An investigation on listening skill of english major freshmen at tay do university by extensive listening

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE AN INVESTIGATION ON LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJOR FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY BY EXTENSIVE LISTENING Supervisor: Dang Thi Hanh, MA Student’s name: Chau Hong Thuy Trang Student’s code: 13D220201083 Class: English 8B April 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The success and final outcome of this study required a lot of guidance and assistance from many people First of all, I respect and thank my supervisor, Ms Dang Thi Hanh, MA at Tay Do University for providing me all support and guidance with her enthusiastic, thoughtful and informative instruction Secondly, I want to show my special thanks to Faculty of Literature and Linguistics for giving me the opportunity and permission to carry out proposal research I also would like to thank all participants of this study for having helped me to complete survey and interview Finally, I want to give my gratefulness to my family for the loves and supports This is the motivation that helps I accomplish this study i COMMENT …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ii TABLES OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………….i COMMENT……………………………………………………………………ii TABLE OF CONTENT……………………………………………………… iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of study 1.3 The organization of study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of listening and its importance 2.1.1 Definition of listening 2.1.2 The importance of listening skill 2.2 Listening strategies 2.2.1 Nature of strategies 2.2.2 Categories of listening 2.3 Factors affecting listening skill 2.3.1 Vocabulary 2.3.2 Grammar 2.3.3 Pronunciation, intonation and accent 2.3.4 Background knowledge 10 2.4 The term of extensive listening 10 2.4.1 The definition of extensive listening 10 iii 2.4.2 Benefits of extensive listening in learning English 11 2.5 Previous studies 13 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTIONS – HYPOTHESIS 15 3.1 Research aims 15 3.2 Research questions 15 3.3 Hypothesis 15 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 16 4.1 Design 16 4.2 Participants 16 4.3 Instruments 16 4.4 Procedure 17 CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUTCOME 18 REFERENCES QUESTIONNAIRE iv ABSTRACT This survey research presents the process of the study about “AN INVESTIGATION ON LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJOR FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY BY EXTENSIVE LISTENING” The participants of this research are the freshmen from Bachelor of English class at Tay Do University about 40 students of class English 11B, course 2016 – 2020 In study process, questionnaire is used as instruments to collect the data The results of the research will explain how EL is able to help learners overcome some of the barriers they face in listening English by extensive listening v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the researcher would like to present the rationale, significance and the organization of the study 1.1 Rationale Language is our primary source of communication It is the method through which people share their ideals and thoughts with others There are thousands of languages in this world Countries have their own national languages Therefore, people need a general language to exchange information As a result, English is considered as the international language because it is the official language in a large number of countries and it is taught in other countries as a foreign language In Vietnam, English is taught as a subject in school and it is an indispensable factor to get a good job When learning English, students often concentrate on four basic skills They are listening, speaking, reading and writing Among these skills, listening is an important skill which needs to be developed This research is made to figure out an investigation on listening skill of English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening 1.2 The significance of study The research is conducted to help the freshmen majoring in English recognize their listening skill by extensive listening 1.3 The organization of study The investigation consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Research aim-Research questions-Hypothesis Chapter 4: Research methodology Chapter 5: Expected outcome CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of listening and its importance 2.1.1 Definition of listening Listening is receiving language through the ears Listening involves identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and sentences When we listen, we use our ears to receive sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to convert these sounds into messages that mean something to us Different from other skills, listening needs to deal with spoken language which is often unplanned and typically exhibits short idea units Despite of being a difficult concept to define in the eyes of researchers, some of them have introduced definitions of listening from various perspectives According to Howatt and Dakin (1974), “listening is ability to identify and understand what others are saying This process involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the speaker's grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning” An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously Ronald and Roskelley (1985) define “listening as an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and reading demand” Purdy (1991) defines listening as “the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering and responding to the expressed verbal and nonverbal needs, concerns and information offered by the human beings” Described listening as a set of activities that involve “the individual” is capacity to apprehend, recognize, discriminate or even ignore Buck (2001) wrote that “listening help us a personal and individual, and a series of process which begin with deciphering incoming sounds and later make meaning out of them” In short, listening is a broad term used to refer to complex affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes Affective processes include the motivation to attend to others; cognitive processes include attending to, understanding, receiving, and interpreting content and relational messages; and behavioural processes include responding with verbal and nonverbal feedback 2.1.2 The importance of listening skill Listening is a skill of critical significance in all aspects of our lives - from maintaining our personal relationships, to getting our jobs done, to taking notes in class, to figuring out which bus to take to the airport Regardless of how we're engaged with listening, it is important to understand that listening involves more than just hearing the words that are directed at us In a study conducted in 1950, it has been found that when we communicate, 45% of this comes from listening, 30% from speaking, 15% from reading and 10% from writing People develop sound judgment from their experiences and this can be shared to others in the form of communication With the highest percentage of involvement in the exchange of information, listening has to be considered an English language forerunner As humans communicate at about 71% of their waking time, it can be concluded that listening is utilized in most parts of the day In summary, listening plays a vital role in learning English That is the reason why students majoring in English should pay attention skill 2.2 Listening strategies 2.2.1 Nature of strategies The word "strategy" appears as an essential part of learning Discussing about t origin of the word, Oxford (1990) cited that it "comes from the ancient Greek word "strategies”, which means steps or actions taken for the purpose of winning a war” (p.21) The control and goal-directedness remain in the modern version Oxford (1990) defines language learning strategies as "approaches or techniques the learners use to enhance their progress in developing L2 skills" p22) From this definition, Li (2010) concluded that foreign language learning strategies refer behaviors or thinking in learning process to make it effective All types of listening activities that allow learners to receive a lot of comprehensible and enjoyable listening input These activities can be teacherdirected dictations or read-aloud or self-directed listening for pleasure that can be done outside the classroom The key consideration here is that learners get to a lot of meaningful listening practice (p 56) As can be seen from the above definition, extensive listening can be done as an in-class or out of class activities, but the important thing to remember is that students get to a lot of meaningful listening practice In order for the students to be willing to engage in sustained listening practice, the language must be comprehensible and the contents of the materials interesting and enjoyable It is believed that this kind of sustained practice can provide learners with a cognitive map, i.e., a network of linguistic information from which learners can "build up the necessary knowledge for using the language" (Nation& Newton, 2009, p 38) In addition, from the perspective of a skill learning theory (e.g., Dekeyser, 2007), language learning takes a lot of practice The kind of practice afforded by extensive listening enables L2 learners to move from the slow and controlled processing of language elements (e.g., sounds, words, phrases) to the faster, and automatic processing of these elements This is particularly important where lower proficiency learners of English are concerned While they have acquired some basic listening skills, their bottom-up processing skill is still at a level that is not efficient enough to process normal speech In order to be able to process spoken language at normal speed, the students' bottom-up processing skills will have to be automatized through repeated practice so that its use becomes "fully spontaneous, effortless, fast, and errorless" (DeKeyser, 2007, p 3) Extensive listening is well-suited to provide the kind of practice needed to develop this automaticity in L2 listening 2.4.2 Benefits of extensive listening in learning English Extensive listening can improve our students' listening comprehension primarily because it enables them to process spoken language more accurately and 11 fluently In a chapter on extensive listening (Renandya, 2011: 32-33), he discusses a number of language learning benefits associated with extensive listening, some of which are listed below: First, it can enhance learners' ability to deal with normal speech rate, which for many beginning L2 learners is perceived to be too fast Beginning students often complain about the difficulty of understanding spoken language, not because the content is difficult or the language is too hard, but because it is too fast (Renandya, 2012) Second, it can improve their word recognition skill Students report that they can often recognize words in writing, but not in speech Again, lower proficiency students seem to have problems recognizing words in speech and frequent listening practice seems to facilitate the development of automaticity in sound-script relationships Third, it can enhance their bottom-up listening skills, in particular the skills of recognizing word boundaries In speech, words often take on different forms from when they are said in isolation Speech phenomena such as assimilation (e.g., in class ing class), contractions (e.g., going to gonna), resyllabification (e.g., bend it ben dit) are common in speech and known to cause listening problems to lower proficiency learners Finally, extensive listening can give students a lot of opportunities to experience a high level of language comprehension Students experience a deeper degree of comprehension when they listen to a spoken text, because it is this type of comprehension that is more likely to lead to acquisition Some research evidence that shows that repeated listening of the same material (called narrow listening) can lead to deeper comprehension Dupuy (1999), for example, found that for her beginning learners of French as a foreign language, a higher degree of comprehension (95% and above) is possible only after the third or fourth listening 12 In short, Extensive listening has an important role in the development of learner’s aural comprehension ability, particularly in situations where students need exposure to large amounts of comprehensible input For most learners, especially those EFL settings, thistype of input is most readily available through extended listening Since learners all have different learning styles, providing opportunities to engage in EL should benefit a wider range of learners than in the case of intensive or classroom listening With access to the internet now nearly universal in many areas, opportunities to find appropriate listening texts of a suitable level of difficulty and interest should become increasingly easy 2.5 Previous studies In the other research, the researchers are also study about some problems affected extensive listening According to Wm R Holden III was study the topic “Extensive Listening: A new approach to an old problem” said that the best way to master something is to it regularly for an extended length of time The participants was a few Japanese English students And the result will explain how EL is able to help learners overcome some of the barriers they face in learning a second language, examine EL for the challenges it poses L2 learners, and provide a few guidelines for instructors who wish to incorporate extensive listening as a component of a language teaching program About the topic, “The Effects of Extensive Listening for Pleasure on the Proficiency Level of Foreign Language Learners in an Input-based Setting” by Emrah BOZAN to examine the relationship between extensive listening for pleasure/extra practice and English as a foreign language proficiency in an inputbased setting For the study, 85 college students whose proficiency levels were A1 or A2 were recruited They took a pre-test including listening and use of English sections (grammar and vocabulary) at the beginning of the Spring 2015 semester After a semester, they took a post-test, which was the same as the pre-test, and 13 completed a listening habits questionnaire The results also suggest that there is a positive relationship between extensive listening and proficiency level, which means the more learners extensive listening, the more they improve their global language skills 14 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTIONS – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aims This investigation aims to find out listening skill of English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening The most important purpose of this research is to help them recognize that extensive listening is an effective ways to improve their listening ability 3.2 Research questions The research is expected to figure out how to improve listening skill of English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening Therefore, this research is required to answer the following research question: Does extensive listening help English major freshmen at Tay Do University improve their listening skill? 3.3 Hypothesis According to most of English majored students at Tay Do University listening is the most difficult skill Students have faced difficulties in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation They not apply rightly listening strategies Lack of background knowledge is also a big problem which needs to be concentrated This research is supposed to be a tool which will find out ways to improve in listening skill by extensive listening 15 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Design That is a combination of Quantitative The questionnaire will be given to all participants The data from participants will be collected through the questionnaires The collected information will be analyzed to show the investigation that freshmen majoring in English faced 4.2 Participants The participants of this study are freshmen majoring in English, course 11 at Tay Do University Their ages ranged from 18 to 22 who come from different areas, both rural and urban They speak Vietnamese as mother tongue and English is considered as their foreign language They have been learning English for to to 13 years The main material of English listening at university is Interaction 1, silver edition (Cheryl Pavlik; Margaget Keenan Segal; published by McGraw-Hill ESL/ELT, a business unit of the McGraw-Hill Companies) They will be given questionnaires in order to get information about their investigation with studying listening 4.3 Instruments Questionnaire is used to collect the participants’ idea about the investigation in learning listening subjects The students share their opinions which are essential in the research process Thus, the questionnaire is used as the instrument in this research The questionnaire includes questions and statements and it is classified into the following groups: Group Summary question group’s content a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Students’ background b From to 15 An investigation of student faced in listening 16 4.4 Procedure Duration (12 weeks) Step 1: from the 1st week to 4th week Activities in study process - Designing the framework of the research - Designing questionnaire and interview Step 2: from the 5th week to 7th week - Delivering the questionnaire to students and interview to students - Collecting the data from the questionnaire and interview Step 3: from the 8th week to 12th - Analyzing the collected data from week questionnaire and interview - Completing the paper 17 CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUTCOME Listening plays an important role in learning a language Students majoring in English, especially freshmen, usually face many problems when listening This research aims to find out investigation in listening skill of English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening have to face in listening including: Lack of vocabulary will be a big obstacle to most freshmen in listening comprehension their vocabulary about fields; topic they hear will limit to understand the message from speakers Complex grammatical structures which always interfere with student's listening comprehension are partly due to the structural component of the text because English and Vietnamese belong to different language families The listening problems students face stem from unfamiliarity with certain pronunciation features They cannot apprehend properly due to the pronunciation of the speakers with different accents such as American, British They not capture the significance of specific patterns of stress In addition, they have difficult in understanding what they hear that intonation suffers About listening strategies: Students often translate all things they hear into their mother tongue They have a tendency to pay a lot of attention to details, facts, or words, rather than meaning or the main ideas of the context In addition, they are not interested in the speaker They assume they know and understand what other people are saying and only vague messages are interpreted Students sometimes wait for the speaker's ideas; they can be pushed into passive listening Background knowledge has a significant effect on listening Providing the learners with background knowledge as well as systemic knowledge provide, learners with the necessary information to facilitate listening on a preciously unfamiliar topic Helping students develop listening proficiency has always been a particularly difficulties aspect of foreign language teaching, not least because listening involves of a number of complex, interrelated cognitive processes which 18 must occur simultaneously within fractions of a second for a message to be interpreted correctly 19 REFERENCES  Anderson (1995) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition Ausubel (1968) Cognition, Education, and Deafness: Directions for Research and Instruction Buck (2001) Building a Validity Argument for a Listening Test of Academic Proficiency Byrnes, Nagle & Sander 1986 Swaiman's Pediatric Neurology E-Book: Principles and Practice DeKeyser (2007) Practice in a Second Language: Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology Dornyei (2005) The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition Dunkel, P (1991) Listening in the native and second/foreign language: Toward an integration of research and practice Dupuy (1999) Transition towards Sustainable Mobility Emrah BOZAN The Effects of Extensive Listening for Pleasure on the Proficiency Level of Foreign Language Learners in an Input-based Setting file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/extensive%20listening%202.pdf Gilbert (1984) Is There a Single True Morality Goh (2000) A cognitive perspective on language learners’ listening comprehension problems Habte-Gabr, E (2006) The Importance of Socio-affective Strategies in Using EFL for Teaching Mainstream Subjects the Journal of Humanizing Language Teaching Harmer(2001) Studying Second Language Acquistion from a Qualitive P.288 20 Hinofotis, F and Baily, K., American undergraduate reaction to the communication skills of foreign teaching assistants, TESOL “80: Building Bridges: Research and Practice in TESL”, Alexandria, V.A, 1980 Howatt and Dakin (1974) Language laboratory materials Li (2010) Computational Intelligence in Remanufacturing P.244 Luca Lampariello An Easy Way to Learn Foreign Languages Meara, P and G Jones, 1988 Vocabulary Size as a Placement Indicator.In P Grunwell (ed) London: Applied Linguistics in Society Mendelsohn, D (2001) Listening comprehension: We’ve come a long way, but Contact, 27, 33–40 Murphy (1985) Why People Earn What They Earn and What You Can Do Now to Make More Nation and Newton 2009 Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking Nunan, D (1999) Approaches to teaching listening in language classroom O'Connor (2003) Classroom communication and instructional Process.Editors Barbara Mae Gayle ,Raymond W O’Malley, J M., & Chamot, A U (1990) Learning strategies in second language acquisition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Purdy (1991) Listening in everyday life Rahimi, M., & Katal, M (2013) The impact of metacognitive instruction on EFL learners’ listening comprehension and oral language proficiency Journal of Teaching Language Skills Renandya & Farrell (2011) English Language Teaching Today: Linking Theory and Practice 21 Ronald and Roskelley (1985) Listening as an act of composing.Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Rost, M (2002) Teaching and researching listening London: Pearson Education Shaklin (1994) Dimesions of Human Behavior: Person and Environment Stevick, E.(1978) Pronunciation for English as an International Language.TESOL Quartery.Pp 235 -241 Vandergrift (2005) Facilitating second language listening comprehension: Acquiring successful strategies Wm R Holden III Extensive Listening: A new approach to an old problem file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/extensive%20listening%201.pdf Young (1997) Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology Zhang & Liu (2008) Comprehensive Biomaterials P.556 22 QUESTIONNAIRE Dear friends, My name is Chau Hong Thuy Trang I come from English 8B at Tay Do University, and I am currently a senior majoring in English I am very grateful to you for spending your valuable time helping me Now I am carrying out a research entitled “an investigation on listening skill of English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening” This is the questionnaire used to finish these below questions carefully because your answers are very important ad helpful to my research Once again, thank you so much! Student’s full name: ………………………………………………… Age: ………………… Gender: Male Female Class: …………………………………………………………………………… Please read the following question and circle the appropriate answer for each question Give specific answers if needed How long have you studied English? …….years Where are you from? a Urban area/ city b Rural area/ countryside Which skill did you studying in high school? (choose more than one answer) a Listening c Reading b Speaking d Writing What skill you like best? a Listening c Reading b Speaking d Writing 23 What you think about listening? a Very important d Not important b Important e Not important at all c Normal How you feel about your listening skill? a Very good d Bad b Good e Very bad c Normal How much time you spend on practicing listening a day? a …………… hour(s) a day b …………… minute(s) a day What is the most difficult skill with you? a Listening c Reading b Speaking d Writing Please read the following statements and mark (v) suitable column to express your opinion Statements Strongly Agree No ideas Disagree Strongly disagree (1) Listening plays an important role in studying and everyday life aspect 10 If you have a good listening skill, you can exchange more information in communicating (2) (3) (4) (5) 11 You lack of vocabulary 12 You not understand a word with more than one meaning 13 Grammar structure is an important factor affecting listening skill 14 You translate all things they hear into your native language 15 You try to hear every word and write down anything you catch without thinking about whether it is important or not