakthrough in the progress of student‘slistening competence after the implementation was terminated In detail, the number ofrecordings assigned in each unit was doubled, probably resulting in the increase in theamount of time students spent on listening practice Every week, students wereassigned 4 listening assignments with the deadlines set on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturdayand Sunday respectively Additionally, apart from dictation practice, students wererequired to highlight new words and learnt them by heart with the hope that it would beless challenging for them the next time they encountered the words The participantsalso took part in the discussion on the topic of listening practice hosted by theresearcher in the face-to-face lesson The purpose

of this activity was to help the teacher to check whether theyhad done the assignments carefully or submitted the copycatversion of others‘ works The discussions in class were alsoexpected to motivate students to get more involved in listeningpractice at home.

In this phase, participants followed the schedule set by the researcher listed as follows:

Table 2 Course schedule for Phase 2

Recording 2: Organic compounds

in our bodyGenre: Conversation

Sunday31/3/2019

Genre: Short talk

Tuesday2/4/2019

Recording 2: Water compounds

Genre: Short talk

Thursday4/4/2019

Recording 2: Oil, good or bad?

Genre: Short talk

Thursday11/4/2019