How to improve listening skills for the second year students at faculty of english hanoi open university

Graduation paper DECLARATION Title: HOW TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE SECOND – YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Hanoi, 3rd May 2015 Student Supervisor Nguyễn Kim Thanh Assoc Prof Dr, Hoàng Tuyết Minh Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my sincere appreciation to many people who wholeheartedly helped me to accomplish this paper Without their guidance and advice, this paper might not have been completed First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Ms Hoàng Tuyết Minh for her enthusiastic guidance and valuable advice Without her help, this graduation paper would not have been completed Secondly, I would like to express my special thanks to all the teachers at English Faculty of HOU for their valuable lectures and instructions which has helped me much in completing the final task Thirdly, I also wish to send my thanks to HOU 2nd year English major students for their enthusiastic cooperation in completing my survey questionnaires Finally yet importantly, I would like to give my great thanks to my beloved friends and family members who encouraged and supported me throughout my research paper Hopefully, this paper will be useful for learners of English in generals and the second-year English majors at Hanoi Open University in particular Hanoi, 3rd May, 2015 Student Nguyen Kim Thanh Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper TABLES OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Listening skills in the process of language learning 1.1.1 The definition of listening 1.1.2 The significance of listening 1.1.3 The differences between listening and others skills 1.1.4 Characteristics of listening 1.1.5 Types of listening 10 1.2 Choosing authentic materials 16 1.2.1 Introduction 16 Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper 1.2.2 Definition of authentic materials 16 1.2.3 Classification of authentic materials 18 1.3 Teaching methods for listening skills 19 1.3.1 Learner – Centered Teaching methods 19 1.3.1.1 The balance of power…………………………………………………… 19 1.3.1.2 The function of content………………………………………………… 20 1.3.1.3 The role of teacher…………………………………………………… …22 1.3.1.4 The responsibility for learning……………………………………… …22 1.3.1.5 The purpose and process of evaluation……………………………… …23 1.4 Summary 24 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 25 2.1 Subjects 25 2.2 Questionnaire 26 2.3 Procedures 26 2.4 Data analysis 27 2.5 Summary 36 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 38 3.1 Difficulties faced by second year students caused by objective reasons 38 3.1.1 Speech rate 38 3.1.2 Different accents of speakers 39 3.1.3 Unfamiliar topics 39 3.1.4 Sound condition 40 Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper 3.2 Difficulties faced by second year students caused by subjective reasons 40 3.2.1 Inability to understand natural native speech 40 3.2.2 Vocabulary limitation 41 3.2.3 Concentration ability 41 3.2.4 Confidence 42 3.3 Suggestions for overcoming the difficulties 42 3.3.1: Strategies for listening comprehension 42 3.3.2 Teaching listening activities 45 3.3.3 Multimedia 49 3.3.4 Listening and dictating news broadcast of VOA and BBC 49 3.3.5 Checking out movies and songs 50 3.3.6 Catching the news 51 3.3.7 Cultivating student’s ability of guessing 52 3.3.8 Overcoming internal factors 53 3.4 Summary 53 PART C: CONCLUSION 55 REFERENCES 57 APPENDIX 60 Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Subjects in use 25 Table 2: Types of materials students provided for listening skills 27 Table 3: Listening technique used by students 29 Table 4: Students’ learning methods 31 Table 5: Students’ desire 33 Table 6: Difficulties caused by objective reasons 34 Table 7: Difficulties caused by subjective reasons 34 Pie chart 1: Students’ learning frequency 31 Pie chart 2: Students’ need for having modern equipment in class 36 Graph 1: Kinds of listening equipments in class provided 28 Graph 2: The most difficult activity in listening process 30 Graph 3: Types of supplementary listening materials students provided for improving listening skills 32 Graph 4: Students’ attitude towards improving English through techniques 35 Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language FL: Foreign language HOU: Hanoi Open University FOE: Faculty of English Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Graduation paper PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale A great number of non – English speakers as well as native English speakers use English as an important medium of international communication in every part of the world English is no longer the language used solely in English speaking countries; rather it is internationally used As the English language has become an essential factor in strengthening trade and travel in many countries, the necessity of knowing and using this communication medium is increasing Besides, English is widely used in communication through modern technology and media communication devices such as mobile phones, electronic mail and the Internet Undoubtedly, people around the world need English as the main medium of their communication via such devices For this reason, listening plays an important role in both languages learning process and real-life communication Being good at listening in learning English process particularly and in foreign language learning process generally is the immense desire of most foreign language learners Evidently, in order to obtain the purpose of mastering a foreign language, learners are supposed to focus on the four significant skills named listening, speaking, reading and writing Among these four skills, listening is often regarded to be the most crucial and challenging task for students to deal with It is obvious that listening skills have been paid much attention to by numerous language researchers and teachers Many researchers have been conducted on how to teach and learn listening skills effectively All contributions are very useful for enhancing listening skills At Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University (FOE, HOU), however, teaching and learning listening is a really challenging job In Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper addition to the lack of well-equipped facilities, teaching listening methods is unfamiliar to teacher Another problem is students’ low level of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so forth It is the reason why students find it difficult and tough to listen to and they are not confident enough to listening task successfully Moreover, learning habits not help much to improve their listening in classroom The students often get bored, tired and indifferent in listening lesson because of uncreative task and activities, topics, and so on All the above - mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to a research on listening skills and the research title goes as “How to improve listening skills for the second – year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University” It is prospected that the study would bring some useful benefits to learners of English in the process of language learning Aims of the study There are a number of problems facing to students at English major in Hanoi Open University The main purpose of study is to probe difficulties in learning listening of learners The study is intended to address the following issues · The study provides the definition, types of listening skills and methods of teaching this skill · It conducts a survey questionnaire on how English students learn listening skills and what the difficulties they are facing · It finds out the difficulties and gives suggestions for listening skills’ problems Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper Scope of the study The research was conducted with 96 second - year students who were studying at English faculty of Hanoi Open University The research mainly focuses on finding out the difficulties that students cope with listening English Moreover, their attitude about listening English and their choosing channels in this skill were also conducted Methods of the study The following methods are employed to collect data for the study: · Qualitative: Collecting related information from previous researches · Quantitative: Collecting data from questionnaires, tasks and students’ paper · Descriptive: Describing theoretical background and the figure from questionnaire result · Analysis: Analyzing data from the result of survey and listening problems from the gathered data The major source of data for the study was students’ survey questionnaire respondents while direct observation applied with an aim to get more supplement information for any confirmation of the findings Design of the study The study is composed of three main parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper their evidence to support their views In this way listening becomes a much more interactive activity There are two common form that post-listening task can take First form is reaction to the content of the text These ask focus students reaction to the contexts are most important This could be discussion as a response to what they hear, they agree or disagree or it could be some king of reuse of the information they have heard Second form is analysis of language This task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text This is also vital in terms of developing student’s listening skill This is good time to form focus on word as the students have already developed and an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meaning easier 3.3.3 Multimedia Listening is a key second language skill, it has a virtual role in the language acquisition process, and its developments of further language learning are becoming common place and with advances video and audio in combination with text Students often get acquitted with traditional method Teacher usually use typescripts as a main material method so students fell learning listening kill students should listen BBC,CNN or watch television every day They should have a habit It makes them improve their vocabulary so it is easier to listen Moreover, students practice with multimedia can update news daily They have a good knowledge back ground when listen many topics they will understand and have a good choice to exercise 3.3.4 Listening and dictating news broadcast of VOA and BBC When listeners confront listening materials of foreign language, they are apt to avoid original knowledge It is necessary to listen to the news broadcasts like VOA Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 49 Graduation paper and BBC Students listen to the news daily will make them have good habit to use foreign language and encourage them to understand what they hear It is important for students to listening news items in clad on a regular and frequent basis so that they profit from the opportunities to practice listening and to examine the language as it is commonly used on the news At lower level, the headlines provide sufficient sources of news jargon which can be identified and learnt Identifying typical collocations is an important skill at all levels Therefore, listening news is the good way to improve listening skill When students listen to VOA, BBC they can come to following steps: · dictate new abstract · listen to the details and take notes · grasp the main idea In dictating the news broadcast, students can utilize separate skills and integrate the acquired skills to improve their listening skill-remembering a series of details, using contextual clues, recognizing organizational elements, drawing justifiable inferences Before dictating the news, it is better to play one or three times of the tape recording in order to motivate them to frasp the gist of the news and catch some key words Through dictating the news, students can find out what they not know, then they find out what they need to know and this is the method with which they can improve their language skills 3.3.5 Checking out movies and songs If students have VCD or DVD, they should check out American or British movies, songs and turn on both the English sound track and English subtitles Often times, English language learners are much further longer than their reading skill than their speaking or listening skill Feel free to watch movie once for fun of it, but then get ready to watch it slowly with more care Work thoroughly a movie scene by scene Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 50 Graduation paper Listen carefully to the dialog If students cannot make out what is being said, read the subtitle Repeat the scene several time until understand each word Then students can ask themselves some following questions: What was the scene about? Who was the main character? How these characters feel about each other? 3.3.6 Catching the news Learning English by listening to news is not easy In fact, it is more difficult for most students than reading, or writing The problem comes mostly from different sounding voices and different accents There is a huge range of English accents and a world of difference between the soft, carefully spoken English of southern England and the fast, slurred, harsher spoken English of a northerner, or Glaswegian accent A teacher in a classroom may speak slightly slower than usual and the student may interrupt and ask for clarification or repetition, but with news, that’s not possible A natural sounding may have several different voices speaking and interacting Their voices, accents, and dialects may be new to the student and the words may be spoken very fast It takes a lot practice to listen carefully and understand and it may sometimes sound like a completely different language There is pressure on the student to understand quickly There may be question afterwards that the student needs to be able to answer and understand This adds up to a lot of pressure There are many ways of making this easier but practice is the only real solution Listening to English announcements at railway stations, bus stations and airports, listening to radio and watching television will help the student to get used to different English voices and accents Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 51 Graduation paper Watch an English-speaking newscast If the broadcast station provides closedcaptioning, turn it on Listen carefully, read it if have to After broadcast, students can ask each other the following question: What happened? Where it happened? When did it happen? How many people were affected by this event? This way can make students come up with their own questions and then try to ask others to recall specific details about the stories as well as the general nature of the story If students think they not understand some of their points, try to catch broadcast again at another time during the day or see it on Vietnamese news Students can compare to both of news so they can understand it clearly 3.3.7 Cultivating student’s ability of guessing Guessing is a very important skill for foreign language, especially for listening because information only last in a short time Some time students listen to conversation or topic and then they have to fill in the blank with one work but it is difficult for them to this The speech of conversation is too fast, students cannot catch up with so they can guess which word is appropriate They base on topics and condition to guess the meaning of some words that they not know However, students often are nervous when they meet unfamiliar word and will beat their brain to think the meaning of new word so that they cannot catch the major point which will affect the understanding of the whole passage An effective to train student’s guessing ability is that students should practice with conversations, give pause in the middle and then ask each other to guess what will Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 52 Graduation paper happen, who speakers is, what they do, where or when this event happened Guessing skill also make students improve listening skill ability so students should practice with this skill gradually 3.3.8 Overcoming internal factors Many students are fearful of listening and can be disheartened when they listen to something but feel they understand very little In is also harder to concentrate on listening if students have little interest in a topic or situation In the first time Speaking English well is also the key to improve listening skill Some students cannot listen or they not recognize this word because they pronounce not exactly To this problem, they should practice more and more reading in order to be sensitive to these phonetic phenomena They must get familiar either the phonetic symbol and correct the articulation of certain vowels and consonants either the help of their teacher only this can they better recognize words and sentences correctly while listening Besides, students should phonetic practice such as sounds discrimination, elision so that they can master these features of spoken English They also should understand the stress, rhythm and intonation of the word and sentence in the speech in order to get rid of listening barriers in phonetics Students should create the chance to speak with foreigner especial tourist because they come from different countries so students can learn how to speak ell thus it lead to listen well 3.4 Summary This chapter is designed with the hope that the second-year students can use this paper for research to solution and find some useful methods to build up their skills or help them to overcome their difficulties in the process of listening As mentioned in this chapter II, the learning of English listening skills at HOU has some problems Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 53 Graduation paper throughout the analyzed data Therefore, the researcher wishes to put forward some methods in listening with practical attention to students’ need, intellectual interests, providing them with extensive listening materials, and various listening activities for student-centered learning These methods are to encourage students to learn the language, to help them improve their listening skills and real language competence for communication in this ever-changing world Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 54 Graduation paper PART C: CONCLUSION Listening is a significant factor in learning English and it is very necessary in our real life Thus, teaching and learning listening in English is considered as the most difficult skill to achieve among the four skills Moreover, in the trend of regional and international economic integration, learning of English has been popularized in Vietnam’s universities However, many students have difficulties in listening that are barriers to communicate excellent This paper was carried out with the purpose of finding some difficulties in process learning and teaching listening skills for the second year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University First of all, in chapter 1, the writer has given some general literatures about listening comprehension to all the students In this chapter, students have basic information about listening such as: the definition, significance of listening, the differences between listening and other skills the characteristics of listening, types of listening and listening skills’ teaching methods After reading this chapter, the readers will have the general knowledge about listening In the next chapter, secondly, the author has explored situation as well as the difficulties of teaching and learning listening skills of the second year students at English faculty, Hanoi Open University through a survey with twelve questions that was divided into four groups; they are questionnaire for teaching method, students’ self – study, the difficulties in studying listening skills and several recommendations This survey was carried out with the participation of 96 second – year students with a complete result Almost students have problems in listening skills due to speed rate, speakers’ accents, vocabulary limitation and their own confidence Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 55 Graduation paper Finally, in the last chapter, based on the survey’s result, the writer has pointed out the difficulties faced by second year students in listening process and gave come effectively suggestions to help second – year students deal with the problems and improve their listening skills The researcher wants to contribute to study of listening skills with the desire that reader, especially English major students at Hanoi Open University can find this investigation somehow useful for themselves However, in the framework of the graduate thesis, the study just mentioned about the difficulties of learners and its solutions Hence, this is a foundation for further studies Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 56 Graduation paper REFERENCES 1: Anne, A., 1988 Listening s.l.:Oxford University Press 2: Baker, L., 1971 Listening behavior Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pretice-Hall 3: Bird, D., 1953 Teaching listening comprehension Jounal of communication s.l.:Oxford University 4: Brown, J., 1995 Dimensions of difficulty in listening comprehension In D.Medelsohn and J.Rubin (Eds) A guide for the teaching of second language listening )pp.59-73_ San Diego, CA: Dominie Press 5: Brubridge, B., 1986 Listening Comprehension New York: Palgrave McMillan 6: Bulletin, K., 1952 The importance of listening ability Lodon: Pergamon 7: Chiu, B., 2006 An investigation of English Listening Strategies Used by Contunious Education Programs students in Taiwan Retrieved October 30, 2008 from http://web.nanya.edu.tw/tcof/tcrd/word: s.n 8: Coakley, C & W , A., 1997 Listening in the educational environment s.l.:s.n 9: David Nunan, K., 1991 Listening comprehension in second language instruction New York: Longman 10: Dunkel, P., 1991 Listening in the Native and second foreign language: toward an integration of Research and Practice s.l.:TESOL Quartely 11: Guariento, L.D and Morley, C.V (2001), Exploring listening comprehension tactics, London: Modern English Publications 12: Harmer, J & E., 1989 The listening file London: Longman Press Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 57 Graduation paper 13: Henner-Stanchina, C., 1987 Autonomy as metacoginitive awareness: Suggestions for training self-monitoring on listening comprehension s.l.:Iniversity de Nancy 14: Howatt, L & D K., 1974 Language laboratory materials London: Oxford University Press 15: Krashen, J (1985) Factors affecting listening comprehension, EFL Journal 16: Lu, P., 2008 English listening comprehension strategy used by students of prosessional courses of Northumbria University s.l.:Southern Taiwan University 17: Lynch & Anderson, 1988 Listening s.l.:Oxford University Press 18: Martinez, A., 2002 Authentic Materials: an overview New York: Oxford University Press 19: Murphy, J., 1991 Oral communication in TESOL: Integrating speaking, listening and pronunciation TESOL Quarterly s.l.:s.n 20: Nunan, D., 1997 Listening in Language Learning The English Center: University of Hong Kong 21: Nguyen, Bang and Nguyen, Ngoc (2002) A course in TEFL theory and Practice Hanoi: Broughton (1987) 22: O'Mally, J & C A., 1990 Learning strategy in second language acquisition New York: Cambridge University Press 23: Richards, J., 2008 Teaching Listening and Speaking Cambridege, England: Cambridge University Express 24: River, W., 1983B Speaking in Many Tounges 3rd ed Lindon: Cambridge University Express Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 58 Graduation paper 25: Rost, M., 2002 Teaching and Reseaching Listening London, UK: Longman 26: Thompson, I & R J., 1996 Can strategy instruction improve listening comprehension? Foreign Language Annals, 29,331-342: s.n 27: Tomatis, A., 2007 The Listening Center New York: Station Hill Press 28: Penny Ur, 1999 A Course in Language Teaching London, UK: Cambridge University Press 29: Vandergrift, L., 2003 Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence s.l.:s.n 30: Weimer, M., 2002 Learner-centered Teaching: Five key changes to pratice s.l.:Jossey Bass 31: Wing, B., 1986 Listening, reading, writing: Analysis and Application Middlebury, VT: s.n Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 59 Graduation paper APPENDIX Questionnaire This questionnaire is designed to indentify the current situation of leaning English listening skills for students in English Faculty, Hanoi Open University Your cooperation is highly appreciated Please answer the following questions and circle the answer that you think is/are appropriate Group 1: Questionnaire for teaching method 1: What type of materials are you provided for improving listening skills A: Simplified materials from textbook B: Artificial materials provided by teacher C: Authentic materials from Internet D: Others 2: What kinds of listening equipments in class are you provided? A: Radio B: TV C: Video B: Computer Group 2: Questionnaire for students’ self – study Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 60 Graduation paper 3: Which sub – skills you often use while listening in class? (Choose more than one) A: Skimming B: Scanning C: Note – taking D: Guessing the meaning of word E: Sensing styles and tones F: Sound discrimination G: Predicting H: Inference I: Summarizing J: Comprehending K: Listening for total comprehension L: Critical listening 4: What is the most difficult activity in listening process? A: Pre – listening B: While – listening C: Post – listening 5: How often you practice listening at home? A: Never B: Rarely C: Sometimes D: Often 6: How you practice listening skills? A: Listening to English songs B: Listening to news in English C: Listening to English videotapes D: Watching English films Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 61 Graduation paper 7: What types of supplementary listening materials are your teachers using in the class? A: IELTS series B: TOELF series C: Radio and TV programs D: Others 8: Which you prefer to work in class? A: Individual B: Pair – work C: Group – work D: The whole class Group 3: The difficulties in studying listening skills 9: What are objective components that make listening difficult? (Please put a tick in the box) Reasons A B (Always) (Often) C D (Sometimes) (Never) 1: Speech rate 2: Different accent of speakers 3: Unfamiliar topics 4: Sound condition 5: Others ………… Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 62 Graduation paper 10: What are subjective reasons that lead to ineffective listening? Reasons A B C D (Never) (Sometimes) (Often) (Always) 1: Inability to understand natural native speaker 2: Vocabulary limitation 3: Concentration 4: Confidence Group 4: Recommendations 11: What you want to have an interesting listening lesson in class? A: Listening to songs B: Watching short videos made by native speakers that relate to the lesson C: Playing games to improve listening skills 12: Do you want your teacher to bring equipments that lead you to an exciting lesson? A: Yes B: No ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… Thanks for your co –operation Nguyễn Kim Thanh – K18A1 (2011 – 2015) Page 63