Listening skills of the beginners in bbc english center the difficulties and solutions

Graduation paper STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Honestly, the thesis has been resulted from my own interesting as well as my difficulty in teaching the beginners in BBC English Center I did observation in English listening class for the beginners I also directly distributed the questionnaires to the right beginning learners in BBC English Center Therefore, all the statistic given must be reliable Moreover all the reference was quoted and summarized from the clear original sources which have been shown in the references part I trustfully assure that the thesis has been completed by myself Hanoi, 27th April, 2015 Student Supervisor Đào Thị Trang Nguyễn Thế Hóa Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper ABSTRACT Listening is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in real life In learning any foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill It is common knowledge that listening to a message is not as simple as hearing it because the listeners have to understand the information through message and give the right answer Realizing the problems from teaching experiences, the author would like to research tittled "Listening skills of the beginners in BBC English Center: the difficulties and solutions" The thesis will study the subjective and objective difficulties of the beginners in learning listening skills Then the author would like to find out the reasons for those problems and give feasible solutions for both teachers and learners in BBC English Center Therefore, the author applied the quantitative method, the qualitative method and the descriptive method to the research And the collecting data instruments like questionnaires, interviews, observations were used to the study The results of the research will point out the difficulties that the beginners meet when they learn listening skills in BBC English Center More importantly, it helps the author find out the causes of problems so that she can work out the right solutions to tackle them With the hope of improving the beginning learner's listening skills competence, the author has tried her best to this thesis with her own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My BA graduation thesis has been completed with a lot of encouragement and support from my teacher, colleagues and my family First of all, I would like to express my deep great thank to my supervisor, Nguyen The Hoa, M.A for his dispensable and useful advice, suggestions and supports to help me finish the thesis successfully And I wish to thank many teachers of the Faculty of English in Hanoi Open University for having taught me during the time I studied in here so that I can get background knowledge to complete the study In addition, I am grateful to all my friends who have encouraged me a lot and shared useful information to help me to complete the thesis Moreover, it is my pleasure to acknowledge the director of BBC English Center, who permitted me to survey in his center I wish to thank all my colleagues who have given me some practical advice and suggestions and let me observe their classes My thanks are also given to the fifty beginning learners in BBC English Center willing to complete the questionnaires Finally, I am happy to thank my family, who always approved and encouraged me during the time of doing the thesis Hanoi, 27th April , 2015 Student Đào Thị Trang Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT LIST OF TABLE PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Aims and objectives of the study Scopes of the study Research questions Methods of the study 10 Design of the report 10 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 12 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 12 1.1 Listening skills 12 1.1.1 Definition of listening skills 12 1.1.2 Traditional point of view on listening skills 14 1.1.3 Present point of view on listening skills 15 1.2 Classification of listening 16 1.2.1 Real-life listening 16 1.2.1.1 Kinds of real-life listening 16 1.2.1.2 Characteristics of real-life listening 17 1.2.2 Classroom listening 18 1.2.2.1 Intensive listening 18 Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper 1.2.2.2 Extensive listening 19 1.3 Sub-skills involved in listening skills 19 1.4 Listening stages 20 1.4.1 Pre-listening 20 1.4.2 While-listening 22 1.4.3 Post-listening 24 1.5 Difficulties in learning the listening skills 25 1.5.1 Vocabulary 25 1.5.2 Background knowledge 26 1.5.3 Speed rate 26 1.5.4 Phonological aspect 28 1.5.5 Physical condition 29 1.6 Summary 29 CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH 31 2.1 An overview on BBC English Center 31 2.2 Data analysis 32 2.2.1 Participants 32 2.2.2 Instrumentations 32 2.2.3 Survey questionnaire 33 2.3 Finding and discussion 34 2.3.1 The beginners' attitude towards listening skills (question 1,2,3) 34 2.3.2 Problem in learning the listening skills (Question 4) 35 2.3.2.1 Problem from the listeners 36 2.3.2.2 Problem from the listening material 38 2.3.2.3 Problem from the physical settings 42 Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper 2.3.3 The beginners' attitude towards their teachers creating listening interest and motivation (Question 5,6) 43 2.4 Summary 44 CHAPTER 3: FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS TO HELP THE BEGINNERS IN BBC ENGLISH CENTER IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS 46 3.1 Suggestion for the teachers 46 3.1.1 Making the beginners aware of the nature of listening process 46 3.1.2 Promoting the beginners to be fully aware of their purpose of listening 47 3.1.3 Encouraging the beginners to have extensive listening habit 48 3.1.4 Activating the beginners to work in different stages of listening 49 3.2 Suggestions for the beginners in BBC English Center 51 3.2.1 Suggested solutions to solve difficulties of the beginners in BBC English Center 51 3.2.2 Suggested activities for the beginners in BBC English Center to improve listening skills 54 3.3 Summary 55 PART C: CONCLUSION 56 Summary and major finding of the study 56 Limitations and recommendations for the further study 58 REFERENCES 60 Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper LIST OF TABLE Table 1: The beginners' attitude towards listening skills Table 2: Problem in learning the listening skills from the listeners Table 3: Problem in learning the listening skills from the listening materials Table 4: Problem in learning the listening skills from the physical settings Table 5: The beginners' attitude towards their teachers creating the listening interest and motivation Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study In Vietnam in recent years the number of people who wish to know and master of English has been becoming more and more increasingly, since Vietnam adopted an open-door policy, teaching and learning English have been paid much more attention to English becomes a part of the general education, it is one of the main subject in almost school in Vietnam In addition, there are many English centers which are opened to help learners have another opportunities to improve their English Among these centers is BBC English Center As an assistant professor of English , the author realizes that listening skill seems to be the most difficulty of the learners when they start to study in the BBC English Center So the author would like to present the research title: "Listening skills of the beginners in BBC English Center: the difficulties and solutions" because of some reasons: Firstly, The main objective of learning English is to communicate fluently Hence, in order to obtain that aim, the learners not only need grammatical system, lexical system, phonological system, but they also have to practive fours skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing and they are closely interrelated to one another and all necessary Of these fours skills, listening is regarded as a the most important skill in communication in the real life, we are only to talk sensibly when we understand what is said to us Moreover, listening is a useful means of providing learners with comprehension input, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process Secondly, teaching English in school still focuses on grammar, structures, vocabularies so learners are very good at doing exercises of written form, these Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper forms exercise mostly concern on grammar, reading or writing comprehension The consequence is that learners have a lot of difficulties in listening Lastly, many learners are not interested in learning the listening skills because they find it boring On the other hand, practicing this skill is quite difficult and it takes long time Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to foster the passion for regular listening and to cater the learner's need to listen for relaxation and pleasure Aims and objectives of the study - To help the beginners in BBC English Center understand the reason why they find it is difficult to learn listening skills - To give some feasible solutions with the hope that the beginners in BBC English Center can know suitable method in learning English listening skills, find the best way to improve their problem when listening and communicate with foreign people efficiently - To help the teachers in BBC English Center know the problem of the beginners in learning listening skills Scopes of the study Teaching and learning English, especially listening skills, are so sophisticated and varied among these level However, within the study, the author will only focus on some main difficulties of the beginners in BBC English Center What is more, the study also give some suggestions to help them improve listening comprehension Research questions The study mainly focuses on answering three following research questions: - What are the difficulties of the beginners in BBC English Center in learning Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page Graduation paper listening skills? - What factors have an influence on the listening skills of beginners in BBC English Center? - What are feasible solution to help the beginners in BBC English Center improve listening skills? Methods of the study In the research, the theoretical foundation is based on the knowledge which I have collected through materials and my supervisor's support In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, quantitative and qualitative research methods are used and a questionnaire is designed as a means for research to collect data The questionnaire is given to the beginners in BBC English Center with the hope to find out their difficulties when they learn listening skills Based on the result of the survey, data analysis was done to indicate some problems of the beginners in BBC English Center and solutions to improve learning listening skills in the center Design of the report The study consists of three main parts: introduction, development, and conclusion Part A, "INTRODUCTION" presents the basic information such as the rationale, the aims and objective, the research question, the scope, the methods and also the design of the study Part B, "DEVELOPMENT" consists of three chapters: - Chapter one, literature review, presents different views of listening skills, the importance of listening , the classification of listening, sub-skill involved in listening skills, listening stages, as well as difficulties in learning listening skills Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 10 Graduation paper Secondly, in the while-listening stage, the teachers should not a lot of teaching as the learners will the while-listening stage by themselves, in pair or in group It is time for the learners to construct clear, accurate meaning and they interpret the speakers' verbal massage and non-verbal cues During this stage, the beginners verify and revise their predictions One thing to keep in mind is that listening skills lesson is task-based, the learners make interpretations and judgment based on what they know and assess what they need to know, thus the teachers should de less up-front teaching To activate the beginners in while-listening stage, the teachers should: - Set up and vary listening tasks at different level and different cases - Encourage the beginners to work independently to comprehend the speakers' language, ideas, and the topic - Give the learners helps whenever it is needed, but not inflicting help on those who not need - Encourage the beginners in BBC English Center to help each other, so that the emphasis is on the successful completion of the task rather than on who got it "wright" or "wrong" - Not treat the activities at test to be marked and scored - Encourage the beginners to alter their answer if they wish to, perhaps after listening for a second time - Help the learners know when to request clarification of what they not understand - Encourage the beginners' critical reactions and personal responses to the speaker's ideas and use of language The last stage is post-listening stage, it is important for the teachers to Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 50 Graduation paper encourage the beginners to reflect, clarify, and extend their thinking about what they have heard by making concrete responses which may be written, spoken, visual, or dramatic Many of the same means use to help the learners extend and clarify their reading experience can be used to extend and clarify their listening experience 3.2 Suggestions for the beginners in BBC English Center 3.2.1 Suggested solutions to solve difficulties of the beginners in BBC English Center Make summaries as you listen - If possible, this by making notes This helps you concentrate as it gives you something to to stop your mind from wandering However, it is not always possible to make written notes In this case, you can make mental summaries Good listeners take advantage of pauses to quickly sum up what has just been said Do this as often as you can in English, and you will notice a great improvement in your ability to remember what has been said to you Focus on the main idea - If you hear a word you don’t know, don’t worry Many learners of English will hear an unknown word and immediately their mind wanders as to the meaning of it They stop listening, trying to figure out the meaning of this one word This makes you miss the main idea, which is the whole point of listening in the first place Just listen to get the gist If you hear an unknown word you can always look it up later There are some suggested clues to identify the main points in listening: - Discourse marker is considered to be the bridge that leads to the points It is such a natural thing that the speakers often signal the main points with discourse markers Different markers with particular expressions keep listeners catch up to Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 51 Graduation paper the turning points of the task Marker of addition (in addition, moreover, furthermore, etc) announces a modification or an addition to an idea while marker of cause and sequence (because, due to the fact that, as a result, consequently) informs us the reason and the result of a fact or an action - Repetition is supposed to be the signal of main points When a word or phrase is repeated for several times, possibly it covers the important points - The speed of the speech also supplies cues for catching the main points As a matter of fact, the natural talk is very fast to second language learners so it makes up some trouble to the non-native speaker Nevertheless, in the streaming of listening students would notice that sometimes the speaker speaks a bit slower and clearer than he did before This is mostly the points of the listening It is the chance for the learners to capture the necessary information in a listening text Emphasis is a natural factor in speaking so speaker also emphasizes to signal the most significant ideas What the learners should is to pay attention to the speed and the intonation of the speaker and identify the points Avoid translation – To get better at listening in English, you have to listen in English The more you translate, the more your brain has to Try to understand the message in English rather than making sense of it in your own language This will also help you access the English in your brain much quicker, improving in your speaking, reading and writing as well as your listening Anticipate the speaker’s next point - Try to guess what the speaker is going to say next If you get it right, you are listening well and you understand the main point If you get it wrong, this could mean that you are missing the main point This is a good way to assess your listening skills for yourself Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 52 Graduation paper Take note quickly - Effective note-taking requires that you records information quickly To this, good note taker not write down every word or try to take note in neat sentences; instead they write only key words and phrases In addition, good note taker use shorthand when they take note In other words, they use symbols to represent words or ideas Here are some of the symbols: Symbols Meaning > more than < less than = equal ＃ different ♀ female ♂ male w/ with w/o without b/c because k thousand / per/out of @ Each or at Enriching the vocabulary - the number of English vocabulary is extremely huge, therefore you should enrich your vocabulary day by day If you know a lot of new word, you will not be interrupted during listening Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 53 Graduation paper As with anything in language, the best way to improve is to practice, practice, practice Take advantage of being surrounded by English when you study with BBC English Center Take out your headphones and listen to the English around you This will help you improve your understanding and be a better user of English overall 3.2.2 Suggested activities for the beginners in BBC English Center to improve listening skills - Utilize free online resources, such as the BBC Learning English site and the English Club, which both feature free lessons and activities to strengthen your listening skills These sites offer exercises for diction, plus activities with radio programs, news programs, poetry and more - Participate in tandem language exchanges by scheduling sessions in which half the time is spent with you assisting an English person in learning your language and the other half is spent with that person letting you practice your English This method is a fun way to meet new people and practice with others that understand what it is like to learn a new language, and may thus tend to be more patient You can find people interested in tandem language exchanges by reading the bulletin board at a local language school or community college or through online classifieds - Listen to music in English, and then read the lyrics that go along with the song to see if you understood what you heard Listen to the song again with the lyrics and read or sing along It is important to first listen to the music without the lyrics to see how much you can understand without help - Watch English movies without subtitles and try to follow along Even if you not understand each word, study the actors' body movements and verbal cues to Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 54 Graduation paper figure out what is going on Repeat the movie with the subtitles to see if you were correct in your comprehension Remember, the subtitles generally not match word-for-word, as they are designed to be read quickly, so use them as a way to understand what is happening within the scene and not as a perfect translation of what is being said - Volunteer to speak with English-speaking tourists or find a position at a local tour company This will allow you to practice your English listening skills on a regular basis with English speakers The experience may be frustrating at first, but you will be immersed in an environment where you can quickly improve your English listening skills 3.3 Summary In this chapter, the writer has given some feasible solutions for the learners to solve the difficulties when learning listening skills and suggested activities for them to improve listening skills Furthermore, the author has also provided some recommendations for the teachers in BBC English Center to help their learners listening efficiently However, as with anything in language, the best way to improve is to practice, practice and practice The learners should try to practice listening English as much as they can by listening English song, watching international channels,etc The teachers should often renew the teaching method and use modern teaching techniques to motivate the learners' interest Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 55 Graduation paper PART C: CONCLUSION Summary and major finding of the study The main content of the thesis is divided into three sections Firstly, it is literature review which presents different views of listening skills, the importance of listening , the classification of listening, sub-skill involved in listening skills, listening stages, as well as difficulties in learning listening skills Secondly, this is the most important sections of the thesis, it is practical research which deals with analyses on general learning situation at BBC English Center Also in this section, there is a focus on data analysis, finding and discussion Finally , section presents feasible solution for both the teachers and the learners to help the beginners in BBC English Center improve listening skills and Basing on the previous analysis of the beginners' difficulties in BBC English Center, the study now comes on to review the major findings record from thesis In term of the beginners' attitude toward listening skills, it is evident that the purposes of the beginner for learning listening are to pass the exam, to find a goog job, to communicate and also to entertain But the main purpose is to passing the exam because over a half of fifty beginners is studying And with the people who are working they want to master English so that they can get a good job In addition, there are a small number of the learner learning English with the communicating and entertaining purpose Most of the beginners in BBC English Center think that listening skills is the most difficult skill, there are a little of them find it easy to learn However the beginners in the center almost have an awareness of the importance of listening skills when study a foreign language, Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 56 Graduation paper especially English The beginners in BBC English Center have to face with many problems in learning the listening skills They often meet difficult in making prediction what speakers talk about because they lack of background knowledge, thus they usually have no ideas with the new topic Then the beginners have problem in guessing unknown words or phrases and recognizing the main point because they don't know how to take note efficiently In addition, listening material is also a big problem with the beginners in learning the listening skills They often find it difficult in accent, authentic material, colloquial words, speed of speech, linking words, ungrammatical sentences, hesitation, and length of listening text In term of physical settings, the beginners have a little issue, they sometimes meet problem with the equipment and tape because the center always equip the modern thing to help the learner to listen effectively However, the noise often affected to the listening of beginners, it maybe from the learners' discussion, transportation on the road, etc The way of teachers in BBC English Center to motivate the learner in listening skill is extremely efficient, because they still use traditional way, providing new words and structures, before the listening Some teachers give guiding question to help the listeners think about the text They sometimes give suggestion for doing the task, and also help the beginners to understand the purpose of listening text As the result, the number of learners, who feel a lot of interesting in the listening lesson, is not too high Some of them still feel rather interesting, and just a little interesting Thus, the teachers in the center need to renew the teaching method frequently, and change the way to motivate the beginners in listening lesson Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 57 Graduation paper Limitations and recommendations for the further study * Limitations of the study The research has been carried out with my great effort However, it certainly can not avoid some weakness due to the researcher's limitation of time, knowledge, materials, other objective factors Listening skills is effected by social factors such as age, sex, professional, education, and by physical aspect for example voice, intelligent, but they are not mentioned in this study The interview has just taken place in the learners, not in the teachers So the teachers' opinion and observation was not exploited * Recommendations for the further study Although the difficulties in learning listening skill of the beginners in BBC English Center and feasible solutions to improve it have been investigated so far in the thesis It can not cover all the aspect of issue and all effective solutions Moreover, the thesis have been taken to find out the difficulties of beginners in learning listening skills, and the difficulties of teachers in teaching listening skills have not been considered yet As the result, further researches can further find out more about the topic Here are some suggestion: - Teaching the listening skills for the beginners in BBC English Center: difficulties and solutions - The difficulties of learning listening skills of the beginners in BBC English Center in term of social aspect - The difficulties of learning listening skills of the beginners in BBC English Center in term of physical aspect The thesis has been completed with the greatest effort However, during the Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 58 Graduation paper making of study, shortcomings and mistakes are inevitably avoidable Therefore, sympathetics comments and suggestion are highly appreciated Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 59 Graduation paper REFERENCES Anderson and Lynch (1988) Listening Oxford University Express Broughton, G., Brumfit, C., Flavell, R., Hill, P., & Pincas, A (1978) Teaching English As A Foreign Language London: Routledge & kegan Paul Brown, H.D (2001) Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy New York: Longman Bulletin (1952) The teaching of listening In Arif Saricoban Hacettepe University Clark & Clark (1977) Psychology and language: An introduction to psycholinguistics New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Doff, A (1995) Teaching English: A training course of teachers Cambridge University Express Gillham, B (2000) Developing a questionnaire A & C Black Howatt, A and J Darkin (1974) Language laboratory materials Jo McDonough, Christopher Shaw, and Hitomi Masuhara (2013) Materials and methods in ELT John Willey & Sons 10 Lindsay, C and Knight, P (2006) Learning and teaching English Oxford University Express 11 Martin, P (1993) Task for language teachers: A resource book for training and development Cambridge University Express 12 Micheal, B (2003) Advance listening DynEd International, Inc 13 O' Malley, J.M & Chamot, A.U (1989) Listening comprehension strategies in second language acquisition Applied Linguistics, 10(4), 418-437 14 Purdy, M (1997) Listening in everyday life University Express of America 15 Rivers Wilga, M (1986) Teaching foreign language skill The University of Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 60 Graduation paper Chicago Press P 157 16 Rost, M (1994) Listening London: Longman 17 Rost, M (2002) Teaching and researching listening London, UK: Longman 18 Samuels, S (1984) Factors influencing listening: Inside and Outside the head Modern Language Journal 19 Underwood, M (1989) Teaching listening New York: Longman 20 Ur, P (1992) Teaching listening comprehension Cambridge University Express P.4 21 William, L (1981) Communicative language teaching: A introduction Cambridge University Press Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 61 Graduation paper APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE Name: Age: Job: Gender: Male / Female Address: The purpose of this questionnaire is to identify current situation of learning listening skill of the beginners in BBC English Center Please answer the following questions Question 1: what is your purpose towards learning English? A: To pass the exam B: To find a good job C: To entertain D: To communicative Question 2: what you think about the listening skills? A: it is the most difficult skill B: It is a little difficult to learn C: It is as difficult as other skill D: It is easy to learn Question 3: what you think about the importance of learning listening skills? A: Very important B: Important C: A little important D: Not important Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 62 Graduation paper Question 4: How often you encounter these following problems? (put a tick in an appropriate column) Frequency Problems Making Never prediction Sometimes Often Always what speaker talk about Guessing unknown words or phrases Recognizing main point Unfamiliar topics Different accent Authentic material Colloquial words Speed of speech Linking words Ungrammatical sentences Hesitation Long listening Noise Poor tape quality Poor equipment Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 63 Graduation paper Question 5: What are your teachers' activities to create interest in the listening lesson? A: Helping the learners to understand the purpose of listening text B: Giving some guiding questions C: Providing new words and structures D: Giving some suggestions Question 6: How you feel about your teachers' motivation in the whole listening lesson? A: Very interest B: Rather interest C: Just a little interest D: not at all Đào Thị Trang – K18A3 (2011 – 2015) Page 64