Difficulties in listening comprehension of english majored students at grade 8 nguyen truong to secondary school and feasible solutions

DECLARATION I certify that this graduation paper is the result of my own research and the substance of the research hasn’t been submitted for degree to any other university or institution Hanoi, June 2011 Nguyen Ngoc Hoa i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this thesis, I have received great assistance and support from many people without whom the work could not have been fulfilled First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and my profound appreciation to my supervisor, M.A Quach Thi Tuyet Thanh – from Thanh Do University for her guidance, precious suggestions, invaluable critical feedback and encouragement in the process of completing this thesis I would also like to express my sincere thanks to MA Phan Thanh Thao - The Dean of Foreign Languag Department My great thanks also go to all the lecturers of Nguyen Truong To Secondary School, Hanoi for their interesting lectures and suggestions for the topic of my study Thanks are also due to my students at English majored class of grade at Nguyen Truong To Secondary School, for their assistance and cooperation in completing the questionnaires Last but not least, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my parents and my friends for their moral support and encouragement throughout my training course Hanoi, June 2011 Nguyen Ngoc Hoa ii ABSTRACT The study has been conducted in the area of listening skill It focuses on the attitudes towards the learning listening and the difficulties in listening lesson of the students at English majored class of grade in Nguyen Truong To Secondary School When the problems have been identified, suggestions to improve the situation of teaching and learning listening to English would be made The graduation paper is organized into three parts Part gives rationale for the study, and sets up the aims, the research questions, the significance, the scope, the method and the design of the study Part looks at the review of related literature, researches on the current situation of teaching and learning listening to English in Nguyen Truong To Secondary School and gives feasible suggestions to improve the teaching and learning listening English in the school Part presents the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study It is hoped that this thesis will make contribution to solve some of the existing problems of inadequate listening competence of the students in Nguyen Truong To Secondary School iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARALATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF CHART vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION .1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Significance of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study .3 Design of the study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT .4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Listening comprehension 1.1.1 Different views of listening comprehension .4 1.1.2 Importance of listening comprehension 1.1.3 Classification of listening comprehension 1.3.1.1 Real - life listening 1.1.3.2 Classroom - listening .10 1.2 Listening stages 10 1.2.1 Pre-listening stage 10 1.2.2 While - listening stage 12 1.2.3 Post - listening stage 13 1.3 Listening tasks .14 1.3.1 Definition of task 14 1.3.2 Kinds of listening tasks 15 1.4 Language learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension 17 iv CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH 21 2.1 Overview of current listening teaching and learning situation in Nguyen Truong To Secondary School 21 2.2 Participants 21 2.3 Research method 22 2.4 Instrumentation 22 2.4.1 Survey questionnaire 22 2.4.2 Class observation 22 2.5 Procedure 22 2.6 Data analysis and discussion .23 2.6.1 Students’ attitudes towards listening skill 23 2.6.2 Students’ experience in listening 24 2.6.3 Students’ comment on factors causing difficulties in their learning listening 26 2.6.4 Students’ difficulties in listening to English texts 28 2.6.5 Teacher’s strategies to improve the students’ English listening skill 30 2.6.6 The students’ expectation to their teachers .31 2.7 Major findings .33 CHAPTER 3: FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION .35 3.1 Choosing the suitable listening texts 35 3.2 Designing suitable tasks 36 3.3 Helping the students to prepare well for the listening through the pre – listening stage 36 PART CONCLUSION 39 The achievement of the objectives of the study .39 Limitations of the research 39 Recommendations for further research 40 REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………… I v LIST OF TABLES Table : Students’ attitudes towards listening skill Table 2, and : Students’ experience in listening Table and : Students’ comment on factors causing difficulties in their learning listening Table and : Students’ difficulties in listening to English texts Table : Teacher’s strategies to motivate the students Table 10 : The students’ expectation to their teachers LIST OF CHARTS Chart : Students’ attitudes towards listening skill Chart 2, and : Students’ experience in listening Chart and : Students’ comment on factors causing difficulties in their learning listening Chart and : Students’ difficulties in listening to English texts Chart : Teacher’s strategies to motivate the students Chart 10 : The students’ expectation to their teachers vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale It cannot be denied that in the whole world English has become more and more important as the international means of communication in many fields of our life such as aviation, business, service, culture, education, economy, and so on Vietnam is not out of this circle; teaching and learning English have been paid more and more attention to However, for many years, Vietnamese students and teachers are familiar with the process of teaching and learning in traditional ways As a teacher of Nguyen Truong To Secondary School, the author finds that the teaching and learning here still focus too much on grammar, vocabulary and structures Although students follow the English course book by the Ministry of Education and Training Department, in which each unit is designed to be composed of five parts - reading, listening, speaking, writing and language focus; assessment and testing only aim at students’ knowledge of English grammar along with reading and partial writing Therefore, teaching and learning listening skill as well as speaking skill is paid less attention to After having taught for months at Nguyen Truong To Secondary School, the author realizes that many students who are good at writing and reading find it rather difficult to listen to English materials What’s more, we all know that language is used as a means of communication Therefore, students should be encouraged to develop all four skills which are closely related to one another For all these reasons, the author would like to something to help improve my students’ listening skill in English majored classes by exploring the common problems that they often encounter in the process of learning listening and helping them get acquainted with the vital use of pronunciation, stress, intonation, linking, elision in speaking as well as different accents from authentic materials As the result, the title of the study is “Difficulties in listening comprehension of English majored students at grade 8, Nguyen Truong To Secondary School and feasible solutions” Aims of the study This study aims at taking a closer look at the current situation of teaching and learning English for the English majored students at grade 8, Nguyen Truong To Secondary School in listening lessons to find out the problems that these students usually encounter, and after all to improve their listening skill through listening tasks which focus on pronunciation, stress, intonation, linking, elision as well as different accents from authentic materials Research questions To meet the research aims, the study is carried out on the basis of using qualitative research method including survey questionnaire for students In brief, the ultimate goal of the study is to answer the following research questions: What difficulties English majored students at grade 8, Nguyen Truong To Secondary School face in their listening lessons? What are the possible causes of these students’ difficulties in acquiring listening skill in English? What can be done to help these students overcome their difficulties? Significance of the study To learn a foreign language well, learners need to develop all the four skills Listening to spoken language is an important way of acquiring language, of picking up structures and vocabulary We cannot develop speaking skill unless we also develop listening skill To have successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them Then the ability to understand spoken language may become very important for listening to radio, understanding foreigners, etc Listening comprehension is a very complex process that students often find most difficult in learning English This thesis, therefore, is carried out so as to help students to improve their listening skill Scope of the study Since Nguyen Truong To Secondary School is a school for gifted students in many subjects including mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, literature, history, geography, English and French, there are different sorts of students at different levels of English Teaching and learning English, especially listening skill, are so sophisticated and varied among these classes Within this study, the researcher will only focus on the students of English majored class of grade to investigate the troubles that students at this class usually encounter, and then give some proposals to overcome discovered difficulties to help improve students’ listening ability Methods of the study The study is carried out on the basis of quantitative and qualitative research method The questionnaire is designed as a means for researcher to collect data The questionnaire is given to students of English majored class of grade with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their learning listening and their difficulties in listening lessons as well as their expectation from focused listening tasks Based on the results of the survey, data analysis was done so as to put forwards some applications and suggestions in order to improve teaching and learning listening in English majored classes in Nguyen Truong To secondary school Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion Part 1, “INTRODUCTION”, presents the basis information such as the rationale, the aim, the research question, the significance, the scope, the method, as well as the design of the study Part 2, “DEVELOPMENT”, consists of three chapters  Chapter one, literature review, looks at different views of listening comprehension, importance of listening comprehension, classification of listening comprehension, listening stages, definition of task and kinds of listening tasks as well as language learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension  Chapter two deals with the current listening teaching and learning situation in Nguyen Truong To Secondary School analysis on general teaching and learning situations at this school Also in this chapter, there is a focus on data analysis and discussion as well as major findings  Chapter three presents major solutions and recommendations to improve students' listening comprehension Part 3, “CONCLUSION”, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out some limitations and provides suggestions for further study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Listening comprehension 1.1.1 Different views of listening comprehension The language learning is constituted from four main skills including reading, speaking, listening and writing These skills are closely related to one another What’s more, communication is the process of exchanging information and attitudes Therefore, language as a means of communication cannot take place without listening Listening is a key second language skill, it has a vital role in the language acquisition process, and its development is of primary concern to language teachers It is also believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development in a native language as well as in a foreign language So, there are numerous ways of defining listening According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), there are two influential views: traditional view and alternative view Traditional view regarded listening as receptive skills, like reading skill Learners play a passive role in the listening learning process They just listen to the messages or recording and try to understand the meaning of the speakers’ utterances without taking any notice of such factors as attitude and shades of meaning This leads to a problem: teachers merely test students’ capacity of hearing and remembering utterance they hear in the recording, not students’ understanding of the conversation or talk For this perception, teaching listening, in the traditional way, is thought as teaching listening for sounds not for meaning Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as inappropriate and inadequate This notion is not a tenable one Alternative view, on the other hand, considers the learner as an active model builder Listeners of this kind can combine the new information with their own background knowledge to reach full comprehension of what has been heard Both researchers agree with this view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of listeners on incoming information Other scholars supported this view as well