Introducing audiovisual materials in listening comprehension lesson at Nong Cong II high school 1 TABLE OF CONTENT PART A INTRODUCTION I Rationale 2 II Aims of the study 3 III Research questions 3 IV[.]
TABLE OF CONTENT PART A INTRODUCTION I Rationale II Aims of the study III Research questions IV Scope of the study V Method PART B DEVELOPMENT I Literature review II Innovation 10 III Research data and data analysis 11 IV Discussion 18 V Experimental Results 20 PART C CONCLUSION 21 REFERENCE 22 APPENDIX 23 SangKienKinhNghiem.net PART A INTRODUCTION I RATIONALE Nowadays, together with the development of economy and technology in Vietnam, foreign language, specially, English has become an important mean of international communication It has also been considered as a “gold key” to enter the door of integrative trend The need of using English fluently is an urgent requirement Thus, in recent years, English has been taught and become one of the compulsory subjects in schools, colleges and universities There have been many colleges and universities where train English as major purpose to meet the inquiry of society With the demands of learning English for communication has been increasing; one of the urgent requirements for all English teachers is to be able to help students improve four skills well In recent years, Thanh Hoa province has invested for teaching and learning English However, the quality of teaching and learning English is not as good as hope After graduating, most students cannot communicate in English fluently, especially speaking and listening skills Due to this reason, the requirement of improving English communication is an urgent duty in this school This research project will be conducted with the hope to improve teaching and learning listening skill at Nong Cong High School in Thanh Hoa province Although Richards (1983) realizes the limitation of direct research on second language listening comprehension, language researchers in recent time have focused much time on this matter Listening comprehension is considered as an essential skill According to Morley (2001), since 1960’s, listening skill has changed from an incidental and peripheral status to a significant and central important status in language education Thus, it is necessary to improve listening skill for learners One of the biggest problems is the inadequacy of authentic materials Nowadays, teachers can choose useful materials such as radio, TV, internet, CD, VCD from many resources In other words, audiovisual materials are good choice for teachers to improve their students’ listening skill As a result, the researcher would like to use audiovisual materials in teaching listening and see whether audiovisual materials have good effect on students’ listening skill or not II AIMS OF THE STUDY This research project is conducted to investigate the fact of teaching and learning listening skill at Nong Cong High School in Thanh Hoa province as well as to examine how audiovisual materials can affect students’ listening skill Hopefully, this innovation will be useful method for teaching listening not only for the researcher herself but also for her colleagues at Nong Cong High School SangKienKinhNghiem.net III RESEARCH QUESTIONS This research project was designed so that it would answer the following research questions: How audiovisual materials improve students listening skill? What are students’ attitudes to audiovisual materials? IV SCOPE OF THE STUDY The participants of this study were 47 students with different levels who came from grade 10A4 and teachers who had many experiences in teaching English in English Department at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province The number of female students in the class is 42 while there are male students Their age is from 14 to 15 years old All students have learnt English for years at Secondary School They really wanted to study English well and took part in this study voluntarily V METHODS The methods used in the study consisted of classroom observation, small group interviews and teaching dairy The first method was classroom observation Students were observed while they were doing the listening tasks to examine whether students listened to the CD attentively and how they did the tasks The second one was informal small group interviews to define the difficulties and the students' attitude towards listening after carrying out listening innovation Finally, in order to investigate whether this listening innovation was useful for students and whether it could encourage students to listen, what the teacher observed and interviewed were noted down on weekly teaching dairy PART B DEVELOPMENT SangKienKinhNghiem.net I LITERATURE REVIEW In recent years, language researchers have paid attention to the aspect of listening skill improvement Audiovisual materials are suggested to apply in teaching four skills, especially listening skill Teaching and learning listening skill According to Ralph Nichols (1980), the most basic of all human needs “is the need to understand and be understood The best way to understand people is to listen to them” Moreover, Morley (1991, p.82) points out that people can expect to listen twice as much as they speak, four times more than they read and five times more than they write Thus, listening skill is considered as one of the most common communicative activities in daily life In second language of foreign language classrooms, listening is vital because it provides input for students (Rost, 1990, p.141-142) In the past time, with the popular of Grammar translation method, most schools in Vietnam only focused on teaching reading and writing skill Listening and speaking skills seemed to be ignored Brown (1987) states that twenty-five years ago, listening comprehension was not taken seriously in the process of language teaching The focus in teaching as well as in publishing materials at that time was on reading and writing skill Since 1960, as the development of communication approach, language learning could not be limited to writing and reading skill Language was taught in an integrative way where all four skills were focused Then, listening comprehension received more attention than before (Brown, 1987) Audiovisual materials and language teaching & learning 2.1.Audiovisual materials In general, audiovisual materials are considered as any device used to help communicate ideas clearer Talking about audiovisual materials in language teaching, it is commonly said that it means modern and recently used of teaching method such as film, video, radio, television, computer, etc Audiovisual materials are combined from two types of materials The first type is audio material that influences the learners’ auditory organ (hearing or listening) The second one is visual material that influences students’ sight sense (seeing or viewing) Thus, audiovisual materials are both of listening and viewing sense Today, audiovisual materials are widely used at all degrees and levels of teaching and learning language According to Mueller (1980) in his research, most foreign language teachers believed that the more visual is used the better English is achieved Thus, teachers used these visual aids in their daily teaching Audiovisual materials not only make the learning process effective in general, they also help the weaker students to improve their English level In his pilot study, Masako Sato (2006) hoped to explore the effects of using audiovisual materials on the weaker learners of English Among many sources of audiovisual materials, he mostly SangKienKinhNghiem.net focused on using film scripts In his opinion, films were often used as authentic material and helped to motivate students’ learning Sato, M pointed out that films encouraged students’ interest and challenge to understand what happen in the films However, Sato complained that films are also too difficult for weaker students Because spoken words in films did not wait anyone and it might make the listener find it difficult to understand many phonetic changes in real utterance Because of this reason, Sato suggested that to motivate students learning, film as an audiovisual material should be used In addition, students’ listening skill would be improved if they understood the sound variation system 2.2 Effect of audiovisual materials on language teaching and learning As the discussion talked above, audiovisual materials are helpful and necessary in the following ways Firstly, audiovisual materials are considered as the mean of communicating They help to supplement for what teachers cannot express well For example, when the teacher wants to introduce the meaning of a new word, a picture or a poster will be very helpful Secondly, audiovisual materials are useful in retentive process Students are often interested in films, video or pictures so these materials make the lessons more interesting and enjoyable When seeing and hearing a visual with interest, students will remember it for a longer time Finally, audiovisual materials are a way of saving time In the limited time of a lesson, the teacher cannot speak too much Mei-Mei Chang and James D Lehman (2002), two professors in Taiwan have the same interest in studying student’s motivation with multimedia and computer-based In their experiment study (2002), they investigated relation between learners’ motivation and interactive multimedia in English as a foreign language (EFL) This research deeply studied the effects of the relevance component of the ARCS model on learners’ motivation ARCS model here means attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction According to them, computer-based interactive multimedia was at the center of language learning technology It provided students a learning environment that can satisfy their needs and interest Chang and Lehman also concluded the ideas of other researchers about the benefit of audiovisual resources found in computer Also talking about multimedia, Khalid Al-Seghayer (2001) focused on its effect on second language vocabulary acquisition By briefly summarizing some relevant research on this area, Khalid Al-Seghayer made clear about the effect and value of multimedia annotation, the impact of electronic glossing on second language vocabulary acquisition and efficaciousness of videos and pictures The result of his research showed that video was an effective way to teach new vocabularies Studying the other aspect of audiovisual materials, Gina Mikel Petrie (2003), a doctorial candidate at Washington State University investigated language teachers’ SangKienKinhNghiem.net views on visual language Specially, the researcher focused on the ways that language teachers experienced visual language in their classrooms According to her, visualizing technology such as video, audio, the World Wide Web became more and more popular today It not only influenced social lives, it also affected classroom environment The result of his research showed that visuals helped to enhance language development However, some ideas showed that visual language sometimes distracted the text In conclusion, the researcher suggested that the language teachers should acknowledge soon the role of visual language such as image, graphics in language classroom Audiovisual materials and listening comprehension Because audiovisual materials become more popular and useful with both teachers and learners, they are considered as a helpful tool to teach and learn listening skill more effectively Daniel Y Chang (2007) believed that changing learning environment was a good way to develop students’ listening skill For this purpose, multimedia and interactive model were used as the best solution According to him, audiovisual materials have brought a new environment for teaching and learning language One of the most useful audiovisual materials was multimedia with personal computer In his research, the author realized that interactive model with multimedia was useful with the learning process Multimedia was the combination of some media such as video, audio, sound, text, picture, and computer It helped to enrich processing as well as recall the target language Similar to Chang, Jone and Plass (2002) paid attention to multimedia annotation to support listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition The main purpose of their research was to explore how effectively multimedia can assist second language students’ listening skill More specifically, their research focused on the choice of pictorial or written annotation in listening activities After studying 171 students at their university, the researchers found that students’ listening skill through the result of tests was highest when they received both written and pictorial annotation However, groups of students who received pictorial annotation were better at listening than those who received written Audiovisual materials are helpful for teaching and learning listening comprehension However, a new question is that how they affects listening comprehension testing? Chan (2008), a lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University in China conducted a research project to examine the effects of different types of visual materials on CET-3 listening tests According to him, traditionally, listening tests in his school had no visual clues so that the validity of tests was low Because of this reason, the author tried to apply the different types of visual materials and investigated their effects on CET-3 listening tests After doing the research on 174 students of four classes at his university, the author provided evidence that the effect of visuals in the tests were not clear With short conversations as well as with short passages, the effects SangKienKinhNghiem.net of visual clues were nearly nonexistent From this result, the researcher claimed that at least for the moment, visuals should not be added to the CET-3 listening test Like the lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University, Londe (2009) in her research emphasized the effects of video media in English as a second language (L2) listening comprehension tests Her research aimed to explore the differences in test performance when learners were given listening tests in different formats of audio and video In her opinion, to assess students’ listening skill, it was simple to find out the evidences that students could respond to question in real life and could answer several questions in listening test With the new trend of communicative testing, video media helped to change the traditional way of test tasks However, the result of this pilot study showed that although video media was more authentic than audio alone, it did not help to change the performance of listening testing However, through her study, Londe found that her students felt more interested and comfortable with video format Progosh (1996) in his research had ever mentioned that students liked video listening test than audio only It might be that video media helped to enhance students’ motivation and attention In conclusion, video media help to decode meaning in listening comprehension but it had no influence on students in listening testing (Kellerman, 1992) In conclusion, the author of this study tries to review and have an overview of research that is related to the topic However, for most research, the effects of audiovisual materials in listening comprehension are in general There is nearly no research in which listening skill’ improvement is mentioned and explored From this problem, the author of this research project should emphasize and deeply study about the effects of audiovisual materials on improvement of students’ listening skill in EFL classroom Innovation 4.1.What is innovation? In recent years, the word ‘innovation’ was much mentioned in many language researches While Miles (1964, p.13) saw innovation as organizational behaviors, Rogers and Schoemaker (1971, p.19) emphasized innovation with the aspect of the personal perception and interpretation Summarizing from these opinions, Nicholls (1983, p.4) described innovation as a new idea, object or practice of which intention for improvement in the relation with objectives More specifically, in the research in 1988, White saw innovation in the differences with change According to him, change was the act of making different between time and time Change occurred without being planned or intended whereas innovation was produced with awareness, plan and intention The procedure of carrying out this study was an innovation based on the idea of White (1988) because the researcher had awareness of her teaching context, had intention to change, and then made careful plan to innovation SangKienKinhNghiem.net 4.2.The model of innovation: The researcher followed to both the social interaction and problem-solving models because of following reasons: 4.2.1 The social interaction model: According to White (1988, pp 125-126), the social interaction model emphasized the influent and important factors of social relation in the transmission and adoption of innovation In the social relations, communicator and communication were key factors whereas the change agent played a significant role In this innovation, the researcher and six other English teachers in teaching staff played important roles in the transition and adoption of the innovation The researcher found the solution for the problems in teaching listening at her school and experiment with new method to know whether it was successful or not By inviting other colleagues to take part in the study, the researcher introduced and transmitted the innovation and these colleagues adopted as well as continued to transmit this innovation It was the social relation in this study 4.2.2 Problem-solving model: In his opinion, White (1988, pp 123-125) saw problem-solving model as the basis of action research where the researcher identified the problems by herself This model emphasized on a bottom-up rather than top down approach Markee (1997, pp 66-67) also emphasized that problem-solving model was the most popular approach to promote change in education in which the eventual user of an innovation identified the need for change and this change was a bottom up not a top down process In this study, the researcher identified the problems from her teaching context by herself and she was aware of the need for change Thus, this study not only followed to social interaction model but also problem-solving model 4.2.3.The role of stakeholders: According to Markee (1997, pp 43-44), teachers played a key role while other individuals had a stake in the process of an innovation These individuals called stakeholders Stakeholders were those who involved in an innovation They had their own opinions about innovation and showed their views in different ways Stakeholders had relationship to each other as adopters (or resisters), implementers, clients, suppliers and change agents (Markee, N., 1997) Following items were more detail about stakeholders and their roles in the innovation process 4.2.4 Adopter: An adopter is a person who decides to accept the change According to Markee, N (1997, p 58), there are five different types of adopters that can be listed as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards In this innovation, the researcher, the English teachers invited to take part in the innovation, and students in class N5 were adopters 4.2.5 Resister: SangKienKinhNghiem.net A resister is a person who rejects an innovation; refuses to adopt the ideas of change agents and does not want to change Some students in class N5, who did not want to change, were resisters 4.2.6 Implementer: Implementer is a person who has to make innovation work in the classroom In this innovation, the researcher and the English teachers invited to take part in this innovation were the implementers 4.2.7 Clients The students in class N5 were clients in this innovation 4.2 Supplier: Supplier is a person who designs an innovation The researcher and the English teacher invited to take part in the innovation played the role as the suppliers 4.2.9 Change agent: Change agent is a person who manages the change in the classroom In this innovation, the change agents were the researcher and the English teacher invited to take part in the innovation 4.3 Culture context In his research, Holliday (1994) described the different between BANA- a dominant culture within the profession and TESEP- a very different culture within state institutions Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had some characteristics of “TESEP” environment because of the following information Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province was not very good with large classes equipped with fans and white boards Besides, the size of the English classes were from fourty-five to fifty- five students, therefore, these classes were too crowded and affected by the noise of surrounding classes English teachers mostly applied the grammar translation approach for all English classes especially in teaching listening comprehension, in which teacher was the center of classroom Most of them were old teachers who had taught English more than fiftyfive years Thus, teachers were not familiar with authentic materials in English teaching, especially in teaching listening The students at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had different ages, levels, backgrounds and purposes to study English Some of them were at intermediate level and some were at low-level English competence At Nong Cong II High School, although the modern approaches of language teaching were applied, listening skill was ignored surprisingly Teachers mainly showed their students how to read and write, not how to listen or speak Thus, students’ listening ability was limited Students hardly could understand what other people speak in English Many students complained that listening skill was the most difficult skill to improve It seemed to be the most challenging of the four English skills that students have to face SangKienKinhNghiem.net Due to those reasons, it was necessary for teachers to find the useful way for improving students’ listening skill Beside the need of applying new teaching methods as well as investing good furniture for learning condition, the suitable inputs should be taken care of Nowadays, together with the development of high technology, the sources of materials for learning and teaching listening comprehension were wide and various In this study, the researcher tried to explore the effects of audiovisual materials on the improvement of students’ listening skill II INNOVATION In this section, I would like to introduce my innovation in my listening periods carried out from October 10 to November 30 at Nong Cong High School There are forty five students who are in grade ten in my class with mixed abilities Each week we had one listening period which lasted during 45 minutes The main material was English 10 book which designed with different topics as well as different tasks for students to practice listening However, most of students in my class are low competence and they seem to have no strategies to listen, therefore the tasks are too difficult for them This is the reason why I decided to innovate and this innovation divided into steps: adapting the listening materials and the tasks, providing students with appropriate listening strategies Procedure At first, the researcher expressed the purpose of the study to all students and the director of at Nong Cong High School It was necessary to explain clearly about students' problems about learning and improving listening skill as well as audiovisual materials and possible results of this study to get their agreement to cooperate After that, one English teacher was invited to teach listening lessons in class 10A4 The researcher and four other teachers observed her class during the first week to understand more about the normal listening lessons with no audiovisual materials (See appendix 1) The observers had to take note what happened in the lessons and filled in to the observation scheme (See appendix 7) Then, a questionnaire was given to fortyseven students in class 10A4 to get their ideas and attitude to their listening lesson (See appendix 2) Thirdly, the teacher applied audiovisual materials in class 10A4 to help them learn listening comprehension lesson In listening lessons, she used authentic materials such as pictures, CD player and video clips (See appendix 3) During this step, the researcher observed her students’ behaviors and attitude towards the listening skill lesson with audiovisual materials 10 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Fourthly, another observation (See appendix 4) was conducted after two months of the research This observation focused on the classroom atmosphere, the students’ participation to the lesson and the changes compared with the first observation Next, the researcher (See appendix 5) interviewed the students in class 10A4 about their thought and difficulties of learning with audiovisual materials Finally, an English teacher interview was conducted with six teachers who participated in the research to get their views and attitudes to audiovisual materials and its’ effects on teaching and learning listening comprehension (See appendix 6) III RESEARCH DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS This section described the results from observations, the survey and English teacher interview during the two-month research The first part of this section was the data analysis of the first observation and survey those were conducted before introducing audiovisual materials The second part was the results from the other observation and survey as well as the teacher interviewing those were taken place after applying audiovisual materials in the listening lessons Part 1: Before change Observation result The first observation was done during the first week of the study The researcher invited six other English teachers in her teaching staff to observe Then, the researcher collected the take notes to analyze data Followings were some main points of observation results: Teacher taught listening skill with grammar translation method She only explained the aim of tasks and then asked students to the task by listening to the tape two or three times The materials that the teacher used were only textbook and the radio Sometime, she read the task by herself to help her students listen easier Classroom atmosphere was boring with no extra activities Most students did the task in silence When a students gave the answer, most of other students only looked and self corrected if necessary There was little feedback or opinion from students Some students did not participate to the lesson They sat and looked only Survey result 11 SangKienKinhNghiem.net The first survey was carried out as soon as the first observation finished The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese and delivered to forty-seven students in class 10a4 From the survey, the researcher put the data in to the table to find the most common ideas of students about their listening skill Table 1: Students’ attitude to listening skill Which skill you like most? Respondent (%) A Listening 9% B Speaking 10 18% C Reading 30 55% D Writing 10 18% This table expressed students’ attitude to listening skill For the question about students’ like, the result showed really clearly In students’ opinion, reading skill was the skill that they liked most 18% student said that they liked speaking skill and the same number was for writing skill Only few students showed their love with listening skill (9%) It could be seen more clearly from the figure below Figure 1: Students’ like with listening skill among four skills 30 25 20 15 10 A Listening B Speaking C Reading D Writing 12 SangKienKinhNghiem.net The reason why most students disliked learning listening skill was shown in the next question Which skill is the most difficult? Respondent (%) A Listening 30 55% B Speaking 16% C Reading 9% D Writing 11 20% For the question of students’ attitude to difficult level of listening among four skills, most students (55%) agreed that listening was the most difficult Reading seemed to be not difficult for them 16% students stated that speaking is the most difficult skill while 16% students complained that the most difficult skill was writing Figure below drew more clearly about this data Figure 2: Students’ attitude to difficult level of listening among four skills 30 25 20 A Listening B Speaking 15 C Reading 10 D Writing 13 SangKienKinhNghiem.net For mot students, listening was the most difficult skill so that they disliked learning this skill as they said in question Question and were for students’ ideas about their listening lessons Results of question and question summarized students’ ideas about their listening lessons Answering for question about the materials that their teacher gave in their listening lesson, students said that they only used textbook and sometimes they had CD player They only had listening lessons with authentic materials one or twice a semester when the lessons were observed For question of students’ assessment about their listening lesson, most students complained that their listening lessons were boring Only few students commented that their listening lessons were interesting and excited Table2: Students’ hope and suggestion for their listening lessons What you hope to change in your listening lessons? Respondent (Write your answer in lines below) Your answer: Your answer: Your answer: Your answer: What you suggest to improve your listening lesson? Respondent (Write your answer in lines below) Your answer: Your answer: Your answer: Your answer: In your opinion, what will happen if your teacher use authentic materials such as video, picture… in your listening Respondent 14 SangKienKinhNghiem.net lesson? A The lessons will be more interesting 27 B The lessons will be more boring C I not know I am not sure about it 26 D Other opinion: Table explored students’ hope and suggestion for their listening lessons About their hope, most students said that they wanted their listening lessons to be more interesting and attractive They hoped to be the center of class with the good help of their teacher They also hoped to have more time for their listening practice To help the listening lessons more interesting and attractive, most students suggested their teacher to use more interesting activities and authentic materials They said that they were bored with learning listening skill in the same way of all class periods such as listening to the teacher’ reading or tape player and doing the tasks as the teacher asked With audiovisual materials, a half of students believed that suitable materials would help their listening lessons to be more interesting and easier for students to learn However, nearly a half of students in class 10A4 wondered about the effectiveness of authentic materials They said that they were not sure about it It might be helpful or harmful with their learning Only % students had negative guessing about the effectiveness of authentic materials They thought that video, pictures, newspaper, etc, might make their lessons more boring Part 2: After change Observation result The second observation was done during the last week of the study Six other English teachers were also invited to observe Then, the researcher collected the take notes to analyze data The followings were some main points of observation results: The listening lesson was added with some interesting activities in prelistening stage Students were motivated to start their lessons Beside textbook and CD player, teacher used some authentic picture and video clips that related to the content of lesson 15 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Classroom atmosphere was more interesting Students were eager to listen and ready to the tasks Most students participated in the lesson However, few students seemly ignored the duty Students volunteered to give the answers and they discussed when there was any mistake Survey result The second survey was done at the end of the last observation The questionnaire, which was translated into Vietnamese, was delivered to forty-seven students in class 10A4 This survey consisted of five open questions to find the most common ideas of students about learning listening skill with audiovisual materials For question of students’ feelings about their listening lessons after change with audiovisual materials, most students assessed that their lessons were more interesting, attractive and vivid They felt relaxable, eager and comfortable when listening with authentic materials However, some students complained that sometimes they found it difficult to catch up with the lessons because the people in video clips spoke too fast For question “Do you like audiovisual materials that your teacher used in your listening lessons?”, most students chose “yes” because of some reasons First, students said that pictures and video clips were interesting and vivid so that they were attracted to the lessons Second, these audiovisual materials were relevant with the topic of their lessons so that they found easier to understand Third, these audiovisual materials made different from traditional lessons with only teacher reading, textbooks and tasks This difference made the lesson reduced the humdrum in the classroom However, few students said that they did not like audiovisual materials because these materials were a waste of time For question 3, which asked students to show the advantages of audiovisual materials in listening lessons, it could be summarized in to following main points Audiovisual materials helped to make lessons more interesting and enjoyable so that it helped students to reduce the stress and humdrum in listening Students were also attracted with authentic materials so that they listened with high nature and interest Thus, students could remember information for a longer time as well as improve their listening skill Furthermore, students had a chance to approach the real discourses so that students could improve their English communicative skills in their real life For question 4, about the disadvantages of audiovisual materials in listening lessons, students had most common ideas that sometimes, in video clips there were many different accents so that it was difficult for them to understand Besides, there 16 SangKienKinhNghiem.net were some mixed structures so that students who were at low level of English found difficult to decode the texts For question 5, which asked students about their satisfaction after the change with audiovisual materials in their listening lessons, most students expressed their great satisfaction because of the advantages that audiovisual materials brought for them Teachers interview result After two months of the innovation, four English teachers, who were invited to observe class 10A4, were interviewed about their opinions and attitudes to the usage of authentic materials in listening lessons The followings were main results from this interview: Most teachers complained that listening was one of the most difficult skills to teach They found it difficult to teach listening skill because of many reasons such as the low level of students, the short of authentic materials, etc Teacher also showed their disappointments with their listening lessons They admitted that their lessons were so boring that their students did not participate in the lessons and the classroom atmosphere was boring, too Most teachers showed their agreement about idea of the effects of audiovisual materials on students’ listening comprehension (90%) They said that authentic materials helped the lesson more interesting and students were more motivated These materials also helped teachers to express ideas and give clear instruction for students to learn However, teachers said that it was not easy to choose and use audiovisual materials effectively IV.DISCUSSION In this section, I would like to discuss what I learned during caring out the study, the main issues relating to the success and failure of my own research and the meanings of the issues During the process of conducting this study, the author herself found that whether the teacher understood what difficulties students faced with when learning listening and wanted to help them overcome by finding many ways to teach, students' listening ability could be certainly improved Although students showed many difficulties when they listened, the teacher could not solve all of them at the same time The teacher needed more time to help students tackle with listening problems In this study, the teacher 17 SangKienKinhNghiem.net could only help students by choosing suitable materials for them to practice and providing them some appropriate strategies to each task The results of this study indicated that the teacher really knew the difficulties of students and tried to make them listen better and students who were provided listening strategies listened more effectively From carrying out this study, the researcher herself had more experiences of teaching listening and knew how to implement a research Looking back the results before innovation, students did not use to take part in the listening lesson voluntarily because of many difficulties they had to cope with when listening such as the complicated materials, the shortage of strategies, the speed rate of the tape, ect These are the reasons why students stared at the answer keys on the teacher's book while they were listening and for that the class atmosphere was boring and students could hardly develop their listening ability From the results after innovation, the author could believe that the innovation was really useful and effective to improve students' listening skill Students found that listening was not difficult as they had thought; even it was interesting because the teacher made the tasks suitable for their competence and guided them to listen better by providing some appropriate listening strategies It could not be denied that if the teacher only adapted the listening tasks without providing them useful strategies to listen, the change would not be successful Therefore O'Malley and Chamot (1990) defined that strategies are the tools for active, self direct involvement needed for developing L2 communicative ability Although the materials were adapted and the strategies provided, some students admitted that they still found it difficult to overcome their listening problems and they needed more time, therefore they wanted the teacher slow down the process of teaching However, most students completely agreed with the innovation of the teacher, thus the change really opened an opportunity for students to develop their listening skill Besides, the findings of the current study also indicated that there was a significant improvement on learning listening of students Students actively participated in the listening lesson, they answers and gave comments enthusiastically According to Littlewood (1981), listening demands active involvement from the hearer and the hearer should be encouraged to engage in an active process of listening for meanings The results from observation proved that only few students ignored their duty in the listening class, most students joined in the listening process actively with the hope to improve their listening skill Especially, they were released from the teacher's book and felt self-confident themselves It could be said that this change brought positive effectiveness According to the results, after the author changed the way to teach listening lesson, students were contented with what she did They really liked the way she taught, the way she made it easier and more interesting All of students thought that listening lessons had to be changed if the teacher really wanted to help students In the previous 18 SangKienKinhNghiem.net listening lessons, the teacher only completed a little part of teaching responsibility without paying much attention to whether students gained much in the lessons But in the results of this study, the teacher asked herself whether she was a good teacher, whether she knew the real difficulties of students, the teacher also wondered how to to help students improve listening skill and when decided to change the way to teach listening, she asked herself again the effect of the new way she would made This presented that there was a change in the teacher's mind and the findings in observation and interview which were noted down in the teacher's dairy illustrated that the author had a right decision Most students paid more attention to the listening the lesson, they listened to the tape attentively and did the tasks enthusiastically However there were some students who paid less attention to the lesson but the author believed the new way could help students to listen better In addition, this study also obtained the satisfaction from the five teachers who were invited to take part in observing the change made by the author and the attitude of students with the author's change Five teachers showed their agreement about the effect of innovation on students' listening The most important they saw in this study was that there were obvious differences between the previous listening lessons and the innovative listening lessons Students became active, enthusiastic, and confident in the lessons instead of being nervous, looking at the teacher's book and doing the tasks in silence Although they also admitted that it was difficult to choose the materials that referred to the topic in the textbook and to cut the tape into key sentences, for the sake of students' development if the teacher determined this little problem could be solved According to the opinion of one teacher, innovation was useful and effective to students but it was unnecessary to make change because it took much teacher's time and students only learnt English to pass the General Certificate of Secondary Education meanwhile the GCSE only contained reading, grammar and writing However, the author stated that innovation was necessary due to the fact that listening would be useful for students in their jobs after university graduate Finally, the current research confirmed that the innovation had positive effects on students' listening Although there were some disappointments, the findings from observation, interviews and the information transcript in teacher's dairy rewarded for the author's efforts V EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS After I conducted the teaching experiments about this topic in class 10A4, I find out their positive feedback which improves their listening more Result before and after applying the suggested adaptation of listening activities in textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ 19 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Class/ Number Grade of students Listening skill Before applying (20172018) 6.81% 10A4/ 47 Excellent Good Average Weak Bad After applying (2018-2019) 23.68% 40.90% 50% 2.27% 0% PART C 62.27% 4.05% 0% 0% CONCLUSION This study was conducted with the cooperation of the researcher and four English teachers in English Department as well as grade 10 students at Nong Cong II High School The aim of the innovation was to investigate what difficulties grade 10 students faced with, the effect of innovation on student's listening skill and the students' attitude toward listening after change From the results of the classroom observation, students' and teacher's interview and teacher's dairy, the researcher could see the significant change in listening lessons with the teacher's intervention Both teachers and students realized the necessity of the innovation in learning and teaching listening and felt satisfied with this innovation Students participated in the lesson eagerly and actively This led to the class atmosphere became more interesting From this result, it could be sure that the intervention had good impacts on students' participation, the active learning environment and students could listened better than they used to Although there were obvious significant changes in students' listening improvement, with limited time the limitation of this study was unavoidable The author realized that there are still few areas that should be improved in the future First, the findings cannot be generalized to all students in Nong Cong II High School Therefore further studies should explore the effectiveness of the innovation with higher number of students and allocate a longer period of time than only six weeks Second, the author needs to improve the collection methods In this study, the teacher observed her students in listening class and noted down the information on the teaching dairy by remembering what happened in the class when the lesson finished This could not be enough information so that the author should record what was happening in the class and watched again to have exact information The researcher also did not record the interviews with students and teachers, but based on the teacher's memory and the notes on the dairy This might miss some useful information And the interview questions in the research were still few Thus, in order to have more and deep 20 SangKienKinhNghiem.net ... informal small group interviews to define the difficulties and the students'' attitude towards listening after carrying out listening innovation Finally, in order to investigate whether this listening. .. teachers were not familiar with authentic materials in English teaching, especially in teaching listening The students at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had different ages, levels, backgrounds... I decided to innovate and this innovation divided into steps: adapting the listening materials and the tasks, providing students with appropriate listening strategies Procedure At first, the