Teaching listening comprehension at food industry college of ho chi minh city problems and solutions

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ĐỖ THỊ MINH CHÂU TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT FOOD INDUSTRY COLLEGE OF HO CHI MINH CITY: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS M.A THESIS IN TESOL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL Supervisor : NGUYỄN TIẾN HÙNG, Ph.D HO CHI MINH CITY – March, 2007 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT FOOD INDUSTRY COLLEGE OF HO CHI MINH CITY: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS in terms of the statements of requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee Ho Chi Minh city, March 2007 ĐỖ THỊ MINH CHÂU RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, ĐỖ THỊ MINH CHÂU, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses Ho Chi Minh city, March 2007 ĐỖ THỊ MINH CHÂU ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr NGUYỄN TIẾN HÙNG, who not only assisted me with all his heart in my preparation for the thesis draft and accomplishment of the final work but also provided valuable comments on the individual chapters as well as the whole thesis I also wish to thank the whole teaching staff of the 2003- 2006 TESOL course at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities, who have made me well-qualified with the background knowledge to fulfill this thesis Next, my profound thanks are expressed to the Directorate of Food Industry College of Ho Chi Minh City for permission and encouragement to my carrying out this project I also thank my colleagues for their enthusiastic cooperation and appreciated suggestions as well as the students here who took part in the survey for my research Finally, I am grateful to my family, especially my husband Lưu Hoàng, who have always been supportive during my studies, especially the time when I made this thesis ABSTRACT Listening in language teaching has undergone several important influences, as the result of developments in linguistics and even global politics Since 1980, listening has been viewed as a primary channel for language learning (Richards 1985; Richards and Rodgers 1986; Rost 1990) Furthermore, nowadays, in the age of globalization, communicative competence gains more and more attention in comparison with language competence However, the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Vietnam cannot catch up with the current theory and methodology in the world (Appendices D, E, F, G, H) In this context, I wonder how much prominence has been given to the teaching of communicative skills, especially listening comprehension The answer is that there is a belief that listening practice in Vietnamese EFL classes, especially those at college or university, is hardly touched on, or if it is, it will be incidental As a teacher of English at Food Industry College of Ho Chi Minh city (FICH), I was motivated to conduct this study because students seem to acquire no listening skill, let alone to develop it, after the compulsory English course at FICH There have been much considerable research on difficulties confronted by the EFL learners while acquiring this skill (Literature Riview) But listening obstacles have not been widely researched in the field of a training program This leads to the following purposes of the study: to find out the real problems of the teaching of listening comprehension in the compulsory General English course at FICH to identify the difficulties of the learning of this skill to suggest some feasible solutions to them Both qualitative and quantitative approaches including three methods, namely description, observation and questionnaire were employed to find out the answers to the research questions The findings indicate that the amount of teaching time and the listening objective according to the curriculum, and the class size play important roles in the efficiency of teaching listening comprehension And the problems of teaching this skill can be one of the sources resulting in difficulties for students in acquiring it These are associated with the internal factors of learners such as their affective statuses, listening habits, information processing capacities, English proficiencies, and their belief about listening activities Other barriers concerned the nature of listening strategies the listening material used and teaching methods Based on the findings, a series of pedagogical implications are provided in the hope of providing students access to communication skills in English TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study 1.1.1 Theoretical background 1.1.2 Teaching background 1.1.3 Context of teaching listening comprehension at FICH 1.2 Statement of purpose 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Overview of thesis chapters CHAPTER : LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Some important definitions related to the research 2.1.1 Definitions of “listening” 2.1.2 Input 2.1.3 Aural texts 10 2.1.4 Top-down and bottom-up processes 11 2.1.5 Schema 12 2.1 Task 12 2.1.7 Objective 13 2.2 The nature of listening in real- life communication 14 2.2.1 Introduction 14 2.2.2 The purposes of listening in real-life communication 15 2.2.3 The nature of listening comprehension 16 2.2.4 Characteristics of real-life listening 21 2.2.5 Listening strategies 22 2.3 The nature of listening comprehension in classroom 24 2.3.1 Introduction 24 2.3.2 The importance of listening in second language learning 26 2.3.3 The objective of listening comprehension in classroom 27 2.3.4 The purposes of a listening activity 27 2.3.5 Important features in listening to English as a foreign language 28 2.3.6 Types of classroom listening performance 28 2.3.7 Types of listening activities 30 2.3.8 Principles for designing listening techniques in classroom 31 2.3.9 The role of the learner 34 2.3.10 The role of the teacher 34 2.3.11 The format of a good listening lesson 35 2.3.12 characteristics of a good practice activity 36 2.3.13 Characteristics of effective teaching 37 2.3.14 Characteristics of an effective listener 38 2.3.15 Characteristics of an effective listening course 40 2.4 Related studies on difficulties in learning listening comprehension 40 2.4.1 Difficulties due to the process of listening or the speech processing40 2.4.2 Difficulties due to the task 42 2.4.3 Difficulties due to the learner 42 2.4.4 Difficulties due to the limitations of the present listening teaching and listening materials 43 2.4.5 Summary 44 2.5 Summary of the chapter 46 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 47 3.1 Research design 47 3.1.1 Overview of the research 47 3.1.2 Location 47 3.1.3 Population 48 3.2 Data collection method 49 3.2.1 Description 50 3.2.2 Observation 50 3.2.3 Questionnaires 51 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .55 4.1 Results from description 55 4.1.1 Description of the compulsory General English course at FICH 55 4.1.2 Description of the listening tasks in the course book 63 4.1.3 Description of the listening learning conditions at FICH 67 4.2 Results from the observation 70 4.2.1 Observation results of pre- listening stage 76 4.2.2 Observation results of while-listening stage 79 4.2.3 Observation results of post-listening stage 82 4.2.4 Summary of the observation results 84 4.3 R esults from the questionnaire 84 4.3.1 Results from the questionnaire for students 84 4.3.2 Results from the questionnaire for teachers 104 4.4 Discussion about the results 123 4.4.1 Internal difficulties 124 4.4.2 External difficulties 126 4.5 Limitation of the study 128 4.6 Summary of the chapter 128 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SOLUTIONS .129 5.1 Conclusion 129 5.2 Solutions 130 5.2.1 To overcome difficulties from the course 130 5.2.2 To overcome difficulties from the present listening teaching style135 5.2.3 To overcome difficulties from the listening learning conditions 137 5.3 Summary of the chapter 138 APPENDICES 139 APPENDIX A 139 APPENDIX A’ 144 APPENDIX B 148 APPENDIX C 151 APPENDIX D 154 APPENDIX E 159 APPENDIX F 163 APPENDIX G 164 APPENDIX H 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY 166 background knowledge and discourse ability by self-practice if they want to make progress in listening comprehension Other internal difficulties can be solved only when the identified external difficulties are rectified What students can in the course is to play their active role in learning listening And the teacher should be responsible for making their students active and interested in the course of listening by playing their right role Following are is some suggested solutions to overcome the above-mentioned difficulties 5.2 SOLUTIONS 5.2.1 To overcome difficulties from the course 5.2.1.1 The managing staff and the English teaching staff should try and cooperate to organize General English classes for the students of the same or nearly the same background and level of English 5.2.1.2 The teaching staff of English are responsible for writing the specific listening objectives (which listening strategies at Elementary level the students can acquire after the course because most of them start learning listening from the beginning) 5.2.1.3 More time should be spent on teaching listening in class Besides, extra evening communicative classes from the beginning level should be organized for students who really have the need to acquire communicative skills in English, especially listening skill 5.2.1.4 (Nunan, pp 212) The listening materials should be based on authentic data from the very beginning Students should be given practice in listening to extracts from radio and television, public broadcasting announcements, conversations and discussions, telephone conversations, answering machine messages, voice mail, and other types of authentic data such as films, pop 153 songs in English and so on This authentic material helps bring the content to life, ultimately makes learning and using language more meaningful and easier for students, and so increases the students’ motivation In order to perform this solution, the multi-media library with the internet, the cable television and audio players should be equipped 5.2.1.5 Activities in textbooks must be adapted or chosen carefully (Penny Ur, p.115 -118) In order to provide students with training in listening comprehension that will prepare them for effective functioning outside the classroom, activities should give learners practice in coping with at least some features of real-life listening situations (Penny Ur, p 107-110) Following are chart of listening comprehension activities at Elementary level suggested by (Rivers, 1978): A Identification: Perception of sounds and phrases; identifying these directly and holistically with their meaning  Macro Listening to tapes of various languages to detect the language one is learning Listening to songs and poems for the pleasure of the sounds (in classroom, listening room, or listening corner) Songs and poems played over loudspeakers in the language laboratory for atmosphere Hearing original sound tracks of documentary films before being able to understand them  Micro Aural discrimination exercises Short-phrase discrimination with picture 154 Listening to segments of dialogue to be learned Responding with miming actions to segments from dialogue learned or from classroom conversation Responding with flashcards to names of letters of the alphabet 10 Backward buildup in imitation of a model B Identification and selection without retention: Listening for the pleasure of comprehension, extracting sequential meanings, without being expected to demonstrate comprehension through active use of language 11 Games involving miming of words and phrases learned 12 Listening to conversation-facilitation dialogues, songs, or poems already learned 13 Listening to retelling of stories already read, reacting in some way to variations from the original 14 Listening to a conversation which is a variant of a dialogue studied 15 Listening to an anecdote based on reading material studied 16 Teacher gives some background information on a topic, then tells an anecdote, or describes an experience With visual 17 Listening to a description of pictures or slides 18 Listening to an anecdote, story, or dialogue illustrated with a flannel board 19 Listening to a “Show and Tell” oral report With action 20 Total physical response activity or “Simon says” 21 Obeying classroom instructions 155 22 Listening to simple narration, raising hands whenever a color (or occupation, or kind of food, etc.) is mentioned 23 Letter bingo 24 Number bingo C Identification and guided selection with short-term retention: Students are given some prior indication of what they are to listen for; they demonstrate their comprehension immediately in some active fashion With visual 25 Discrimination of numbers, dates, and times of day by pairing ones they hear with multiple-choice items, clock-faces, lists of famous events, or flight schedules 26 Learning a dialogue with vanishing techniques 27 True-False questions supplied beforehand; students listen to variation of a dialogue or story read and check answers 28 Multiple-choice answers supplied beforehand; students listen to a dialogue or story using recombination of vocabulary and structures learned, and check appropriate answers With action 29 Miming the actions in a story being narrated 30 Obeying complex classroom instructions for class exercises and tests 31 Completing a diagram according to instructions With speaking 32 Directed dialogue 33 Group piecing together of a new dialogue from initial hearing 34 Participating in Cumming device 35 Participation in Gouin series 156 36 Participating in verbal-active series 37 “Who is it? What is it? Where is it?” (Guessing who, what, or which place is being described by teacher or student) 38 Intensive practice exercises varying syntactic segments 39 Taking part in puzzle exercises 40 Running commentary: listening to a story and giving the gist at the end of each sentence With writing 41 Writing down words which are dictated letter by letter 42 Writing from dictation series of numbers of increasing length and complexity 43 Information search 44 Students repeat to themselves what they think they heard before it 45 Spot dictation D Identification and selection with long-term selection: Students demonstrate their comprehension, or use the material they have comprehended, after the listening experience has been completed; or they engage in an activity which requires recall of material learned some time previously 46 Listening to a continuation of a story (with the same vocabulary area, same setting, and same characters) 47 Listening to a story different from, but with similar vocabulary to, one already read 48 Listening to a conversation one studied 49 Listening to skits prepared by other students 50 Listening to dramatizations of stories read 157 51 Listening without the text to the expressive reading of a poem already studied 52 Listening to other students reciting poems in a poetry competition 53 Checking answers to aural questions given before or after a passage for listening 54 Checking appropriate choices for multiple-choice continuations given orally after a listening passage With speaking 55 Listening to a story, then giving the gist at the end 56 Answering questions orally on a passage just heard 57 Responding to others in spontaneous role-playing 58 Listening to and discussing oral reports of other students 59 Chain dialogue 60 Rubbishing the dialogue 61 Acting out learned dialogues with other 62 Learning and acting a part with others in a skit or original dialogue 63 “What’s my line?”: A student mimes a series of actions, others ask yes-no questions until they have guessed what the student does for a living With writing 64 Students answer questions in writing after they have listened to a story or conversation 65 Students write down what they have learned from another student’s oral report 66 Cloze test on content of what has been heard 5.2.1.6 The final listening test should be designed 5.2.2 To overcome difficulties form the present listening teaching style 158 5.2.2.1 The teacher should follow three stages of teaching listening :Pre- , While - , Post- with the Communicative approach 5.2.2.2 In teaching listening, Nunan suggests that we design activities that teach both bottom-up and top-down processing skills as they both play important, but different, roles in listening If teachers suspect that there are gasps in their learners’ knowledge, the listening itself can be preceded by schema-buildings activities to prepare learners for the listening task to come 5.2.2.3 It is also important to teach learners specific strategies that can help them understand the process underlying listening, so that gradually they can assume greater control of their own learning Among the key strategies that can be taught are predicting, selective listening, listening for different purposes, inference, and personalizing 5.2.2.4 Field also advocates the use of preset questions, the used of taskbased listening activities, a focus on listening strategies, and a greater use of authentic materials 5.2.2.5 Learner – centered strategy should be applied to the listening classes This is important because if learners are aware of what they are doing, if they are conscious of the process underlying the listening comprehension, listening learning will be more effective This can be done in one of two ways:  Tasks can be devised in which the classroom action is centered on the learner, not on the teacher  Listening materials, like any other types of materials, can be given a learner-centered dimension This can be achieved in the following ways: Making instructional goals explicit to the learners Giving learners a degree of choice 159 Giving learners opportunities to bring their own background knowledge and experience into the classroom Encouraging learners to develop a reflective attitude to learning and to develop skills in self – monitoring and self-assessment 5.2.2.6 Austin Shrope (1970) also suggests some ways to improve our learners' listening skills We should let them  Adopt a positive attitude  Be responsive  Shut out distractions  Listen for the speaker's purpose  Look for the signals of what is to come  Look for summaries of what has gone before  Evaluate the supporting materials  Look for non-verbal clues 5.2.2.7 According to the most important features of listening, while planning exercises, listening materials, task and visual materials should be taken into consideration The teacher should produce a suitable discourse while using recordings A preset purpose, ongoing learner response, motivation, success, simplicity, and feedback should be well considered while preparing the task Visual materials are useful for contextualization We can also categorize the goals of listening as listening for enjoyment, for information, for persuasion, for perception and for comprehension and lastly for solving problems 5.2.3 To overcome difficulties from the listening learning conditions 160 5.2.3.1 Over-sized English classes should be divided into small classes according to the real infrastructure and academic conditions of FICH Such good organization can help teachers control students’ process of listening comprehension and help students get on tasks quickly and efficiently 5.2.3.2 The lab should be opened with many classes at different time So the students can volunteer to enroll in the suitable class 5.2.3.3 The library should be equipped with cassette players and listening materials to support students with their self-practice outside the classroom 5.3 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER In 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