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

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES PHAM THI MY HANH USING INTERACTIVE APPROACH TO TEACH ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS FOR LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2022 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES PHAM THI MY HANH USING INTERACTIVE APPROACH TO TEACH ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS FOR LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Que, Ph.D THAI NGUYEN – 2022 ĐẠI HỌC THÁI NGUYÊN TRƯỜNG NGOẠI NGỮ PHẠM THỊ MỸ HẠNH SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TƯƠNG TÁC ĐỂ DẠY KỸ NĂNG NGHE TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC CƠ SỞ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ (Định hướng ứng dụng) Ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Cán bộ hướng dẫn: TS Nguyễn Thị Quế THÁI NGUYÊN – 2022 DECLARATION I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled: “Using interactive approach to teach English listening skills for lower secondary school students”, which is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Languages at Department of English Linguistics of Post-Graduate Studies, School of foreign languages, Thai Nguyen University, is the result of my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted to any other university or institution wholly and partially Approved by Author’s signature SUPERVISOR Nguyen Thi Que, PhD Pham Thi My Hanh Thai Nguyen – 2022 i ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS This research paper would not have been completed without the help of people to whom I would like to express my deep gratitude First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mrs Nguyen Thi Que, my supervisor, for her wholehearted support, continuous motivation and precious guidance which were decisive factors to the completion of the thesis Secondly, I would like to thank all the teachers of the master's course at the foreign language school who helped me during my master's degree Thirdly, I would like to extend my special thanks to all the research participants, especially my students Without their valuable opinions and ideas in the questionnaires, the study would not have been accomplished Last but not least, I owe my family their continuous support Their patience and love have helped me go beyond what sometimes looks like an insurmountable task ii ABSTRACT This study aims at investigating the impact of using interactive approach to teaching English listening skills for lower secondary school students at Thinh Duc Lower Secondary School, Thai Nguyen province Specifically, the researcher tried to a investigate: (1) the difficulties that secondary school students were facing when learning listening skills and the effects of applying the interactive process in teaching English listening skills to secondary school students, and (2) the students’ attitudes towards using interactive approach in teaching English listening skills To achieve the above-mentioned objectives, an action research was conducted with the participation of 45 grade 7th students at Thinh Duc Secondary School, Thai Nguyen province A pre-test, a post-test and two sets of questionnaires were used as instruments to collect data for analysis The findings show that there were several factors that caused difficulties to students in English listening competence such as 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 etc In addition, results of pre-test and post-test revealed a significant difference in students’ listening comprehension performance More specifically, the findings proved that interactive approach had a positive effect and enhanced students’ listening skills substantially iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF TABLES VII LIST OF FIGURES VIII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Rationale 1 1.2 Research aims 3 1.3 Research questions 3 1.4 Scope of the study 3 1.5 The significance of the study 4 1.6 Methodology of the study 4 1.7 Design of the thesis 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6 2.1 Listening 6 2.1.1 The Definition of Listening .6 2.1.2 Types of listening 7 2.1.3 Listening processes .9 2.1.4 Factors affecting listening processes .16 2.2 Interactive teaching 18 2.2.1 The Definition of Interactive teaching .18 2.2.2 Features of interactive teaching 18 2.2.3 Interactive teaching environment .19 2.3 Teaching listening skills .20 23.1 Stages of a listening lesson 20 iv 2.3.2 Interactive process in teaching listening skills 22 2.4 Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the Thesis .27 2.5 Summary .28 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .29 3.1 Rationale of the use of action research 29 3.2 Research setting 30 3.3 Selection of participants 31 3.4 Data Collection Instruments 31 3.4.1 Pre-test and Post-test 31 3.4.2 Questionnaires 31 3.5 Research design .32 3.6 Data collection procedures 33 3.7 Evaluating the plan 36 3.8 Summary .36 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .37 4.1 Results of the preliminary investigation questionnaire 37 4.1.1 Students’ perceptions in listening skills 37 4.1.2 Factors affecting students’ listening performance .38 4.1.3 Reasons for students’ poor performance in English listening skills 38 4.2 The effect of interactive approach on students’ listening skill 40 4.2.1 Results from the listening Pre-test and Post-test: .40 4.2.2 Results from questionnaire after the intervention of interactive approach44 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 49 5.1 Summary of findings and conclusions 49 5.2 Limitations 50 5.3 Recommendations 50 5.4 Reflections 51 REFERENCES 52 v APPENDIX 1: SAMPLE INTERACTIONS USED IN LESSONS I APPENDIX 2.1 XXIX APPENDIX 2.2 XXXII APPENDIX 3 XXXV APPENDIX 4 XXXIX APPENDIX 5 XLII vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: Some kinds of bottom-up exercises for beginners 25 Table 1.2: Some kinds of top-down exercises for beginners 26 Table 2.1 Action plan for the research .34 Table 3.1 Listening results in previous semester .37 Table 3.2 Students’ opinions about listening skills .37 Table 3.3 Factors affecting students’ performance in listening skills 38 Table 3.4: Reasons for not catching up with listening 38 Table 3.5 Perception on students’ vocabulary level .39 Table 3.6 Perception on students’ pronunciation .39 Table 3.7 Perception on connected speech (linking, elision) used in listening text 40 Table 3.8 Perception on structures used in spoken language 40 Table 3.9 Comparison of Students’ Performance in the Pre-test and Post-test .41 Table 3.10 Paired Samples for Means 42 Table 3.11 Paired Samples Test .43 Table 3.12: Students’ Evaluation of the Learning Sessions using interactive approach 45 vii