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Improving 11th form students’ listening comprehension through modified listening tasks of the new textbook English 11 at Trieu Son No2 High School THANH HOA SERVICE OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING TRIEU SON[.]
THANH HOA SERVICE OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING TRIEU SON No2 UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE IMPROVING 11TH FORM STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION THROUGH MODIFIED LISTENING TASKS OF THE NEW TEXTBOOK ENGLISH 11 AT TRIEU SON No2 UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL Researcher: Lê Đình Thắng Post: The head of group Field: English THANH HÓA, NĂM 2018 SangKienKinhNghiem.net TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale………………………………………………………… 1.2 Aims of the study……………………………………………… 1.3 Scope of the study……………………………………………… 1.4 Methods of the study…………………………………………… CONTENT 2.1 Theoretical basis of the initiative 2.2 The real situation of teaching listening skills at Trieu Son No2 upper-secondary school 2.2.1 The syllabus of teaching and learning English 2.2.2 The teaching and learning English speaking skills 2.3 The used measures to solve the problems 2.3.1 Initial data 2.3.1.1 Results from pre-listening test 2.3.1.2 Results from pre-action stage observations 2.3.1.3 Results from students’ questionnaire 2.3.1.3.1 Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competence 2.3.1.3.2 Students’ opinions about listening tasks in English 11 2.3.1.3.3 Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 2.3.1.3.4 Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening 10 tasks to their listening competence 2.3.1.3.5 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 10 2.3.1.3.6 Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat 11 listening tasks 11 2.3.1.4 Results from document analysis 11 2.3.1.4.1 English 11 11 2.3.1.4.2 Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 12 2.3.2 The hypothesis 13 2.3.3 Planning action steps 14 2.3.3.1 Replacing 15 2.3.3.2 Omitting 15 2.3.3.3 Changing 15 2.3.4 Data collected in the action stage 16 2.3.4.1 Results from action stage observations 16 2.3.4.2 Results from Questionnaire 16 2.3.4.3 Results from teaching diaries 17 2.3.4.4 Results from post-test 18 2.3.5 Action research evaluation 19 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 2.3.5.1 Students’ involvement in tasks before and after action plan 2.3.5.2 Students’ progress reflected through tests 2.3.5.3 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 2.3.5.4 Modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1 Conclusions 3.2 Recommendations REFERENCES……………………………………………………… APPENDICES SangKienKinhNghiem.net 19 19 20 20 22 22 22 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study The years 2006, 2007 and 2008 marked a milestone in the ways of teaching and learning English when the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) introduced the new sets of English textbook English 10, English 11 and English 12 to school curriculum The aim of MOET is to develop students’ communicative competence so as to meet the demand of integration and globalization That is the reason why in the new textbooks, four skills including reading, speaking, listening and writing are put in priority and integrated Of the four skills mentioned above, listening is considered to be the most challenging one Most students find it hard to master this skill and soon feel bored with listening periods The reasons for this are various, such as uninteresting topics, fast speed, students' poor pronunciation or lack of background knowledge and cultural understanding Eleven graders at Trieu Sơn No2 High School have encountered such a lot of difficulties when dealing with listening lessons However, after five years of teaching English 11, I also discover that the listening tasks themselves are also a factor affecting students’ listening comprehension It is obvious that suitable tasks make students more interested in the listening passages and then help them develop their listening skills Inappropriate tasks, on the contrary, can demotivate students In listening sections of English11, some tasks are too difficult or too long and some are boring In this case, it is necessary for teachers to modify listening tasks to make the tasks more suitable and interesting for learners, even though it is not an easy job for the teacher as modifying tasks means having to take many things into accounts such as the objectives, the criteria or the student’s needs However, for the benefit of students, it is worth doing so For the above reasons, especially for the researcher’s desire to help her students better at listening, the choice of the study entitled “Improving 11th form students’ listening comprehension through modified listening tasks of the new textbook English 11 at Trieu Son No2 High School ” is not accidental 1.2 Aims of the study The main purpose of this research is to study the effects of modified listening tasks of English 11 on improving 11th form students’ listening comprehension at Trieu Son No2 Upper-Secondary School The specific objectives of the study are: To investigate students’ attitudes towards listening tasks in English 11 and the difficulties they face To study whether the modified listening tasks could help students improve their listening comprehension SangKienKinhNghiem.net 1.3 Scope of the study Due to the limited knowledge, energy and time, the researcher was unable to carry out the investigation on a large scale This action research was only conducted for only weeks with the four listening lessons and in the context of 40 eleventh-grade students at Trieu Son No2 High School in the academic year 20172018 only Hence, the results of the study is only limited to the above teaching context and participants Methods of the study The author has applied the following methods in this study: Data collection results from interviews (for teachers), survey questionnaires (for students) and class observations Data analysis is done through coding, classifying, and reporting the information SangKienKinhNghiem.net CONTENTS 2.1 Theoretical basis of the initiative In our daily life, outside the classroom, listening is used twice as often as speaking, which in turn is used twice as much as reading and writing (River, 1981) Inside classroom, the two often used skills are listening and speaking (Brown, 1994) Therefore, listening plays an important role in the processes of learning and communication essential to productive participation in life What is listening? Through years, various definitions of listening have been proposed Listening is more than merely hearing words It is considered to be an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken and or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994) Brown (1994) argues that listening is a skill in which to identify and understand what is being said, listeners must comprehend “a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary” Sharing similar ideas, Barker (1971) defines listening as “the selective process of attending to, hearing, understanding and remembering aural symbols” Listening comprehension is very important in the process of learning a language According to Rost (1994: 141), listening comprehension is “vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understanding input at the right level, any learner simply can’t begin” He also argues that “Spoken language including listening provides a mean of interaction for the learners Because learners must interact to achieve understanding access to speaker of the language is essential Moreover, learner’s failure to understand the language they hear is an impetus, not an obstacle, to interaction and learning” Obviously, listening comprehension is an essential skill for almost interaction It is therefore the most primary medium for input in language learning process and by speeding up the students' ability to perceive speech, the amount of input they get will increase and thus aid students' language acquisition To conclude, given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help students become effective listeners 2.2 The real situation of teaching listening skills at Trieu Son No2 uppersecondary school 2.2.1 The syllabus of teaching and learning English At Trieu Son High School No2, English is one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum The syllabus and the textbooks for English including “Tiếng Anh 10”, “Tiếng Anh 11”, “Tiếng Anh 12” are prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Training The English curriculum for grade 11th students is divided into two semesters with a total of 105 periods, periods per week Each period is 45 minutes long SangKienKinhNghiem.net The textbook which is currently used for teaching and learning English for grade 11th at Triệu Sơn High School No2 is “Tieng Anh 11” which was designed following communicative approach The textbook consists of 16 units with parts in each unit arranging as follows: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus in which a variety of exercises and tasks was compiled for practice Also, there exists a consolidate unit after every units The objective of these units is to examine how well the students have achieved in the previous units 2.2.2 The teaching and learning English speaking skills It has been accepted that students’ communicative ability is the proper aim for language teaching This makes teaching and learning speaking skills seem to be an important part in any English course Like many other high schools in Vietnam, teaching and learning listening skills at Triệu Sơn High School are affected by some constraints such as large class sizes, students’ unfamiliarity with CLT, students’ low English proficiency, students’ low participation in class time Normally, in a class at Triệu Sơn High School, a number of students who have a good knowledge of English are eager and active during the class while a majority of those with low English proficiency are very passive Besides, lack of training in teaching methods, especially CLT makes it difficult for the teachers to access to new approach, which makes the teaching and learning listening skills more challenging 2.3 The used measures to solve the problems 2.3.1 Initial data 2.3.1.1 Results from pre-listening test Students would a test to measure their level Below are the results of the test Table 1: Results of the pre-test Marks Marks 1-2 Marks 3-4 Marks 5-6 Marks 7-8 Marks 9-10 Numbers of 28 10 students Percent 18% 56% 20% 6% 0% From the table, it can be seen that 74% of the students scored below average, whereas students achieving average scores made up 20% and only 6% could get from mark to mark 10 The result of the test showed that most of the students were quite weak at listening skill Students need to be helped to improve this skill 2.3.1.2 Results from pre-action stage observations At pre-action stage, the researcher taught Unit (Friendship) and Unit (Personal experiences) with non-modified tasks The lessons were observed by another teacher During the observations, this teacher took notes and gave the total marks of students’ involvement in the tasks in the two periods The following is the description of one lesson: SangKienKinhNghiem.net Class: 11C4 Number of students in class: 40 Time: 45 minutes Unit 1: Friendship Period 5: C - LISTENING As usual, the lesson started with warm-up The teacher asked her students some questions (Who is your best friend?, How long have you known each other?, What qualities you admire in your best friend?) Then, students worked in pairs to ask about their best friends in minutes After calling one pair to ask and answer in front of the class, the teacher introduced the lesson (Today we will listen to two monologues of Lan and Long They are talking about their best friends) Before students listened to the passages to complete the tasks, teacher introduced some words and phrases Then students continued the lesson with task deciding True/False statements They were asked to work individually, run through the 11 sentences in task and underline the key words Then teacher played the tape twice After that, the teacher asked students to give answers However, few of them had all the answers Some even paid no attention to the task The teacher stopped by each sentence for checking Students, then, came to task in which they had to take notes of what Lan and Long like about their friends and how and where they met The teacher again played the tape twice However, this task seemed to be difficult for students as almost no student noted down anything The teacher had to provide help The lesson flew slowly Finally, the teacher gave some cues and asked students to work in pairs to talk about Lan’s and Long’s best friends Here are the results from the observations First, it should be mentioned that the observation sheet had six items, but during unit and the observer only used four items to observe students’ involvement in the tasks The highest mark for each item was and the highest mark for the whole class in each lesson was 20 The highest total mark for the observations during two lessons was 40 Below are the concrete results: Table 2: Students’ involvement in the tasks Units Unit Unit (Friendship) (Personal experiences) Marks of students’ involvement in the tasks Percent 40% 45% SangKienKinhNghiem.net It can be seen from the table that level of students’ involvement in the tasks was quite low In Unit (Friendship), the percent of students who involved in the tasks accounted for 40%, while in Unit (Personal experiences) was a bit higher with 45% This figures showed that more than half of the students paid no attention to studying listening They barely participated in the lessons This may be resulted from two main reasons: the first one, maybe, is that the tasks themselves are uninteresting; the second one is probably due to students’ low level of listening competence 2.3.1.3 Results from students’ questionnaire 2.3.1.3.1 Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competence (Questions and 2) When answering the first question about their evaluation about learning listening skill, most of the students (96 %) admit that learning listening skill is difficult, even extremely difficult Regarding to students’ self-evaluation about their own listening comprehension ability, only out of 50 students confidently said that her listening ability was very good; whereas 78% thought that they were very bad at listening In listening lessons, they almost hear nothing 2.3.1.3.2 Students’ opinions about listening tasks in English 11 (Questions 3, and 5) When answering the question how often they completed listening tasks in listening lessons, 2% of the students said that they always completed listening tasks, 14% often finished, but 84% sometimes could finish the tasks The result also showed that 66% of the students confirmed that kinds of listening task in the textbook were not very diversified Question No tried to seek the frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons The results are clearly presented in the table below: Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons Answering Filling Decidin Numberin Multiple Completin Ticking open-ended missing g T/F g the choice g missing the things questions words stateme pictures question informatio you hear (%) (%) nts (%) s n in the (%) (%) (%) table/ charts (%) 84% 24% 24% 10% 12% 4% 10% As can be seen that the most frequently used tasks in listening lessons are answering open-ended questions Filling missing words and deciding T/F statements rank second with 24% for each kind Such kinds of task as numbering the pictures, multiple choice questions and ticking the things you hear are SangKienKinhNghiem.net sometimes present Only the tasks of completing the missing information in the table/charts are rarely used The information in this table once again confirmed that listening tasks in English 11 are not very plentiful 2.3.1.3.3 Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 Question No examines students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 The results can be seen in the following table: Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 Very interested Interested Normal (%) Bored (%) Very bored (%) (%) (%) 2% 6% 38% 0% 54% When asked to express their feeling when doing listening tasks in English 11, the majority of the students (accounting for 54%) said they felt very bored with the listening tasks in the textbook 38% of them felt normal and only a small number of students were interested in the tasks It is obvious that listening tasks in the textbook dissatisfy most of the students, which can not motivate students to participate in the lessons as well as not to encourage them to develop their listening skill 2.3.1.3.4 Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to their listening competence Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks Very effective Effective (%) Not clear (%) Ineffective (%) (%) 6% 8% 34% 52% Table presents that only 6% and % of the students thought that listening tasks in the textbook were very effective and effective, while 34% of them spoke that they were not clear whether the tasks could help them improve their listening comprehension Especially, 52% believed that their ability for listening comprehension was not improved They claimed that the tasks were totally ineffective 2.3.1.3.5 Students’ preferences for listening tasks Question was used to collect information about the listening tasks that students preferred The results are shown in the table below: Table 6: Students’ preferences for listening tasks Answerin Filling Deciding Numberin Multiple Completin Tickin g openmissin T/F g the choice g missing g the ended g statement pictures question informatio things questions words s (%) s n in the you (%) (%) (%) (%) table/ hear SangKienKinhNghiem.net charts (%) (%) 2% 36% 29% 30% 64% 16% 28% According to the information in the table, the most preferred listening task is multiple choice questions The next one is tasks with filling missing words Tasks of deciding T/F statements rank third Followings are such kinds of tasks as ticking the things you hear and completing missing information in the table/charts respectively The least favorite one is answering open-ended questions 2.3.1.3.6 Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks Table 7: Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks In what way does your teacher teach listening tasks in the Textbook? Options Result (%) a The teacher always follows the given tasks in the textbook 76% b The teacher sometimes replaces difficult tasks for easier ones 8% c The teacher often modifies listening tasks to fit students’ level 16% Most of the students said that their teacher always follows the given tasks in the textbook without any adapting, while 16% stated that the teacher usually modifies listening tasks to help them listen better and 8% admitted that their teacher occasionally replaces the difficult tasks for easier ones These figures clearly show that most of the teachers still depend too much on the textbook They hardly have any changes to fit their students’ level 2.3.1.4 Results from document analysis 2.3.1.4.1 English 11 English 11 was officially in use in the year 2007 It is developed from a theme-based syllabus Like English 10, English 11 consists of 16 units Each unit presents a topic as shown in the below table: Table 8: Topics in English 11 UNIT TOPICS UNIT TOPICS Friendship The post office Personal experiences 10 Nature in danger A party 11 Sources of energy Volunteer work 12 The Asian Games Illiteracy 13 Hobbies Competitions 14 Recreation World population 15 Space Conquest Celebrations 16 The wonders of the world There are five parts in each unit arranged as follow: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language focus Each part starts with the items: preactivities, while-activities and post-activities with a variety of activities and tasks SangKienKinhNghiem.net All the tasks and activities are designed to help students develop communicative competence 2.3.1.4.2 Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 For listening sections in English 11, the main aim is to help students improve their listening comprehension relating to the topics of the units Therefore, all the activities and tasks are designed with the hope of achieving this goal fully Normally, a listening section consists of two tasks Task often involves filling in the gap, deciding True/False statements or choosing the best answer Task often deals with comprehension questions The table below shows more clearly types of listening tasks in English 11: Table 9: Types of listening task in English 11 Units Types of listening task Units Types of listening task Tasks Tasks Unit Unit Task Task True/False statements Multiple choice Task Task questions Note-taking Comprehension questions Unit Unit 10 Task Task True/False statements True/False statements Task Task Gap-filling Comprehension questions Unit Unit 11 Task Task True/False statements Multiple choice Task Task questions Comprehension questions Gap-filling Unit Unit 12 Task Task Gap-filling Multiple choice Task Task questions Comprehension questions Comprehension questions Unit Unit 13 Task Task Multiple choice questions True/False statements Task Task Comprehension questions Gap-filling Unit Unit 14 Task Task True/False statements True/False statements Task Task Comprehension questions Comprehension questions Unit Unit 15 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Task Task Unit Task Task Multiple choice questions Comprehension questions Task Task Ticking Comprehension questions Unit 16 Task Task True/False statements Comprehension questions Gap-filling Comprehension questions As can be seen from the table, listening tasks in this textbook are not various in forms and styles There are always repetitive tasks such as deciding on True/False statements or comprehension questions, which can lead to students’ boredom in listening lessons In addition, when perusing these tasks, it appears that not all the tasks are suitable with students’ background and knowledge, especially, with students in a mountainous area like Kinh Mon district For example, in Unit (A party) although the listening topic is quite familiar; task is too long with seven comprehension questions, not to mention some questions which can cause students’ difficulties in answering In Unit (Volunteer work) the listening passage is about a special school named Spring School in Ho Chi Minh City It can be certain that most of the students have never heard about this school before Besides that when dealing with task 2, students can meet difficulties in answering question (Why children participate in fund-raising performances?) and question (Why are foreign volunteers needed?) as to get answers, students must listen to very long sentences, which require them to have good skills of remembering and taking notes 2.3.2 The hypothesis The analysis and discussion of the initial data formed the following hypothesis: Modified listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 could help improve student’s listening comprehension To help improve students’ listening comprehension, an action plan was designed In this action plan, the original listening tasks were modified to make them more appropriate and interesting to students when they deal with listening lessons 2.3.3 Planning action steps In this action plan, the researcher focuses on modifying inappropriate listening tasks basing on the principles and techniques for adapting presented in sections 1.3.3 and 1.3.4 of Chapter to make the tasks more appropriate for students at Kinh Mon High School The choice of each specific technique depends on students’ opinions and the analysis of original listening tasks With a carefully 10 SangKienKinhNghiem.net prepared plan, the researcher wishes to attract students to listening lessons, then, in part, help them better at listening The followings are some techniques exploited to modify listening tasks 2.3.3.1 Replacing In Task of Unit (Volunteer work), students are required to listen to a passage and fill in the missing information However, the missing information is mostly numbers, so it is not very informative It is the reason why Task is replaced by the following one: Modified task: Listen to the passage again and then underline false information in the following sentences Dance , theatre, singing and folk music classes were set up in 1998 Children from these classes raise money to continue their studying and Performance Arts classes The school requires volunteers to help organise their fund-raising dinner in which children dance, sing and play music at one of the largest clubs in HCM City They need foreign volunteers to contact students’ parents and help to expand the school activities Volunteers are required from February until July to help organise the events Besides that, according to questionnaire 1, most of the students felt bored with such the repetitive listening tasks as answering the questions Moreover, this kind of task seems a bit difficult for students In Unit (Volunteer work), task (Answering five questions) would be replaced by the following task Modified task: Listen to the passage about Spring School, a special school in Ho Chi Minh City and then choose the best answer: The aim of Spring School is ……… A to teach disadvantaged children all over the country B to teach disadvantaged and poor students how to dance and sing C to provides classes to disadvantaged children in Ho Chi Minh City only The number of students at the school is ………… A 30 students B 250 students C 280 students The school set up English classes in………… in the cooperation with……………… A 1996/ The Organization for Education Development B 1997/ The Organization for Ecomomic Development C 1998/ The Organization for Education Development The fund-raising dinners are held……………… A Once a year B Twice a year C Every two year At fund-raising dinners, the children often…………… A Sing and dance B Dance and play music C Sing, dance and play music 11 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 2.3.3.2 Omitting As mentioned in section 3.1.3.2, some tasks in the textbook are too long for students to complete in a limited time For Unit (A party), there are two tasks In task 1, students have to listen and decide True/False statements (5 statements) In task 2, students listen again and answer open-ended questions, but this task seems to be too long with seven questions included To ensure to have enough time for two tasks, two questions of task (Questions No and No 5) are omitted 2.3.3.3 Changing Changing is another technique used for this research Task of Unit (World Population), the five open-ended questions are quite long and a bit difficult for weak students to understand Therefore, the task would be changed to help students easier to understand as follows: Modified task: Listen to the passage again and then answer the following questions: According to the expert, how many people will there be by the year 2015? How is the rate of population growth in different parts of the world? What are the bad effects of population explosion? What are the four solutions offered by the expert? In brief, three main techniques employed for modifying the tasks in the textbook are replacing, omitting and changing 2.3.4 Data collected in the action stage 2.3.4.1 Results from action stage observations In the action stage, the researcher applied modified listening tasks in three listening lessons (Unit 3, and 7) Three observation sheets were completed by a colleague teacher The sheet included six items, the highest mark for each item was 5, the highest mark of the whole class in each lesson was 30 and the highest mark for three observed lessons was 90 Table 10 shows score for students’ involvement in tasks: Table 10: Students’ involvement in tasks Units Unit Unit Unit (A party) (Volunteer work) (World population) Marks of students’ 19 22 23 involvement in tasks Percent 63.3% 73.3% 76.7% It can be seen from the table that students’ involvement in tasks increased gradually through the lessons which used modified listening tasks In Unit 3, more than half of the students (63.3%) paid attention to the lesson In Unit 4, the percent 12 SangKienKinhNghiem.net of students’ involvement in tasks was 10% higher than that of Unit It means that students were more and more engaged in modified listening tasks In the last lesson of the action plan- Unit 7- students’ involvement in tasks added up to 76.7% Obviously, modified listening tasks increased students’ interest in learning listening However, the average percentage of students’ involvement in tasks in three lessons (71.1%) was not so high as it is expected There were some students uninterested in modified listening tasks This encourages the researcher to continue adjusting modified listening tasks so as to increase students’ participation in the lessons 2.3.4.2 Results from Questionnaire Questionnaire (Appendix 2) was delivered to each student after finishing each lesson during three weeks (from week to week 7) to see how students evaluate the modified listening tasks The total number of questionnaires collected during three lessons was 150 The questionnaire had four items and highest mark for each item was 5, the total score for a questionnaire was 20 and the total score of the whole class was 1000 The results of the questionnaire were illustrated in the table below: Table 11: Students’ evaluation about modified listening tasks Units Unit Unit Unit (A party) (Volunteer work) (World population) Marks of all 630 725 755 students Percent 63% 72.5% 75.5% The figures from the table showed that most of the students found the modified listening tasks more interesting, meaningful and appropriate The percentage of students who preferred the modified tasks increased lesson by lesson In Unit was 63%, 72.5% in Unit and 75.5% in the last lesson It proved that students had positive opinions about modified listening tasks Most of them felt satisfied with the changes made by the teacher Especially, according to what they said in their comments after each lesson, the modified listening tasks of the teacher help facilitate their process of listening They somewhat felt less stressful when dealing with the tasks as they could be easier get information from the listening passages and finish most of the given tasks They, finally, expressed their wish that the teacher often modified the tasks to help them listen easier and better In brief, the results from the observations and questionnaire once again confirmed that modified listening tasks increased students’ involvements in the tasks Students concentrated more on the lessons and most of them could complete 13 SangKienKinhNghiem.net the listening tasks themselves In other words, students’ listening competence was partly improved because of more appropriate listening tasks 2.3.4.3 Results from teaching diaries With the hope of following closely what was happening during the lessons, how effective the modified listening tasks were as well as what problems came up, the researcher wrote teaching diaries after each lesson As mentioned above, at the pre-action stage, when the teacher taught Unit and with non-modified listening tasks, nearly a half of students paid no interest to the lessons They even didn’t finish the lesson in 45 minutes However, this situation changed when modified tasks were applied in Unit 3, and As perceived by the researcher through her teaching diaries, students’ listening comprehension was improved a lot during three lessons at the action stage The modified listening tasks really had good effects on students’ progress Most of the students could finish the tasks themselves They also found the tasks more interesting and satisfying; therefore, they were more engaged into the lessons and felt less nervous when solving listening tasks That also explained why the class atmosphere during three weeks of action stage was at ease However, according to what was written in the teaching diaries, there were some off- task students These students stayed silently in class and could a part of tasks This showed that the modified tasks should be adjusted a bit to attract more students To sum up, the teaching diaries together with observations and questionnaires helped the researcher evaluate the effectiveness of modified listening tasks on students’ progress more exactly The researcher could identify the good points and existing problems after each lesson so that there are more appropriate adjustments to enhance students’ comprehension 2.3.4.4 Results from post-test After the researcher had applied the modified listening tasks in teaching, she prepared a test with the aim of probing whether students really could improve their listening comprehension through the modified listening tasks The table below presents the results: Table 12: Results of the post-test Marks Marks 1-2 Marks 3-4 Marks 5-6 Marks 7-8 Marks 9-10 Numbers 15 20 10 of students Percent 8% 30% 40% 20% 2% Obviously, students achieved certain progresses in this test The number of students getting below average marks reduced remarkably More than half of the students scored better marks than in the test before This figures once again 14 SangKienKinhNghiem.net confirmed that the modified listening tasks had good effect on students The majority of them got some success in improving their listening comprehension 2.3.5 Action research evaluation In this section, an evaluation of the action research was made based on the data collected from pre- action stage and action stage to see whether students’ listening comprehension could be improved through modified listening tasks 2.3.5.1 Students’ involvement in tasks before and after action plan Chart 1: Students’ involvement in tasks before and after action plan 100 90 % 73.3 80 76.7 63.3 70 60 50 45 40 40 30 20 10 Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Students’ involvement in tasks before action plan Students’ involvement in tasks after action plan As can be seen from the graph, the percentage of students’ involvement in tasks at the pre-action stage was 40% in lesson and 45% in lesson It means that nearly the other half of the class was off-tasks During the action stage, some changes could be seen clearly The percentage of students’ participation in tasks increased gradually from 63.3% in Unit to 73.3% in Unit and 76.7% in Unit Obviously, the majority of the class was attracted to the lessons using modified listening tasks They involved into these lessons much more than the previous ones This once again confirmed that students gained some improvements in listening when the action plan was implemented in the action stage In short, the data collected from both initial stage and action stage indicates that students’ listening comprehension was improved During the lessons of the action stage, the percentage of student on-tasks gradually increased This proves that the modified listening tasks are quite effective 2.3.5.2 Students’ progress reflected through tests Chart 2: Students’ progress reflected through tests 15 SangKienKinhNghiem.net % 56 60 50 40 40 30 30 20 20 20 18 8 10 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 Result of the pre-test Marks Result of the post-test C1: Marks 1-2 C2: Marks 3-4 C3: Marks 5-6 C4: Marks 7-8 C5: Marks 9-10 The chart indicates that after implementing the action plans, students gained some progresses The score of the post-test was much higher than that of the pre-test In details, the number of students who got bad marks decreased by half, while the number of students achieving good marks went up dramatically This proved that students’ listening comprehension was improved 2.3.5.3 Students’ preferences for listening tasks There are many different kinds of listening tasks such as answering questions, completing the missing information However, the three kinds of tasks which are most favored by students are multiple choice questions, True/False statements and gap-filling Students like doing these kinds of task probably because such kinds of tasks are appropriate to their level They can feel at ease when meeting these tasks, which create good psychology for them when solving the tasks 2.3.5.4 Modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension The action plan was implemented during three lessons (Unit 3, Unit and Unit 7) with the modification of the listening tasks in English 11, i.e replacing, omitting and changing the unsuitable tasks The results from observations, questionnaire and teaching diaries clearly indicate that with the modified listening tasks students are much more eager to participate in the lessons The percentage of students’ involvement in tasks increases lesson by lesson (63.3% in Unit 3, 73.3% in Unit and 76.7% in Unit 7) More importantly, students find the lessons more interesting, meaningful with appropriate tasks During three lessons at the action stage, the majority of students feel satisfied as they can complete the tasks themselves Modified listening tasks have positive effects on improving students’ listening comprehension because of the following reasons: 16 SangKienKinhNghiem.net First of all, the modified tasks not only closely followed the theories of listening and principles for adapting materials but they were also based on students’ opinions Hence, the modified tasks fit students’ needs and interests In addition, after each lesson, the researcher immediately got reflection from students through questionnaires, from a colleague teacher through observations and she herself kept teaching diaries This helped the researcher have proper adjustments for the next lessons to fit students’ needs Therefore, all the modified listening tasks were certainly prepared Last but not least, the researcher tried to employ the various techniques for adapting the material to ensure the modified tasks more appropriate to her students 17 SangKienKinhNghiem.net ... applied the modified listening tasks in teaching, she prepared a test with the aim of probing whether students really could improve their listening comprehension through the modified listening tasks. .. stage The modified listening tasks really had good effects on students’ progress Most of the students could finish the tasks themselves They also found the tasks more interesting and satisfying; therefore,... 2.3.2 The hypothesis The analysis and discussion of the initial data formed the following hypothesis: Modified listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 could help improve student’s listening