Designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for 11th graders at lê lai high school

Designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for 11th graders at lê lai high school DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THANH HOA PROVINCE LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE DE[.]

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THANH HOA PROVINCE LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE: DESIGNING SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE LISTENING SKILL FOR 11TH GRADERS AT LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL Implementer: Lê Văn Bằng Job title: Group leader Experience initiative: English THANH HOÁ YEAR 2016 SangKienKinhNghiem.net TABLE OF CONTENS Page Introduction - Rational - Purposes and significance of the study - Methods and instruments .2 The study 2.1 English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School 2 Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT .3 Data analysis and findings 2.3.1 Initial data 2.3 1.1 Results from pre-listening test 2.3.1.2 Results from pre-action stage observation 2.3.1.3 Results from students’ questionnaire 2.3.1.3.1 Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competition 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 tasks to their listening competence 2.3.1.3.5 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 2.3.1.3.6 Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks 2.3.2 Results from documents analysis 2.3.2.1 English 11 2.3.2.2 Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11 2.3.2.3 Conclusion 2.4 The hypothesis 10 2.5 Data collected in the action stage .10 2.5.1 Results from action stage observations 10 2.5.2 Results from questionnaire 11 2.5.3 Results from teaching diaries 12 2.5.4 Results from post – test 12 2.5.5 Summary of major findings and discussions 13 2.5.5.1 The unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook and its effects on students’ listening comprehension 13 2.5.5.2 Students’ preferences for listening tasks 13 2.5.5.3 Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension 13 2.6 Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks 14 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Page Conclusion - Conclusions .18 - Recommendations 18 - Limitations of the study 19 - Suggestions for further study 19 REFERENCES APPENDIES APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST APPENDIX 2: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA APPENDIX 4: OBSERVATION SHEET APPENDIX 5: TEACHING DIARY APPENDIX 6: POST-TEST SangKienKinhNghiem.net LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS - EFL: English as a foreign language - AR: Action research - TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages SangKienKinhNghiem.net LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Page List of tables Table 1: Results from pre-listening test Table 2: Students’ involvement in the task Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks Table 6: Students’ preferences for listening tasks .6 Table 7: Students’ opinions about the ways their teachers treat listening tasks Table 8: Topic in English 11 .8 Table 9: Types of listening tasks in English 11 Table 10: Students’ involvement in the tasks 10 Table 11: Students’ evaluation about supplementary activities and modified listening tasks 11 Table 12: Results of post-test 12 SangKienKinhNghiem.net Introduction - Rationale for the study For some recent years, English has played more and more important part in Vietnam; therefore, it has been taught in Vietnamese secondary schools as a compulsory subject So far, there have been remarkable changes in the way of teaching and learning English However, English teaching in general and teaching listening in particular still is far from satisfactory How to motivate students to listen is really necessary, and is a big question to most teachers in Vietnam now On the other hand, each student has different language learning capacity Especially, in my high school in a mountainous area, students have quite low levels of English So it is important for me to find effective ways to increase my students’ interest in listening and hence improve their listening skill In reading relevant literature, I can see that students find listening extremely difficult and boring due to different reasons For instance, the listening tasks may be monotonous, repetitive and beyond their language level, or there could be too many new words in the listening records; the pronunciation of several words in the record may be unfamiliar to students who are used to pronouncing them wrongly; or the speakers may speak too fast for them to hear, as they are used to hear each word separately in the Vietnamese language rather than focusing merely on stressed syllables and essential key words in English, etc Supplementary activities before listening, while listening and after listening, especially language games, are highly needed in order to ease the listening tasks for them while they may add fun to the listening lesson and hence help them improve their listening skill There may have been a good number of interesting materials for use by English teachers in their listening lessons, but which of them can be suitable to the particular students at my school remains a question to answer, since each group of students may have their own problems and capacity, as discussed earlier For the above reasons, I decide to embark on the task of designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for the 11th graders at Le Lai High School - Purposes and significance of the study The study aims at the following: - Understanding Le Lai High School’s 11th graders’ English proficiency and difficulties in listening, and causes of the difficulties they face with; - Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in the textbook “English 11” for 11th graders to identify difficulties; - Identifying possible supplementary activities needed for those listening tasks and see which of them can help enhance these students’ listening skill SangKienKinhNghiem.net The study’s output is the set of possible activities to supplement the listening tasks in English 11 for 11th Graders at Le Lai High School, which will benefit other teachers and students at my school apart from myself and those I teach This provides my study with its practical significance - Research questions, methods and instruments In the attempt to achieve the afore-mentioned aims, the following research questions are formulated so as to gather necessary information and data: i) What is the level of the 11th graders’ English listening skill, and what difficulties they may face with in listening? Why? ii) What makes listening lessons in English 11 difficult and why? iii) What additional activities can be designed to help the students address those difficulties? To seek answers to the three research questions above, I will apply the following methods and instruments: Question 1: - Interviewing a number of 11th graders to find out what difficulties they expect to encounter in listening lessons in the 11th grade and causes of those difficulties; - Discussing with English teachers at my school to gather more information on difficulties 11th graders have faced with, or may have to face with, and their causes Part of the information from teacher discussions will also help answer question below Question 2: Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in English 11 to identify problems and their possible causes, including new words, pronunciation, speed, intonation, etc Question 3: Designing supplementary activities and modifying listening tasks to help address the difficulties identified so that listening tasks are easier, more suitable and interesting to the students SangKienKinhNghiem.net The study 2.1 English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School As you know, Le Lai High School is a mountainous high school Thus its English teaching and learning has several difficulties Firstly, the class size far exceeds the standard number for a language class, with approximately or more 40 students each Secondly, the number of technology-aided classrooms is very limited; therefore, teachers can not apply electronic lessons to the extent that they desire for Moreover students’ motivation in learning foreign language is quite weak, especially listening skill Finally, there is lack of visual aids such as pictures and portable boards from the school Thus, the teachers and students are not offered the most convenient and modern environment to the teaching and learning of English 2.2 Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT CLT underpins the design of English Textbook 11, so the structure of each unit includes four skills: reading, speaking, listeningand writing Linguistic knowledge such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar areconsidered the means and condition to form and improve communicative ability In fact, the learnercentered approach is also adapted in order to promote students' activeness and creativeness, in which teachers act as theorganizer and facilitator in the class The content of the book is theme-based, with 16 units covering different topicswhich were contextualized to be suited to Vietnamese students Further, learning is task-based, with the activities are designed in the way in which students are offered opportunities to interact and co-operate In English Textbook 11, Listening is the most challenging and important skill in each unit It is put after two other skills due to its productive nature and dependence on input from other skills In the 11th grade, students are expected to work on a variety of listening tasks, each of which goes with a particular topic 2.3 Data analysis and findings This section, first of all, analyzes the initial data collected from pre – listening test, questionnaires and teaching diaries Then, the hypothesis and planning and action phases are presented Finally, the researcher discusses the techniques used for supplementary listening activities and modifying listening tasks as well his attempts to evaluate the action research 2.3.1 Initial data 2.3 1.1 Results from pre-listening test As stated above, on the first day of week 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 22 of students Percentage 22.5% 55% 15% 7.5% 0% SangKienKinhNghiem.net From the table, it can be seen that 78% of the students scored below average, whereas students achieving average scores made up 15% and only 7.5% 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 (The post office) and Unit 10 (Nature in danger) with non supplementary activities and 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:  Class: 11A1  Number of students in class: 40  Time: 45 minutes  Unit 9: The post office  Period 5: C - LISTENING As usual, the lesson started with warm-up The teacher gives some photos and asked his students some questions: (Which is the quickest, a phone call, a fax, an e-mail or a letter?, Do you think more and more people are using cell phone in Vietnam nowadays? Why?) then students worked in pairs to match the name of each picture in minutes After calling each pair to go to board and match some picture with the name of telephone, the teacher introduced the lesson (Today we will listen to a t a p e s c r i p t o f the development of Vietnam’s telephone system over the past few years) Before students listened to the passages to complete the tasks, teacher introduced some words and phrases Then students continued the lesson with task choosing the best answer A, B, C or D They were asked to work individually, run through the 05 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 answering five questions about the development of Vietnam’s telephone system over the past few years 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 the development of Vietnam’s telephone system Here are the results from the observations First, it should be mentioned that the observation sheet had six items, but during unit and 10 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: SangKienKinhNghiem.net Table 2: Students’ involvement in the tasks Unit Unit 10 Units (The post office) (Nature in danger) Marks of students’ involvement in the tasks Percentage 40% 45% It can be seen from the table that level of students’ involvement in the tasks was quite low In Unit (The post office), the percent of students who involved in the tasks accounted for 40%, while in Unit 10 (Nature in danger) 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 40 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 Completin Answering Decidin Multiple Ticking Filling Numberin g missing openg T/F choice the missing g the informatio ended statequestion things words pictures n in the questions ments s you hear (%) (%) table/ (%) (%) (%) (%) charts (%) 84% 24% 24% 10% 12% 4% 10% SangKienKinhNghiem.net 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 sometimes presented 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 Ineffective Effective (%) Not clear (%) (%) (%) 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 open- missin 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 2% 36% 29% 30% 64% charts (%) 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 76% textbook b The teacher sometimes replaces difficult tasks for easier 8% ones c The teacher often modifies listening tasks to fit students’ 16% level 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 2.3.2 Results from document analysis 2.3.2.1 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: UNIT Table 8: Topics in English 11 TOPICS UNIT Friendship Personal experiences 10 A party 11 Volunteer work 12 Illiteracy 13 Competitions 14 World population 15 TOPICS The post office Nature in danger Sources of energy The Asian Games Hobbies Recreation Space Conquest SangKienKinhNghiem.net 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 All the tasks and activities are designed to help students develop communicative competence 2.3.2.2 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 Units Types of listening Tasks task Tasks task Unit Task Task Unit Task Task Unit Task Task Unit Task Task Unit Task Task True/False statements Note-taking True/False statements Gap-filling True/False statements Comprehension questions Gap-filling Comprehension questions Multiple choice questions Comprehension Unit Task Task Unit 10 Task Task Multiple choice questions Comprehension questions True/False statements Comprehension questions Unit 11 Task Task Multiple choice questions Unit 12 Task Task Multiple choice questions Comprehension questions Unit 13 Task Task Gap-filling True/False statements Gap-filling SangKienKinhNghiem.net questions Unit Task Task Unit Task Task True/False statements Comprehension questions Multiple choice questions Comprehension questions Unit 14 Task Task Unit 15 Task Task True/False statements Comprehension questions True/False statements Comprehension questions Unit Unit 16 Ticking Gap-filling Task Task Comprehension Comprehension Task Task questions 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 pursuing these tasks, it appears that not all the tasks are suitable with students’ background and knowledge, especially, with students in a mountainous area like Ngọc Lặc district For example, in Unit 12 (The Asian Games) although the listening topic is quite familiar; task is too long with five comprehension questions, not to mention some questions which can cause students’ difficulties in answering In Unit 15 (Space conquest) the listening passage is about the first human moon landing It can be certain that most of the students have never heard about this before Besides that when dealing with task 2, students can meet difficulties in answering question (What was the portable life support system for?) and question (What did they while they were staying on the surface of the moon?) as to get answers, students must listen to very long sentences, which require them to have good skills of remembering and taking notes In short, despite some good points, listening tasks in English 11 are not really diversified Some tasks seem not to be appropriate as they not fit students’ level This unsuitability of the original tasks might lead to the boredom and then affect students’ listening comprehension 2.3.2.3 Conclusion The data analysis at the initial stage of this research clearly shows that most students are not very interested in doing listening tasks in English 11 In fact, they feel very bored with the repetitive tasks and believe that these tasks hardly help them improve their listening competence It is due to the unsuitability of the original tasks which discourages students from engaging in listening Then the answer for the first research question ‘What is the level of the SangKienKinhNghiem.net 11th graders’ English listening skill, and what difficulties they may face with in listening? Why?’ was found out Furthermore, basing on collected data, the researcher can draw out some causes of unsuitability of the original listening tasks First of all, some original tasks are beyond students’ knowledge and competence Secondly, some tasks are too long Finally, the repetition of some kinds of task cannot attract students’ attention 2.4 The hypothesis The analysis and discussion of the initial data formed the following hypothesis: Designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for 11th graders at Le Lai high school To help improve students’ listening comprehension, an action plan was designed In this action plan, the supplementary activities were designed and the original listening tasks were modified to make them more appropriate and interesting to students when they deal with listening lessons 2.5 Data collected in the action stage 2.5.1 Results from action stage observations In the action stage, the researcher designed the supplementary activities and applied modified listening tasks in three listening lessons (Unit 11, 12 and 15) 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 Unit 11 Unit 12 Unit 15 (Sources of (The Asian Units (Space conquest) energy) Games) 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 and the supplementary activities In Unit 11, more than half of the students (63.3%) paid attention to the lesson In Unit 12, the percent of students’ involvement in tasks was 10% higher than that of Unit 11 It means that students were more and more engaged in modified listening tasks and the supplementary activities In the last lesson of the action plan- Unit 15- students’ involvement in tasks added up to 76.7% Obviously, modified listening tasks and the supplementary activities increased students’ interest in learning listening However, the average 10 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 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 supplementary activities and modified listening tasks This encourages the researcher to continue adjusting modified listening tasks and design supplementary activities so as to increase students’ participation in the lessons 2.5.2 Results from Questionnaire Questionnaire (Appendix3) was delivered to each student after finishing each lesson during three weeks (from week to week 7) to see how students evaluate the supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks The total number of questionnaires collected during three lessons was 120 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 800 The results of the questionnaire were illustrated in the table below: Table 11: Students’ evaluation about supplementary activities and modified listening tasks Unit 11 Unit 12 Unit 15 (Sources of (The Asian Units (Space conquest) energy) Games) Marks of all 504 580 604 students Percent 63% 72.5% 75.5% The figures from the table showed that most of the students found the supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks more interesting, meaningful and appropriate The percentage of students who preferred the supplementary activities and the modified tasks increased lesson by lesson In Unit 11 was 63%, 72.5% in Unit 12 and 75.5% in the last lesson It proved that students had positive opinions about supplementary activities and 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 supplementary activities and 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 and design supplementary activities to help them listen easier and better In brief, the results from the observations and questionnaire once again confirmed that modified listening tasks and supplementary activities increased students’ involvements in the tasks Students concentrated more on the lessons and most of them could complete the listening tasks themselves In other words, students’ listening competence was partly improved because of more appropriate listening tasks 11 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 2.5.3 Results from teaching diaries With the hope of following closely what was happening during the lessons, how effective the supplementary activities and 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 10 with non-supplementary activities and 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 supplementary activities were designed and modified tasks were applied in Unit 11, 12 and 15 As perceived by the researcher through her teaching diaries, students’ listening comprehension was improved a lot during three lessons at the action stage The supplementary activities and 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 supplementary activities should be designed more appropriate 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 supplementary activities and 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 2.5.4 Results from post-test After the researcher had designed the supplementary activities and applied the modified listening tasks in teaching, he 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 9Marks Marks 1-2 Marks 3-4 Marks 5-6 Marks 7-8 10 Numbers 11 15 10 of students Percent 7.5% 27.5% 37.5% 25% 2.5% 12 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 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 confirmed that the supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks had good effects on students The majority of them got some success in improving their listening comprehension 2.5.5 Summary of major findings and discussions 2.5.5.1 The unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook and its effects on students’ listening comprehension There have been a large number of researches investigating factors affecting students’ listening comprehension These factors are various It may come from the teachers or the students themselves However, basing on what has been analyzed in questionnaires and observations, the researcher found out that the unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook also has a great influence on students’ listening competence The unsuitability of the tasks in the textbook English 11 may fall into three categories The first is the tasks which are too difficult for students They are not appropriate with students’ level, therefore, students often feel very stressful when dealing with this kind of task The second is too long tasks, which students can not finish in the time limited The last one is repetitive kinds of task Monotonous tasks could not motivate students as they soon feel bored with doing the same kind of task every day Obviously, inappropriate tasks could not create a motive and interests for students to learn, thus, students’ listening competence can not be improved much as expected 2.5.5.2 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 2.5.5.3 Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension The action plan was implemented during three lessons (Unit 11, Unit 12 and Unit 15) with the supplementary activities and 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 supplementary activities and 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 11, 13 SangKienKinhNghiem.net 73.3% in Unit 12 and 76.7% in Unit 15) 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 2.6 Supplementary activities In this section, the researcher focuses on designing supplementary activities and modifying inappropriate listening tasks basing on criteria of a good listening task presented in section 1.3.2 of Chapter to make the tasks more appropriate for students at Le Lai High School The choice of each specific criterion depends on students’ opinions and the analysis of original listening tasks With a carefully prepared plan, the researcher wishes to attract students to listening lessons, then, in part, help them better at listening The followings are some supplementary activities and modified listening tasks: 2.6.1 Unit 11: Supplementary activity one Unit 11: Sources of energy  Type of game: Matching  Material: hand-outs  Time: 5-7 minutes  Classroom management: group work  Procedure The teacher divides the class into groups of four students The teacher gives each group a hand-out as below Students have to work in groups and quickly match the sentences in column A with an appropriate energy in column B (a sentence in column A can contain more than one in column B) Which group finishes first and has all correct answers will be the winner Hand-out A B People use it to turn windmills and move a Fossil fuel sailboats It comes from oil, coal, and natural gas b Air energy Scientists use its heat to make energy and it is available only in a few places in the c Solar energy world It is used to make energy with water d Water energy moving from a high place to a lower place They are called the sources of clean e Nuclear energy energy People use panels on the roofs of houses f Geothermal energy to create energy to heat or cool an entire house They are called the renewable sources They are called the non-renewable sources 14 SangKienKinhNghiem.net It can be a very dangerous energy 10 Resource contains the correct amount of nitrogen (N), oxygen (O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) 2.6.2 Unit 12 2.6.2.1 Supplementary activity two Unit 12: The Asian Games  Type of game: Jumbled words  Material: hand-outs  Time: 3-5 minutes  Classroom management: group work  Procedure Teacher asks students to work in groups of to find out the words from the jumbled ones Teacher calls on students to write down the words on the board Ask students to speak out all these words Jumbled words  efer tysle  emlad  dercro  ymganst  pujm  emetr  rab Words 2.6.2.2 Modified task Replacing In Task of Unit 12 (The Asian Games), students are required to listen to a passage and answer questions 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 So task (Answering five questions) would be replaced by the following task: Modified task: Listen to the passage about the Asian Games report and write the missing words 15 SangKienKinhNghiem.net ... on the task of designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for the 11th graders at Le Lai High School - Purposes and significance of the study The study aims at the following:... formed the following hypothesis: Designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for 11th graders at Le Lai high school To help improve students’ listening comprehension, an action plan... instruments In the attempt to achieve the afore-mentioned aims, the following research questions are formulated so as to gather necessary information and data: i) What is the level of the 11th graders? ??