Using interactive approach to teach english listening skills for lower secondary school students

Trang 1 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES PHAM THI MY HANH USING INTERACTIVE APPROACH TO TEACH ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS FOR LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTSM.A THESIS Fie

INTRODUCTION

Rationale

Nowadays, in the booming era of science, technology, and information, it is very necessary for citizens in each country to grasp the most commonly used language, that is English, as a means of communication and integration with other countries in the world Therefore, English has undoubtedly become the number one foreign language taught in Vietnam

In the past, the main goal of teaching and learning foreign languages was reading comprehension to serve literary, scientific, and technical research Today, in order to serve the open policy of innovation and globalization with the region and the world, the goal of foreign language teaching is communication Therefore, for students to communicate well, it is essential for teachers to shift their traditional grammar- translation teaching methods to communicative methods focusing on listening and speaking skills

Listening is one of the four important skills of learning a foreign language since we cannot communicate without it In order to have a successful conversation, we have to pay attention to understanding what other people say so that we can respond to it However, the teaching of listening skills is sometimes overlooked in many educational institutions due to several reasons such as lack of facilities for teaching listening, poor-quality listening resources, and no compulsory requirement of listening skills in mid-term or final tests

In fact, many students claim that listening is the weakest and most difficult of the four skills Why is listening so difficult? It is because of the fact that when students listen to the teacher, they get used to the teacher's tone In addition, teachers can read slowly, use gestures or actions to illustrate difficult listening parts Hence listening becomes easier But when listening to the tapes or recordings, students face the difficulties of being unable to control of what they hear, the speech on the tape is too fast, the content contains many new words etc Students who do not listen regularly will not recognize words that they know So how to help children expand their listening range so that a lesson in listening is less stressful and enjoyable This is the big question that makes English teachers think Steven Brown state:

“Listening in another language is a hard job, but we can make it easier by applying what we know about activating prior knowledge, helping students organize their learning by thinking about their purposes for listening, and if speaking is also a goal of the classroom, using well-structured speaking tasks informed by research Another theme will be motivation Because listening is so challenging, teachers need to think carefully about making our activities successful and our content interesting”

Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School is a public school in the suburb of Thai Nguyen City The school has three grade 7 with about 40 to 45 mixed-level students in each class Through classroom observations and interviews with students during the process of teaching, the research has found that most of the students were exposed to English quite late, and their English ability was rather limited Furthermore, many of them did not have the habit of learning English independently and usually depended on textbooks and teachers to acquire knowledge Most children learned English because it was a compulsory subject, and they learnt it just to pass written tests Some of the students did not have a desire to communicate with other people in English both inside and outside the classrooms Most students found it difficult to express their ideas in speech and writing and did not understand key information from conversation or text in audio and texts Their listening skills were under acceptable levels because most of the students were passive listeners They only listened when studying English lessons or taking tests, so the authentic environment to develop and enhance listening skills for students was almost nonexistent As an English teacher having taught for lower secondary school students for several years, I have found that students here were having many difficulties with learning listening or were even afraid of listening lessons They would prefer not to play out any listening errands and perform ineffectively in listening tests The question here is to find the right approach to help students develop their listening skills

Through browsing many studies on methods to teach listening, the author has found that interactive approach has proven to be very effective in teaching listening to EFL students in many different contexts and may be the answer to solve problems for secondary students at her own teaching context Therefore, all the above reasons have urged the researcher to carry out the study entitled: “Using interactive approach to teach English listening skills for lower secondary school students”.

Research aims

This study is intended with the aim of researching whether interactive approach helps students improve their listening skills in English To attain this aim, the subsequent objectives are commenced for the study:

- To realize an understanding of the difficulties encountered by grade 7 students at Thinh Duc lower secondary schools and the effects of applying the interactive process in teaching English listening skills (2) the students’ attitudes towards using interactive approach in teaching English listening skills

- To investigate the students’ attitudes towards using an interactive approach in teaching English listening skills.

Research questions

The aim of this study focuses on investigating the effects of the interactive approach in teaching listening skills and identifying students’ attitudes towards the use of the interactive approach at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School, Thai Nguyen province Therefore, the specific research questions addressed in this study are as follows:

1 To what extent does the use of interactive approach enhance students’ listening skill?

2 What are the students’ opinions towards the use of interactive approach in teaching listening skill?

Scope of the study

In this study, the researcher did not have the ambition to study all strategies to enhance listening in children There are many strategies to teach and improve listening ability, however, in this study, the researcher used an interactive method to help students at Thinh Duc Secondary School overcome difficulties in and enhance listening skills The researcher was assigned to teach English to 13 years old students at Thinh Duc Secondary School, Thai Nguyen City However, due to the time constraint, the researcher only focused on using experiencing interactive approach to teaching listening skills to 45 secondary students of grade 7A during the study period of 8 weeks and then asked students to respond to a questionnaire about their opinions and attitudes towards the use of interactive approach after trial teaching.

The significance of the study

The study is supposed to add to the advancement of educating and mastering listening abilities It targets assisting understudies with further developing their listening abilities by utilizing interactive approach By drawing out the aftereffects of the impact of interactive approach to foster understudies' listening abilities, and furnishing educational ramifications in managing this methodology, the research will some way or another make the accompanying commitments To start with, the discoveries of the study might be filled in as references for the educators of English to intend their instruction for a more successful methodology Moreover, the popularization of the findings would presumably facilitate the scientist herself and her colleagues to improve their teaching skills It also aids in the development of a welcoming learning environment In addition, it allows students to use and learn the language in practical and substantive ways Lastly, it also aims at increasing the volume of research in learning English listening for Vietnamese learners, especially for secondary students in Thai Nguyen.

Methodology of the study

Conducting the study, the researcher follows the general steps in Nunan's action research model (1992) She makes use of the quantitative method with the wish to explore the matter thoroughly The data are collected from the two following sources:

- Pre-test and post-test

Pre-test and post-test are used to assess the quality of the participants' listening performance before and after the research The two questionnaires are carried out after the pre-test and post-test, and their aim is to confirm and supplement the results of the tests.

Design of the thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction presents the rationale for conducting the study a longing with its aims, research questions, methods, significance and design

Chapter 2 - Literature Review conceptualizes the framework of the study including the key concepts A brief overview of the related studies are also provided

Chapter 3 - Research methodology presents the context, the methodology used in this study including the objects, data collection instruments, data collection procedure and analysis

Chapter 4 – Findings presents, gives a comprehensive analysis of the data and discussion gives on the findings of this study

Chapter 5: Conclusion offers the summary of findings, implications, limitations, recommendations and reflection of the researcher.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Listening

In terms of listening definitions, Anderson and Lynch (1988) had two influential views: traditional view and alternative view

As indicated by the traditional view, listening is viewed as one of the responsive abilities Students simply tune in to the messages or accounts and attempt to comprehend the significance of the speaker's expressions without seeing such factors as demeanor and shades of importance This prompts an issue that instructors simply test understudies' limit of hearing, not understudies' comprehension of the discussion or talk In this conventional manner, it is believed that encouraging listening is for sounds, however not for significance Subsequently, this view is condemned as unseemly and insufficient by Anderson and Lynch (1988)

Nonetheless, students are viewed as dynamic model developers in the elective view New data and audience members' own experience information are joined to arrive at full cognizance of what has been heard Anderson and Lynch (1988) concur with this view, which accentuates the dynamic translation and mix of audience members on approaching data Littlewood (1981) upholds this view also The creator comments that listening requires dynamic inclusion from audience members The idea of listening perception is that the audience members ought to be urged to be occupied with a functioning interaction of tuning in for importance, utilizing etymological signs and non-phonetic information

Listening is a receptive skill that involves responding to the oral language rather than producing the written language It is very useful in habitual action Helgesen and Brown (2007:3) say, “Listening competence is larger than speaking competence” There are many definitions of listening as Helgesen and Brown (2007; 4) cited: 1

“Listening is the process of constructing meaning from spoken input It means listening is not only hearing what people say but also comprehends it” (Rost, 2007:3)

9 2 “Listening comprehension is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language The study of listening comprehension in second language learning focuses on the role of individual linguistic units (e.g phonemes, words, grammatical structures) as well as the role of the listener's‟ expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and topic” (Richards and Schmidt, 2002:313)

Listening is seen as a functioning cycle in which people center around chosen parts of aural info, build significance from entries, and afterward relate what they have heard to existing information (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) All in all, listening is a functioning interaction of building significance and this is finished by applying audience members information to the approaching sounds in which various sorts of information are included including etymological information and non-phonetic information (Buck, 2001) because "comprehension takes place when input and knowledge are matched against each other" (Faerch & Kasper, 1986, p 264)

In short, in order to be successful in listening, it is advisable that "listening comprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all then ignored while other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult materials" (Wilga, 1986, p 157)

There are many varieties of listening we are able to classify these in keeping with variety of variables, together with listening purposes, the role of the beholder and therefore the sorts of text being listened to:

Several students see an enormous gap between listening activities within the schoolroom and actual situations this is often as a result of most listening materials including dialogues in textbooks are terribly grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakers often speak with utterly controlled speech, voice, tone, accent and proper grammar In real-life conversations, learners encounter numerous individuals of various genders, ages, accents, speeds, voices, and tones There could also be improper usage, incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap, etc There are 2 ways in which within which individuals typically listen in real-life, they're casual and focus listening a) Casual listening

A lot of students have a habit of listening to a radio while studying or the television is on while they are doing something else They listen with no particular purpose This kind of listening is called casual listening b) Focus listening

Focus listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the information we need to know or to study the language In this case, listeners often listen with much attention, but they do not listen to everything with equal concentration There is an association between listener's expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener's expectations and needs are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understood than which is not relevant or helpful

Classroom listening may be divided into two types: intensive listening and extensive listening a) Intensive listening:

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for detailed information or full comprehension; For example, listening to a dialogue on the tape to study its structures, intonation patterns in an English class b) Extensive listening:

Extensive listening is freer and more general listening to natural language or general ideas, not for particular detail or not necessary under the teacher's guidance The listening passage for extensive listening can be long or short The language t hat is used in the type of listening is often within the students' ability so that they find it pleasing and interesting when they are listening With this type of listening, students are not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar point linked to the rest of the course

Up to now, many linguists have accomplished research on listening competencies which includes Anderson and Lynch (1998), Underwood (1989), or Brown (1990) they all are of the view that the listening process isn't a simple process of an unmarried activity however a complicated one together with diverse sports After listening to a procedure with diverse stages involving bodily processing of the auditory device with the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, the nerve impulses, and so on, the listening technique takes place within the mind with a lot of sub- strategies

In terms of the character of those sub-strategies, Van Duzer (1997) shows 9 successive activities inside the listening process (1) figuring out a cause for listening;

(2) taking the raw speech and deposits a picture of it in short-term reminiscence; (three) trying to arrange the statistics by identifying the type of speech occasion ( a conversation, a lecture, a radio advertisement) and the characteristic of the message ( to steer/ inform/ request); (four) predicting records anticipated to be included within the message; (5) recalling background statistics (schemata) to assist interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the statistics to be held in lengthy-term reminiscence; and (9) deleting the original shape of the message that has been obtained into short-time period memory

Looking at the issue from other perspectives, other scientists assign listening process to a parallel processing model with bottom-up processing and top-down processing Each term “bottom-up processing” and “top-down processing” originally got here from computer technology and had been later delivered to the linguistic field backside-up processing incorporates the means of “statistics-driven”, and pinnacle- down processing is known as “know-how-driven” in laptop science (area, 1999) in the second language acquisition subject, the terms bottom-up processing and top- down processing are used to describe the cognitive approaches of second language listening or reading (Clement, 2007) Vandergrift (2007) commented that listeners preferred bottom-up tactics after they trusted their linguistic expertise to recognize linguistic elements—phonemes, syllables, words, phrases, sentences to construct which means On the opposite, top-down procedures work on the contrary path, and listeners used context and previous knowledge (topic, style, way of life, and different schema knowledge stored in lengthy-term memory) to build which means

Interactive teaching

2.2.1 The Definition of Interactive teaching

Interaction is the interaction between actors, components in a system or between systems

Interaction in teaching is the interaction between the subjects who are teachers, learners and teaching objects as well as all components of the teaching process Interactive teaching is learner-oriented teaching, in which diverse interactive activities take place in an appropriately organized teaching environment, requiring active participation and high self-reliance of learners The teacher plays the main role of organizing the learning environment and providing support and advice to learners

Interactive teaching requires a high degree of diverse interaction, positivity, initiative and self-reliance of learners However, learners still receive the necessary orientation and help in terms of learning content and methods The interaction here can be called "active interaction" in the sense of emphasizing the learner's requirement for activeness

Not every teaching process can apply high-level interactive teaching Depending on the goals, content and teaching conditions, interactive teaching can be applied at appropriate levels to optimally organize interactive activities Then the concept of interactive-oriented teaching can be used

The basic features of interactive teaching are:

- Interaction is the method and goal of teaching Interactive teaching is based on diverse interactive activities, with special emphasis on social interaction between learners and learners' active interaction with the learning environment - Interactive teaching focuses on building a teaching environment An interactive teaching environment needs to facilitate and strongly support diverse interactive activities

- Interactive teaching is oriented to learners, attaching importance to learners' knowledge and experiences, placing them at the center of the teaching process The teacher mainly plays the role of organizer and controller of the teaching environment

- The learning content is associated with practical situations, complex, suitable for learners' interests

- Learning tasks support the development of capacity to apply knowledge in practice, solve complex and creative problems

- Teaching means support learners' self-exploration process, facilitating interaction

- Teaching methods promote the activeness and self-reliance and self-control of learners The main form of work is cooperative work in groups and independent work of learners Focus on practical activities of learners, combining many senses

- The interactive teaching environment is also usually a multimedia environment, using multimedia teaching devices and teaching software with interactive functions, creating conditions for learners to interact with the teaching environment

Teaching interactions take place in a teaching environment In the most general understanding, the teaching environment (also known as the learning environment) is all the factors outside the learner that affect the learning process The teaching process in schools is an organized process, so the teaching environment needs to be an organized school

Teaching environment in the narrow sense mainly refers to factors of material conditions such as equipment, means, documents, as well as content and learning tasks The teaching environment in a broad sense includes both human and social factors, including teachers and learners with teaching methods and forms of social interaction as well as behavioral culture

Teaching environment is a set of factors of space, time, means, content, teaching materials, learning tasks as well as methods and working forms of teachers and learners, organized appropriately organized to encourage and support learning processes to achieve teaching objectives

The elements of the teaching environment are interrelated, interdependent, that is, they also interact with each other The spatial element here includes the classroom with attached equipment such as tables and chairs and conditions such as atmosphere, light, sound

An interactive teaching environment is an environment that strongly facilitates and supports diverse interactive activities, especially interactions between learners with media, materials, learning tasks and social interaction interaction between learners in the learning process to acquire learning content with high positivity and self-reliance.

Stages of a listening lesson

In the pre-listening stage, you are preparing the students to listen

Ideally, you should already be familiar with the listening task Before class, take a listen to the listening track and ponder these questions

- How many people are speaking?

- What different accents do you hear?

- Do you notice any language that students might find challenging (slang, colloquialisms, advanced-level vocabulary)?

According to Davies and Pearse (2000), it's far useful to put together the beginners for what they're going to pay attention to because it arouses college students' hobby and gives students with the purposes of listening, simply as we normally put together for real-life situations

The aim is to put in sure information before being attentive to help the students get the maximum of what they are going to pay attention to The primary purposes of this stage, consequently, are:

- To motivate college students to pay extra attention to the listening text

- To prompt or build college students' previous topical and linguistic know-how It is essential for college kids to have the ability to relate what they already recognize to the speaker's content material

- To assist the scholars in shape what they listen to with their stored understanding with the aid of activating their previous expertise about the coming subjects

- To set functions for listening: while college students set functions for listening, they end up active listeners who listen for something, now not to it

Those functions may be completed via one of the following sports: the instructor introduces the listening subject matter, offers historical past records, gives clear commands for the whilst-listening hobby; or the students are given steering on the shape of what they may be going to listen, discuss the topic state of affairs, study snapshots, study thru the questions if asked every one of the above sports will help the scholars recognition on the principle points of the listening passage by narrowing down the things that the students assume to hear and activating their previous information

The while-listening degree includes activities that scholars are asked to do at some stage in the time they may be paying attention to the text The purpose of at the same time as listening activities is to assist college students to develop their abilities to elicit messages from spoken language Rixon (1986) points out the functions of the while-listening degree are to mission and guide students to address the data and the message from the listening text Consequently, activities of this degree need to be thrilling and thoroughly chosen To be powerful activities, these whilst-listening ones ought to possess the two following characteristics First of all, they need to be interesting sufficient to make the scholars want to listen and whole the sports Secondly, they ought to be things that can be within the ability of most college students it is recommended to offer at the same time as-listening sports which are a project for the more advanced college students however do not discourage folks that best gain little achievement Like deciding on pre-listening activities, as recommended by means of Underwood (1989), the lecturers ought to recall quite a number of things whilst deciding on at the same time as-listening activities as follows: the opportunities for various the extent of difficulty if wanted, the ease of carrying out activities which want individuals to present oral responses within the classroom, the opportunity for the work to be performed with the teacher gift or as self-have a look at and either in a listening center or at home, substances or thoughts which might be used for post-listening paintings, immediate comments on the extent to which the students have succeeded inside the project

Post-listening degree pertains to the activities that are achieved after the listening is finished A few post-listening sports are extensions of the work carried out on the pre-listening and even as-listening levels and a few relate best loosely to the listening text itself This stage is likewise very essential, with sure purposes as well as sports according to Underwood (1989), the first cause of put up-listening activities is to test how well the students understood and whether or not they have finished the listening challenge the second purpose of the publish-listening work is to mirror why a few college students have didn't apprehend or missing elements of the passage Any other cause of publishing listening activities is to amplify the topic or the language of the listening textual content The fourth purpose is to give students the opportunity to do not forget the way and attitude of the speaker inside the listening text To achieve those above-cited purposes, the followings are viable sports:

- Instructors deliver the answers orally or display the answers on the blackboard

- Instructors draw the students' attention to specific elements of the listening textual content and consciousness on the forms and feature, lexis, strain, and intonation which have brought on troubles to the scholars

- Students work in pairs to test every other's solutions or in companies to speak about any issues associated with the listening textual content

2.3.2 Interactive process in teaching listening skills

The degree to which listeners used the only manner or the opposite would rely on their expertise of the language, the familiarity with the subjects, or the motive of listening As an instance, listening for gist concerned in general top-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, concerned with the main bottom-up processing to recognize all the favored info

Listening as a process, therefore, required listeners’ aware use of strategies and ought to involve the parallel interaction between bottom-up and top-down processing This interactive manner known as parallel processing required the learner to apply background understanding (top-down) to interpret the meaning and linguistic knowledge (bottom-up) in an effort to discriminate between familiar sounds The aim becomes for the language listeners to apply parallel processing with the intention to perceive, interpret, and reply to the facts being heard (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2009, p 185)

A typical lesson in cutting-edge coaching substances involved a three-element collection along with pre-listening, at the same time as listening, and submit-listening and contained sports that linked bottom-up and top-down listening (Field, 1998) The pre-listening segment prepared college students for both top-down and bottom-up processing through activities involving activating earlier know-how, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary The at the same time as-listening section focused on comprehension via sports that required selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, and so on The publish-listening section typically worries response to comprehension and might require college students to give reviews approximately a topic However, it may also encompass bottom-up attention if the trainer and the listeners tested the texts or components of the text in element, that specialize in sections which college students couldn't comply with This might contain a micro- analysis of sections of the textual content to enable students to understand such capabilities as blends, decreased words, ellipsis, and other capabilities of spoken discourse that they were unable to the system or apprehend

With the purpose of improving learners’ ability to listen, researchers conducted a number of studies on listening strategies It was essential to have a look at the development of listening strategies through decades

In 1990, O’Malley and Chamot marked a body of language comprehension learning strategies, and an accompanying classification scheme grounded strategies in cognitive theory Listeners used meta-cognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make their learning more effective Meta- cognitive strategies were important because they oversaw, regulated or directed the language learning process These strategies, which involved thinking about the learning process, included planning, monitoring, and evaluating Cognitive strategies manipulated the material to be learned or applied a specific technique to a listening task Socio-affective strategies described the techniques listeners used to collaborate with others, to verify understanding or to lower anxiety Studies showed that skilled listeners used more meta-cognitive strategies than their less-skilled counterparts (Vandergrift, 1997a) When listeners knew how to (1) analyse the requirements of a listening task; (2) activate the appropriate listening processes required; (3) make appropriate predictions; (4) monitor their comprehension; and (5) evaluate the success of their approach, they were using meta-cognitive knowledge for successful listening comprehension This was critical to the development of self-regulated learning (Wenden, 1998) Also, Thompson & Rubin (1996) investigated the effects of metacognitive and cognitive strategy instruction on the listening comprehension performance of American university students learning Russian They found that the subjects who received strategy instruction in listening to videorecorded texts improved significantly over those who had received no instruction Furthermore, Laviosa (1999) examined the implementation of a cognitive apprenticeship approach to L2 listening comprehension with intermediate learners of Italian This model with teacher's and students' interrelated activities consisted of such steps as eliciting, modelling, observing, coaching, scaffolding, and fading assistance Vandergrift (1999) had also explained how L2 listeners could use strategies to enhance their learning processes and how teachers could nurture the development of listening strategies In short, there were a number of listening strategies which could indeed be practiced in order to improve learners’ listening ability Teachers could use different strategies which should be suitable for the students’ situations to enhance their listening The study would be focused on the cognitive strategies that linked bottom–up and top- down during the listening comprehension task

Brown (2007, p 312) notes that bottom-up processing "focuses on sounds, words, intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language" Therefore, learners need a large vocabulary and good working knowledge of sentence structures to process the bottom-up texts Exercises that require bottom-up processing develop the learner's ability to do the following:

- Retain input while it is being processed

- Recognize word and clause divisions

- Recognize key transitions in a discourse

- Recognize grammatical relationships between key elements in sentences

- Use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence functions

Peterson (1991, p 114-121) suggests several techniques for teaching listening comprehension Below are some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

Table 1.1: Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners

Discriminating between intonation contour in sentences

- Listen to a sequence of sentence patterns with either rising or falling intonation Place a check in column 1 (rising) or column 2 (falling), depending on the pattern you hear

- Listen to pairs of words Some pairs differ in the final consonant, and some pairs are the same Circle the word “same”; or “different”, depend on what you hear Selective listening for morphological endings

- Listen to a series of sentence Circle “yes”; if the verb has -ed ending, and circle “no”; if it does not

Selecting details from the text

- Match a word that you hear with its picture

- Listen to a weather report Look at a list of words and circle the words that you hear

- Listen to a sentence that contains clock time Circle the clock time that you hear, among three choices

- Listen to an advertisement, select the price of an item, and write the amount on a price tag

- Listen to a series of messages from an answering machine Fill in a chart with the following information from each caller: name, number, time and message Listening for normal sentence word order

- Listen to a short dialogue and fill in the missing words that have been deleted in partial transcript

Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the Thesis

Al-Qaraghooly & Al-Bermani (2010) conducted a research on the effect of bottom-up and top-down processing on developing EFL students’ listening comprehension.The researchers chooses 128 second-year students at the Department of English, College of Education, University of Babylon as samples of the study The students is divided into two sections Section A, with fifty-three students, is randomly chosen to be in the bottom-up processing group, and section B, with fifty-three students, is randomly chosen to be in the top-down processing group Twenty-four students are randomly chosen into a pilot sample The results of the research indicates that although the two groups achieve success in listening, the similar standing of both bottom-up and top-down processing in developing the learners’ listening comprehension gives support to the view that the two types of processing should be utilized at the same time Incorporating both bottom-up and top-down processing interactively yields better results than handling each of them separately It is concluded that listening comprehension is a complex, active and interactive process in which both bottom-up and top-down processing operate and contribute to the ultimate aim of understanding auditory stimuli

Villegas (2013) carries out a study on the use of the inclusion of bottom-up and top-down processing in listening comprehension tasks for second-semester students from an English license program Six participants are requested to do listening tasks designed by the researcher for one month The finding shows that the learning of bottom-up and top-down strategies through the guided implementation of different strategies as inferring, contextualization, and prediction allow the learners to connect previous knowledge with new information which facilitates the understanding of the audio In relation to the students' perceptions of bottom-up and top-down, a positive perspective in the listening comprehension task is perceived as most of the participants argue that bottom-up and top-down strategies raise their listening comprehension and help them get aware of the importance of taking the advantage of available information to identify specific details

Duong Thi Thao (2012) did an MA thesis about using bottom-up techniques in teaching listening skill to the first-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology This study was carried out with the participation of 70 first-year non- majored English students who are at elementary level The subjects took part in the 17-week experimental teaching The research was conducted as a quantitative study, using the pre-test, mid-term test and post-test along with the questionnaire to collect data After the experimental teaching, it was found that the first-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology had shown a good view to bottom-up techniques Bottom-up techniques brought positive effects on the students’ listening skills Then, it was concluded that bottom-up techniques could be used to enhance Thai Nguyen University of Technology first-year English students’ listening comprehension Apart from these studies, there were a plenty of works conducted related to using the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing Several conclusions could be reached from these studies First, although bottom-up and top-down processing positively had different influences on students’ listening, they should be combined to get better results in teaching and learning Second, realizing the benefits of using both bottom-up and top-down processing after the instruction, most learners started to learn how to use it to raise their listening comprehension Finally, there were studies on applying discourse processing to teaching listening in Vietnam However, these studies just focused on either bottom-up process or top-down process Consequently, using interactive process was strongly recommended.

Summary

The chapter has presented the relevant literature that helps form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study First, a set of concepts of listening comprehension according to some leading scientists is given and then the types of hearing, the listening process and the factors affecting the listening process are presented Second, listening lessons are discussed, including three phases of a listening lesson and an interactive process In the listening phase, each stage plays a different role and requires specific activities to effectively complete the listening task However, the three-step activities should not be isolated in one listening session They always have a close relationship with each other Finally, an overview of previous studies related to the research area of the dissertation is given to give the readers an overview.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Rationale of the use of action research

Action research is conducted to investigate a selected teaching scenario or observe once the teacher is accountable to seek out an answer to its situation or practice This study is allotted in an effort to find out solutions to boost students' listening skills It's carried out by the teacher-researcher together with her own students in an intact class For these reasons, the man of science believes an action research design would work her purpose though there exist, models that embody completely different steps to hold out the action research, all of them share the subsequent essential elements: the method begins with distinguishing a problem; then an inspiration of action is discovered and implemented; afterwards the investigator evaluates the effectiveness of the plan; finally they propose subsequent actions to more address the problem

The characteristics of action research were stated by Hult and Lennung (1980) and Mckernan (1991), which are as follows:

- Aiming at improving the quality of human actions

- Being in an on-going cycle process, i.e the feedback from data collected can be used to improve the next steps in the research

- Being formative, i.e the researcher may witness the alteration in definition, aims and methodology

- Contributing to a science of education

- Being collaborative, i.e the research involves all contribution to improve the understanding and action

In this study, the teacher-researcher follows the model proposed by Nunan (1992) because it reflects correctly what steps are taken during the study According to Nunan

(1992, p 19), the model has seven steps as illustrated in Figure 3.1:

This study strictly followed the general steps of an action research cycle suggested by Nunan.

Research setting

The study was conducted at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary school Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School is a public school located about 10 km from the city center The school has three grade 7 with about 40 to 45 mixed level students in each class

As an observation and through some interviews, most of the students here were exposed to English quite late, and their English ability was alarmingly limited Furthermore, they did not have the habit of learning English independently and usually depended on textbooks and teachers to acquire knowledge Most children claimed that they learned English because it was a compulsory subject, and they learned it just to pass written examinations Many of them did not have a desire to communicate with other people in English both inside and outside classrooms A large number of students reported that it was difficult to express their ideas in speech and writing and did not understand key information from conversation or text in audio and text

The textbook was used as listening material for students in grade 7 according to English standards published by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam

Besides, Mover textbook was used as supplementary material, which students would use to practice listening at home As the students had finished Listening skills in grade 6, so the textbook Mover was suitable for enhancing their listening skills in Grade 7, especially in semester 2 after students halt to go to school because of COVID-19 There were plenty of activities to help the students develop listening skills in the book Thus, the research still used English 7 for the research However, in order to make the materials more effective, the research would add some extra materials from Mover textbooks.

Selection of participants

The participants of the study involved 45 students of grade 7A at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary school, Thai Nguyen province Most of them are not good at learning English, especially their listening skills, but they are eager to master this subject such as communicating fluently, making a good speech They were exposed to interactive approach in learning listening lessons in an action research teaching.

Data Collection Instruments

3.4.1 Pre-test and Post-test

During the research, the students were asked to take two listening tests “The first test (See Appendix 1) was conducted in the first week The other (See Appendix

2) was carried out in week 8 The pre-test and the post-test on English listening are similar but not the same They are similar in format, instruction, length, level of difficulty, and allotted time Each test includes four tasks with 20 questions based on tasks in text book and Mover, 5 picture questions in task 1, 5 True/False questions in task 2, 5 multiple-choice questions in task 3 and 5 gap filling questions in task 4 After marking two tests, the researcher compares the results so as to reveal any improvement that students have made during the experimental teaching

Two questionnaires were delivered to students after they had finished the pre- test and post-test

In the former questionnaire (See Appendix 3) conducted after the pre-test, 15 questions were designed to find out problems related to interactive process students might get when learning listening The first five questions were designed to investigate the subject’s English listening situation such as their listening results last semester, their thought of listening, their self- evaluation of listening skills, their own experience of listening, and the materials they had used in class The last ten questions were designed based on Underwood’s seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension (1989) The first one listed a number of difficulties students encountered The next eight questions delved into specific problems students often got: speakers, vocabulary, unfamiliar words and structures, pronunciation, stress and intonation in spoken language, connected speech, and structures in spoken language The last question focused on what students expected the teacher to do to help them improve their listening skills

The latter questionnaire (See Appendix 4) consisted of two main parts: The first part was composed of 7 questions which are to evaluate students’ satisfaction after the experimental teaching The second part asks for students’ suggestion for improvement in the next teaching.

Research design

Based on this model, this current action plan was carried out with four steps of: (a) planning, (b) acting, (c) observing, and (d) reflecting (see Figure 3.5.)

Figure 3.5 Action research model 2 a, Planning : While teaching students at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School, the author realized that students’ listening comprehension is limited, which deterred their comprehension and mastery of all English skills Therefore, the researcher tried to read journal articles with ideas, suggestions, techniques or strategies related to listening enhancement that might do wonder for my students Of all the strategies claimed to be effective to improve students’ listening, I decided to apply interactive approach in my teaching for several times However, I had not yet measured how well students performed after the teaching period or whether the hypothesis on the effectiveness of interactive approach was supported in my context Therefore, this study was carried out to find the answer for the question b, Action : At the beginning of my research, students were asked to do the pre-test with the purpose of checking students’ listening comprehension skills The next phrase was devoted to implementing Interactive approach in the teaching listening in

8 weeks After the experimental period, a post-test was delivered to see if students had any improvement in their listening comprehension skill At the same time, a survey was also done to ask for students’ attitude towards the strategy used c, Observation : During the intervention, the research as a teacher experimenting teaching English listening skills using interactive approach and at the same time as an observer paying attention to students’ participation, attitudes and interest in studying listening skills with this approach so that appropriate changes can be made to the teaching and learning of listening skills with this approach in the future d Reflection : After the experimental teaching period and data analysis and interpretation, the author summarized the results and give some suggestions regarding the use of interactive approach in teaching English If the hypothesis is supported, the researcher would reflect on her teaching and would subsequently recommend the use of this technique to my colleagues in Thai Nguyen province.

Data collection procedures

During a listening lesson, it was necessary to elicit the subjects’ knowledge through the use of listening activities Filed (1988) proposed a typical lesson that involved a three-part sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post- listening as well as contained activities that linked bottom-up and top-down listening

Pre-listening activities: served as preparation for listening in several ways The teacher set a purpose or decided in advance what to listen for, decided if more linguistic or background knowledge was needed and also determined whether to enter the text from the top-down process (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom- up process (focus on the words and phrases) Thus, this phase made students aware of the type of text they would be listening to, the role they would play, and the purpose for which they would be listening

While-listening activities: were directly related to engagement with text, which students did during or immediately after the time they had listened Such activities as deciding what was and was not important to understand, used predicting to encourage students to monitor their comprehension as they listened, used questions to focus students' attention on the elements of the text which was crucial to comprehension of the whole would be done in this phase

Post-listening Activities: Teacher wrote questions on the board and asked students to answer them Students were also stimulated to talk and actively participate in the task; moreover, the teacher needed to encourage students to respond to what they heard” For example, teacher might ask questions like “Do you agree?” which encouraged debate Thus, during listening activities learners could be provided with the general background and key vocabulary in advance

Table 2.1 Action plan for the research

As mentioned above, the lesson can be used in any skill and at any stage of that skill depending on the purpose of the lesson and the purpose of the teacher's application Regardless of the type of interaction, teachers need to carefully prepare for each lesson, including time, materials, supporting facilities, lesson presentation, activities during the lesson, and after play Each interaction usually lasts from 12-15 minutes and can be longer or shorter depending on the purpose and requirements of the lesson “In detail, in order to carry out the treatment, vocabulary quiz interactions were prepared and introduced in each listening lesson, and students will listen to conversations with new words and then choose the correct new word corresponding to the illustrations already hung on the board, match the correct new words with the illustrations”

Introduce and implement the lessons

Week 1: Introduction The pre-test was administered to the subjects “After finishing and submitting the pre-test to the researcher, the subjects were introduced to the research program They had some background knowledge of interactive process Then, the researcher asked the subjects to respond to the first questionnaire

The experimental teaching started The researcher applied interactive process to teach listening The textbook English 7 was used During this period, the subjects gradually got familiar with interactive process The procedures of teaching in a listening lesson suggested by Filed (1998) were as follows: Firstly, based on the textbook, the subjects participated in activities involving activating prior knowledge, making predictions, and reviewing key vocabulary at pre-listening stage The activities might be ready in the textbook or designed by the researcher to be suitable for the subjects and the topic Secondly, the while-listening stage focused on comprehension through exercises that required selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, and so on Also, depending on the difficulty of the record, the subjects could listen again and focus on sections they could not follow This might enable the subjects to recognize such features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, and other features of spoken discourse

Finally, the subjects were asked to respond to comprehension or give opinions about the topic”

Week 8: The post-test was given to the subjects After the test papers had been finished and collected, the subjects were asked to fill in the second questionnaire

The teacher walked around the classroom to observe and encouraged students to participate in the interactive activities In some types of interaction, the teacher even participated with the students Most of the selected interactions were played between groups During these activities, teachers observed students’ participation and engagement in the listening lessons

Reflecting: After the experimental teaching period and data analysis and interpretation, the author summarized the results and give some suggestions regarding the use of interactive approach in teaching English.

Evaluating the plan

At the end of the course, the students were asked to complete a survey questionnaire The questionnaire had the same design as the pre-intervention survey The purpose of the questionnaire was to examine whether there were differences between pre- and post-intervention results More specifically, it aimed at finding out whether the intervention teaching period of interactive approach had a positive effect on students’ performance and level of engagement in their listening lessons.

Summary

In this chapter, the methodology for the study, which is a combination of qualitative and questionnaire survey, has been presented The researcher has provided a description of data collection tools and procedures as well as data analysis procedures After eight weeks of intervention, the results of questionnaires and tests were collected and analyzed.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

Results of the preliminary investigation questionnaire

4.1.1 Students’ perceptions in listening skills

In order to examine the students’ listening situations before applying interactive process into listening class, a questionnaire of preliminary investigation was administered to the participants The seven questions were designed to delve into the issue The results of the first questionnaire were as follows:

Students’ listening result of previous semester

Table 3.1 Listening results in previous semester

Very bad Bad Neutral Good Very good

In response to the first question of “How was your listening result last semester?”, it was obvious that the students' listening results in semester 1 are not optimistic because only 10.2% of students achieved good results On the contrary, the proportions of those with bad results accounted for more than half of participants at 55.5% The finding suggests that something must be done in order to improve students’ listening performance This was further confirmed by the reasons stated in question 2

Students’ opinions about listening skills

Table 3.2 Students’ opinions about listening skills

Very difficult Difficult Neutral Easy Very easy

From table 3.2, it is noticeable that learning listening for most of the 7th graders is not an easy task with 80.5% of students thinking that listening was difficult and only 1.5% found it easy while none of them considered it very easy Therefore, it can be understood that a majority of the students have problems with listening skills That explains why they had bad results in their previous semester’s examination

4.1.2 Factors affecting students’ listening performance

Table 3.3 Factors affecting students’ performance in listening skills

Factors affecting the listening skills Percentage

D Speaking speed of the speakers 38.3%

H Lack of background knowledge on the topic 53.3%

When being asked about the reasons that cause difficulties in listening, students claimed that the biggest problems they got while listening were new vocabularies and structures (68.3%), background knowledge on the topic (53.3%) and unfamiliar topics (51.6%) Meanwhile, other difficulties like grammar, different accents, speaking speed of the speakers, context, and poor listening equipment accounted for smaller percentages Therefore, it is essential that in any teaching of listening lessons, students need to be equipped with adequate amount of vocabulary and knowledge of the matter before actually listening to the recording so that they can comprehend and be more confident in listening

4.1.3 Reasons for students’ poor performance in English listening skills

Table 3.4: Reasons for not catching up with listening

B You tried to listen to every word 61.6%

C You’d like to translate into Vietnamese 48.3%

D Their accent or pronunciation was different from your teacher

In answering question 4 of “Why could not you catch up with what the speakers said while listening?”, it was reported that “students’ trying to listen to every word” prevented them from listening the most, accounted for the highest percentage of

61.6% The “too fast speed of speakers” was in the second rank with 56.6%, followed by the intervention of their mother tongue in translation and difference in accent or pronunciation from what they regularly heard at 48.3% and 33.3% respectively The finding can be explained that sometimes, students tried to listen to every single detail that they missed important idea and could not catch the main ideas of the speech Therefore, teachers of English should provide appropriate techniques and training on how to listen to students

Table 3.5 Perception on students’ vocabulary level

Concerning the reasons for poor performance in listening skills, in terms of vocabulary, it is noteworthy that nearly half of the students agreed that they had poor vocabulary (46.6%) and almost one third of them claimed that their vocabulary was not efficient enough It is really alarming since vocabulary plays a crucial role in helping students understand any listening input

Table 3.6 Perception on students’ pronunciation

A Good enough to understand listening context 10%

B Not good enough to understand listening context

C Too poor to understand listening context 26.7%

In terms of pronunciation, it was significantly observed that only 10% of students felt that their pronunciation was satisfactory to understand listening context The number of students who thought that their pronunciation was too poor or not good enough to help them understand listening context accounted for a greater proportion of 90 percent in total This proved that although the students were fully aware of the great impact of pronunciation on listening acquisition, there was far more needed to be done to in their pronunciation to help them master listening skills

Table 3.7 Perception on connected speech (linking, elision) used in listening text

A Difficult to listen for information

B Easy to mistake for other words

C Unable to concentrate on listening

In term of connected speech (linking, elision) used in listening text, 26.7% of the students admitted that they had difficulties in listening for information when there were such elements of connected speech as linking and elision 43.3% claimed that connected speech made them mistake for other words easily and 30% even indicated that they were unable to concentrate on listening It is understandable that when students did not have adequate vocabulary of the subject matter and basic knowledge of connected speech, mistakes and difficulties are unavoidable

Table 3.8 Perception on structures used in spoken language

A Understand all the speaker says 15%

B Don’t understand what the speaker says 18.3%

C Find it difficult and understand some of what the speaker says 50%

D Misunderstand what the speaker says 16.7%

When being asked about the effect of the use of structures in listening texts, half of the students (50%) found it rather difficult to understand some of what the speaker said 18.3% of the students did not understand the listening text 16.7% even stated that they misunderstood what the speaker said And only 15% understood all the speaker said This finding is in accordance with the previous results which suggest that difficulties that students faced mostly relate to knowledge of the subject, limited knowledge of the language and listening techniques Therefore, it is crucial that teachers of English should be aware of these problems and find appropriate ways to improve their students’ listening skills.

The effect of interactive approach on students’ listening skill

4.2.1 Results from the listening Pre-test and Post-test:

The overall mean scores and other descriptive statistics of students in listening before and after the intervention of using interactive approach in teaching listening lessons to grade 7 students are shown in table 3.9 as below

Table 3.9 Comparison of Students’ Performance in the Pre-test and Post-test

Mean N Std Deviation Std Error

As it was shown in the tables above, “the result indicated that the average score of students in the post-intervention (Mean = 8.0693, SD = 0.82754) was much higher than that of the pre- intervention (Mean = 6.9283, SD = 1.12031) It was obvious that students performed better in listening after the intervention with interactive approach More specifically, the mean score of each question in the pre-intervention and post-intervention was compared and shown as Figure 1 and appendix 5 It reveals that the students’ listening scores after the post-intervention were significantly higher than those of the pre- intervention for all students participating in the experimental teaching of listening using interactive approaches

Figure 4.1 Descriptive statistics of Pre-test and Post-test

As can be seen in figure 1, while there were 3.3% of the students getting mark

9 in the pre-test, the percentage of those who got mark 9 increased to 16.6% in the post-test Also, the number of the students who had mark 8 (40%) in the post-test was nearly twice as many as those in the pre-test (23.3%) Moreover, there was 30% of students getting 7 in the pre-test in comparison with 21.7% in the post-test The proportion of the students getting mark 6 in the pre-test (25%) outnumbered the one in the post-test (8%) The number of those getting 5 in the pre-test was 8.3% meanwhile there was 6.7% in the post-test The percentages of students who got 4 were equal in both tests” Unlike 3.3% of those getting 3 in the pre-test, there was no one getting 3 in the post-test Apparently, students’ results in the post listening test was much higher than those in the pre-test

Table 3.10 Paired Samples for Means

It is easy to see that the mean score after the post test is substantially higher and the strong positive correlation indicates that students who do well on the first test also do well on the latter The finding proved that students performed better when being taught with interactive approach whether they were previously good or bad in listening skills

Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper

Table 3.11 shows the comparison of the mean scores of students in the pre-test and the post-test of the intervention It is evident from the table that the computed value of t is equal to 0.4427 which is higher than the significant 2-tailed t-value of 0.000 it can be reported that the mean scores of students in the post-test was much higher than those of the pre-test using interactive approach in teaching and learning English listening skills or there is a significant difference between the mean scores of students in the pre-test and post-test using interactive approach This indicates that students gained mastery of the subject matter when being exposed to this modern method of teaching English The increased level of performance of the students in the post-test scores also reveals that the students’ improvements may also be attributed to the innovation applied by the teacher The use of interactive approach in teaching English not only motivated students in participating in the lessons more actively but it also helped to develop students’ listening competence more effectively

All in all, based on the statistical findings, it can be inferred that using interactive approach significantly enhances students’ listening learning skills In other words, Interactive approach is effective in helping students master listening lessons

4.2.2 Results from questionnaire after the intervention of interactive approach

To guarantee the reliability of the above result, the researcher conducted the second questionnaire survey among all the subjects to get their evaluation on the overall teaching course (See Appendix 4)

When the students were asked about their satisfaction with the learning course, different responses were received as illustrated in the below figure

Figure 4.2 Students’ Satisfaction with the Course

It could be seen from the figure that the majority of the subjects (75%) experienced the learning course with a feeling of contentment and only 25% of them found the course dissatisfaction “When required to give explanation for their choice, the former claimed that their listening skills were improved to a greater extent after the course They gained a new approach to learn listening which they had not realized before These subjects added that before the course, they had not enjoyed listening to lessons and tests for two reasons The first reason was that most of students did not know how to deal with a listening text, so they were confused and afraid of listening tests The other reason was that the students had received too general instructions of listening skills, so they were confused

On the contrary, some students were not really satisfied with the course since they saw very little or no improvement in their listening skills or they gained no different knowledge from other listening session they had undergone before

Students' Satisfaction with the Course sastified not really sastified

To better the next courses in the future, the researcher asked the participants to evaluate the learning session based on some criteria Their assessment was illustrated in the following table

Table 3.12: Students’ Evaluation of the Learning Sessions using interactive approach

1 Course objectives were clearly defined 0 1 20 24 0 3.51 0.99 Agree

The researcher’s teaching was well- organized

3 The teaching course was informative 1 2 15 17 10 3.73 0.68 Agree

The researcher’s teaching was of sufficient duration

The researcher’s teaching provided an excellent opportunity for all participants to learn how to listen well

The learning materials (lesson plans, handouts, etc)

0 0 16 29 0 3.64 1.13 Agree were relevant and useful

The amount of practicing exercises was sufficient

The interactive activities were fun and motivating

I felt eager to participate in listening lessons

The way teachers taught listening lessons were effective and suitable for me

As can be seen from the above table, in general, the learning course being taught with interactive listening approach was positively evaluated by most subjects with an overall means of 3.79 and a verbal interpretation of Agree

To be more specific, students strongly agreed that the interactive activities were fun and motivating, they felt eager to participate in listening lessons and the way teachers taught listening lessons were effective and suitable for them with means of 4.44, 4.29 and 4.24 respectively

In addition, students agreed on the effectiveness of listening lessons because of its clear objectives, good organization, rich source of information, useful handouts among others However, some students suggested that the learning course should be extended so that the students could get more practice for listening skills

Students’ level of interest after learning listening with interactive approach

Figure 4.3 Students’ level of interest after the intervention

When being asked to rate the level of interest after learning listening lessons with interactive approach, it is significant that most of students offer positive feedbacks towards this method of teaching in the action research on their interest in learning listening skills More specifically, 57% of the respondents claimed that their level of interest was of high level on wards 21% of the students remained unchanged in their level of interest in learning the skill while 22% of them had a low and very low interest in listening lessons It is understandable that listening has so far been one of the most difficult skills for students, therefore, enhancing their level of motivation and interest in learning this skill is not an overnight and easy task for English educators of all levels

From the data obtained, it could be seen that with respect to the whole performance in terms of listening skills, an improvement occurred The pre-test and post-test revealed that there was a change in the subjects’ listening results before and after the application of interactive process in listening class Also, a significant improvement was shown in questionnaire 2, which was used to collect the subjects’ opinions after the experimental teaching Additionally, the research received positive

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Summary of findings and conclusions

All in all, the research study achieves its aims of examining the extent to which listening results in English class of 7th grade students at Thai Nguyen In all teaching activities, there is interaction between elements (teachers, learners, learning environment…), but not necessarily interactive teaching Interaction in teaching in general and interactive teaching are two concepts with different connotations Understanding and distinguishing these two concepts, thereby applying the interactive teaching perspective into teaching practice is effective This study aimed at applying interactive process in teaching listening

A total of 45 students of grade 7 at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School, Thai Nguyen province participated in the study At first, the pre-test, as well as the first questionnaire after the pre-test, was given to the subjects “Then they received instruction in interactive process during an eight-week experimental teaching Also, the subjects were asked to keep their diaries to record what they did in class and how they felt during the teaching period After eight weeks, the post-test followed by the second questionnaire was given The researcher collected all of the data, analyzed the results, and made the following findings and conclusions

Concerning the first research question, the study showed the problems related to students had while listening They had difficulties in new vocabulary and structures, background knowledge of the topics, unfamiliar topics, the inability to catch up what speakers said, the speed of the talk, students’ limited ability of pronunciation as well as listening to stress and intonation among others These findings played a significant role in the research since they helped the researcher design adequate lessons during the experimental teaching based on interactive process Almost all the subjects did perform better in the post-test after interactive process had been applied in teaching for eight weeks There might be two factors contributing to the improvement The former factor was that the students’ listening skills were sharpened through the experimental teaching by interactive process and exercises to intensive practice The latter factor was that the students knew how to use interactive process in their listening because they understood the benefits of the process and therefore, their listening skill was much better

Finally, students’ feedbacks in the post questionnaire revealed that their level of motivation and engagement in learning listening were significantly improved through the use of interactive approach in learning listening lessons It is obvious that interactive approach had a positive effect on students’ performance and engagement in listening skills

From the data obtained, the three research questions were answered The research reached its aims and objectives Furthermore, it could be concluded that the grade 7 students at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School made a steady improvement in listening skills after being exposed to interactive approach.

Limitations

The limitations and scope of the study leave the gaps for other studies in the field of teaching listening to fill in “First, the study was carried out with the grade 7 students whose level of English proficiency was rather low; therefore, the teaching technique can be explored to grade 8 or 9 students Besides, it is important that studies on using interactive approach could be adopted to teach reading, speaking, and writing for better English teaching and learning at secondary schools should be carried out in the near future It is because 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.

Recommendations

Having concluded the result of the research, the writer would like to propose some recommendation that hopefully will be useful for students and other English teachers First, the application of interactive activities cannot be successful if the teacher does not explain the tasks and roles of students clearly in integrated into classroom lessons It is important to make students understand the games' rules, how the games went and what procedures they had to follow consequently, when a correct answer is shown, instead of skipping and move to next questions, teacher should explain and give details about the reasons for choosing that answer Besides, using an interactive approach in the classroom sometimes fails due to the lack of cooperation among members of the class What they are supposed to gain more than competition and enjoyment is learning something new such as vocabulary knowledge after the listening lessons.

Reflections

I as a teacher researcher found the process of research in my classroom extremely helpful I was pleased to discover that most of my students were positively affected by the interactive games or activities of the interactive approach given to them throughout the weeks the interventions were implemented In addition, their achievement in listening post test was much higher than that of the pre-test Although the students started out with relatively low motivation in the listening lessons, however, I was pleased to note a change in their engagement level after all the interventions were implemented Moreover, I feel that taking a role as an action researcher in my classroom has not only been beneficial for my students, but for me as an educator Having to implement the intervention strategies laid out in our action research plan forced me to reflect on my teaching style and fostered creativity With this reflective thinking in mind, I would love to continue to apply interactive approach on other skills as an intervention to impact my future students

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APPENDIX 1: SAMPLE INTERACTIONS USED IN LESSONS

I./ OBJECTIVE: : By the end of the lesson, ss will be able to: Use the lexical items related to television

- Use conjunctions (but, and, because …) and question words (where, who, why)

- Ask and talk about a favorite TV programme

- Read a TV schedule and descriptions of famous children’s programmes for specific information

- Listen for specific information from a recommended TV schedule

- Write a short, guided passage about one’s TV-watching habits

- Students know how to learn English in right way

- ability to use of language

1.Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector

III./ TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods by visual, teaching methods by practising, discussion group, technical present…

Teacher and Students' activities Content

Aims:- Elicits the topic from students

The lexical items related to the topic “traffic”

Product: all the words related to the topic

- Show pictures of traffic problems in big cities

Aims: help sts learn the new words

Contents: new words in Skills 1

1 Ss work in groups They study the picture and answer the tow questions

2 Tell Ss to look at the newspaper headline and check their answers

Traffic problems in a big city

1 Work in groups Where do you think this picture was taken? Why is it special?

2 Look at the following headline and check your answers

Teacher and Students' activities Content

3 Play the recording one or two times Ask Ss to listen carefully and circle the correct answers

- long traffic jam (very long line of vehicles)

3 Now listen to the passage and choose the correct answer

Concept of tone in statement used as questions

Grammar and vocabulary in the board

Sts can read in correct innotation

- What do you think about traffic problems in big cities in Viet Nam are

4 Have Ss look at the pictures, read the phrases and tick the problems

Then Ss write full sentences Call some Ss to write on the board

Others give comments T gives corrections

4 Tick the traffic problems in big cities in Viet Nam

- There are too many vehicles (on the road)

- Many roads are narrow and bumpy

- There are traffic accidents every day

- Many young children ride their bikes dangerously

5 Write a paragraph about the traffic problems where you live, or in a town, or a city you know well Use the

Teacher and Students' activities Content

5 Tell Ss to study the sentences they have written, then practise writing the paragraph

Tell Ss to use proper connector: first/ firstly, second/ secondly,

……and pay attention to spelling and punctuation

- Collect some Ss’ writing papers and mark them, then give comments to the class cues above, and the following outline

Conclusion: (Reason or advice/ suggestion)

There are many traffic problems in my city First, there are too many vehicles on the road Second, many roads are narrow and bumpy Last but not least, many young people ride their bikes dangerously

Therefore, there are many traffic accidents every day

In order to reduce these problems, we must strictly obey all the traffic rules

Teacher and Students' activities Content

- Lets sts summarize the content of the lesson

- Learn by heard the words

I./ OBJECTIVE: By the end of the lesson, Ss will listen for special information about someone’s favourite film star; Write a review of a film

1 Knowledge: a Vocabulary: - The lexical items related to the topic “films” b Grammar: ed and ing adjectives, connectors

- Students know how to learn English in right way

- Ss are interested in doing exercises

- Using language to talk about film

1.Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector

III./ TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods by visual, teaching methods by practising, discussion group, technical present…

Teacher and Students' activities Content

Aims:- Elicits the topic from students

The lexical items related to the topic “films and films stars”

Product: all the words related to the topic

- Ask Ss to talk about their favorite actors/ actresses Ask them: Who is your favorite actor/actress? What does he/she

Teacher and Students' activities Content look like? What are his/her successful films? What awards/ prizes has he/she won? What do critics say about him/her?

Aims: help sts learn the new words

Contents: new words in Skills 1

1 Ask Ss to read the instruction carefully and remind them to remember key words in the statements Play the recording and ask Ss to correct the statements Then ask two or three Ss to write their answers on the board Play the recording again for Ss to check the answers

1 Nick and his father are talking about Tom Hanks, a Hollywood film star Listen to their conversation and correct the following statements

1 Tom Hanks is Nick’s father’s favourite film star

2 Tom Hanks isn’t a handsome actor

3 Tom Hanks has won two Oscars

Ask Ss to read the rubric and study the questions carefully Ss may work in pairs to discuss the

2 Listen again Answer the questions below

1 He has won the Oscar for Best Actor twice

Teacher and Students' activities Content answers from the information they have heard in 1

- Play the recording again and have Ss answer the questions as they listen Ss can share their answers with their partners Call some Ss to write their answers on the board

2 They say he is one of the best actors in Hollywood

3 He plays the role of a soldier in Saving Private Ryan

4 Because it is one of the best comedies in the 1990s

Concept of tone in statement used as questions

Grammar and vocabulary in the board

Sts can read in correct innotation

3 Ask Ss to make notes about one of their favourite films

Remind them that they do not have to write full sentences and they can use abbreviations

Then, ask Ss to share their notes with their partners T asks some

3, Make notes about one of your favourite films

- Name of the film, type of film, and actors or director

- The plot: What happens in the film? How is the film? (gripping/ moving/ hilarious) What about the ending?

- Other aspects of the film, the acting, the music, the special effects, the visuals, etc.…

Teacher and Students' activities Content

- Critics’ reviews, your overall opinion

4 Set up the writing activity T reminds Ss that the first and important thing is always to think about what they are going to write In this case, Ss do not have to find out so many ideas of what they have to write because they may have made in 3 So, T only has to brainstorm Ss for the language necessary for writing

- Ask Ss to write the draft first

Then have them write their final version in class or at home

4, Write a review of your favorite film…

Paragraph 2 The plot: What happens in the film? How is the film? (gripping/ moving/ hilarious) what about the ending? Paragraph 3:

Other aspects of the film: the acting, the music, the special effects, the visuals, etc

Critics’ reviews, your overall opinion (Why you recommend the film to everyone)

Mission Impossible is an action spy film directed by Brian De Palma Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is part of an Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) to prevent the theft of the non-official cover (NOC) list from the American embassy in Prague It has a good ending It contains many thrilling visual actions Chicago Sun-

Teacher and Students' activities Content

Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "This is a movie that exists in the instant, and we must exist in the instant to enjoy it."

- Lets sts summarize the content of the lesson

- Learn by heard the words

Unit 9: FESTIVALS AROUND THE WORLD

I./ OBJECTIVE: By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to listen to get specific information about a music festival

1 Knowledge: a Vocabulary: - The lexical items related to the topic “festival” b Grammar: ed and ing adjectives, connectors

Attitude: - Positive about “Festivals around the world”

- Students know how to learn English in right way

- Ss are interested in doing exercises

- Using language to talk about “Festivals around the world”

1.Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector

III./ TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods by visual, teaching methods by practicing, discussion group, technical present…

Teacher’s and students’ activities Content

Aims: chatting to make sts change the state from relaxation to concentration

All about the festivals in Vietnam

Sts know new words to talk about the festivals in Vietnam and all around the world

- Look at the pictures below

What kind of festival do you think it is?

Share your ideas with a partner

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

2 Ss read the statements in exercise 2 and guess if they are true or false Write the guesses on the board

2 Listen to Nick talk about a music festival he attended Tick (V) T (true) or F (false) Correct the false sentences

- Play the recording one or two times

Ask Ss to listen carefully and check their guesses

Have Ss compare their answers in pairs before giving T the answers

1 F (one of the most famous festivals)

4 F (He’s Nick’s father’s favorite singer)

3 Now listen and answer the questions

1 It takes place every June

3 He interested the audience with the hit song

4 They also went to the Bohemian Woods

5 They enjoyed a mixed of good music from around the world

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about festivals

4 Think of a festival they attended and make notes about it

5 Ss write a paragraph individually based on the notes they have made

T can ask one or two Ss to write the paragraph on the board Other Ss and teacher comment on the paragraphs

4 Think about a festival you attended Make notes about it below

It was a cock fighting festival

It was held in the common house’s yard in my village

It was held on January 15 th (Lunar New Year)

5 Write a paragraph about the festival you attended use the notes above

Ss can start like this

Last week I attended a festival It was called “Harvest festival” It was held by farmers in my village

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about festivals

- Lets sts summarize the content of the lesson

- Learn by heart new words

I./ OBJECTIVE: - By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to write a passage about energy and the ways how to save energy in life

1 Knowledge: a Vocabulary: - The lexical items related to the topic “sources of energy”, Types of energy sources b Grammar : Future continuous tense and simple future passive form

Attitude: - Positive about types of energy sources, advantages & disadvantages of energy - Students know how to learn English in right way

- Ss are interested in energy sources &ways to save energy

- Using language to talk about energy sources &ways to save energy

1.Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector

III./ TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods by visual, teaching methods by practicing, discussion group, technical present…

Teacher’s and students’ activities Content

Aims: chatting to make sts change the state from relaxation to concentration

All about how to save energy

Sts know new words to talk about vocabulary related the topic

- Have Ss play game “spider-web of phrases”

1 Look at the pictures Discuss the followings

1, What do you think is unusual about this means of transport?

2, Have you seen any transport like this?

3, What should we do to save energy in our life?

What we should do to save energy Use public transport

- Lead to the new lesson

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Listening a- Elicit some new words (pictures, realias, situations ….)

- Have Ss read many times in chorus

A Listening b- Have Ss guess the answers before listening

- Call someone to give their answers

- provide the keys c- Ask Ss to work individually

- Call some Ss to the black-board

- Have Ss work in groups to discuss what we should do to save energy

2 Listen to the passage and tick true or false to the statements

3.Listen to the passage again and complete the sentences

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about energy resources

4.Complete the article Use the phrases below

- Ask Ss to write down the answers on their notebooks d- Divide the class into 6 groups

- Have Ss practice in group

- Present their works on the sub-boards

5 Discuss the following ways to save energy Decide on the 5 most important, then write them in the box

What should you do to save energy?

3 Reduce the use of fossil fuel

4 Increase the tax on petrol

5 Use low energy light bulbs

6 Write a short passage about what we should do to save energy

Every day, we use too much energy at home We should

It’s very important to save energy What should we do to save energy? I think we should use electricity more efficiently to reduce our electricity bills We can do this by turning off the light before going to bed and using low energy light bulbs We should avoid using cars or motorbikes for short trips…

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about energy

- Lets sts summarize the content of the lesson

- Learn by heart all the new words

- Prepare for next lesson (find the meaning of the new words in the next lesson)

Unit 11: TRAVELLING IN THE FUTURE

I./ OBJECTIVE: By the end of the lesson, Ss can: - listen for specific information about inventions of future means of transport

- Write a paragraph about future means of transport

1 Knowledge: a Vocabulary: The lexical items related to future means of transport and movement b Grammar : will for future prediction, Possessive pronouns

Attitude: - Positive about travelling in the future

- Students know how to learn English in right way

- Ss are interested in means of transports

- Using language to talk about future means of transport and movement

1.Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector

III./ TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods by visual, teaching methods by practicing, discussion group, technical present…

Teacher’s and students’ activities Content

Aims: chatting to make sts change the state from relaxation to concentration

All about the topic travelling in the future

Sts know new words to talk about vocabulary related the topic

Chatting: Which transport do you think of in the future?

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Audio about travelling and means

1 Have Ss guess the answers first Tell

Ss that the questions ask about what they think, and not what is true about the vehicle Remind them to use opinion signal words where possible Do not give corrective feedback

1 Look at the picture Which do you think are the correct options below?

- Accept all answers from Ss and ask them to explain why they think so

2 Play the recording and ask Ss to check their answers in 1

3 Ss work individually to answer the questions and compare the answers with their partners

4 Ss work in pairs to do the task Give correct feedback and play the recording again if necessary

2 Now listen and check your answers

3 Listen again and answer the following questions

1 The vehicle is called TF-X

2 It can travel at 300 kph

4 Tick the benefits of this vehicle that are mentioned in the recording

2 It can avoid bad weather (not mention)

4 You can invite three of your relatives and three of your friends to travel with you on this vehicle at the same time (the car has two seats)

5 Learning to drive the car is simple

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about travelling in the future

5 Refer to the text in Reading to support

6 Have Ss swap their writing with each other Ask them to identify facts and opinions For more able classes, ask Ss to give their own feedback about their friend’s writing

5 Write a short paragraph about a future means of transport in this unit Include both facts and your opinions about the vehicle

- name of mean of transport

- what you think about it

6 Swap your writing with your partner Find which sentences are facts, and which ones are opinions

Do you agree or disagree with your friend’s opinions?

- how it functions What you think about it

Many interesting means of transports have been invented so far

In the future, I think there will be flying motorbikes It will look a bit different from motorbikes nowadays, but it can fly without wings It will use electricity transferred from solar energy It can travel fast and avoid bad weather It will be very useful and popular in the near future

- help sts learn extra vocabulary

Vocabulary and structures to talk about travelling

- Lets sts summarize the content of the lesson

- Learn new words and phrases

- Prepare: Looking back and project

The teacher asked the students to ask their friends related questions about their company

Student 1: What does your company do?

Student 2: It produces and sells mobile phones

Student 1: Where is it based?

Student 2: The head office is in Ha noi

Student 1: What are your biggest markets?

Student 1: How many people do you employ?

Unit 2: COMPETITIONS Type of games: Matching games Classroom management: Group work Material : Pictures and cards Time:10 minutes

The teacher divides the class into groups of four or five students The teacher gives each groups a set of pictures of competitions and cards containing the names of the competitions Students work in groups and quickly match each competititions with their name Which group finishes first and has the correct answers will be the winner

Then the teacher askes students; Do you like taking part in competitions like these? Which competititions do you like to win?

Card 1: Doi Can Television Singing Contest

Card 2: Quiz: “Road to Mount Olympia”

- Happy new year Warm up: Memory game

- Rules of the game: - The teacher presents the picture on the board within 20 seconds, the students memorize it

- The teacher divides the class into 2 teams

- the members of each team will choose from 1 to 6 respectively

- " If you can get a Lucky Number, you'll get one point without having to give the answer If you get a question, you have to answer it One correct answer gives you one point Are you sure what to do now ?Start!"

- Question: there are 5 questions and a lucky number

2 What is the name of the show? (Around the world in 30 minutes'.) 3 Who is the interviewer? The boy or the girl?(The girl)

4 Where are they? (At a studio/ a show/ a TV station.)

5 How many kinds of flwers can you see in the picture? (2 kinds of flowers)

- What is in my secret picture? (Fireworks Fireworks)

6 What may they talk about?

- When are there fieworks? (On special occasions or holidays)

- So which holiday are we going to study in this unit? Open your books and tell me, please

Unit 4: A PARTY ( SPEAKING TASK 1) Type of games: Labeling game Class management: Whole class