demotivating factors in listening lessons of 10 grade students at no.1 lao cai high school = những yếu tố gây mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe của học sinh khối 10 tại trường thpt số 1 thành phố lào cai

2 Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of languages and international studies Department of post graduate studies HOÀNG THỊ HỒNG NHUNG Demotivating factors in listening lessons of 10 grade students at No.1 lao cai High School NHỮNG YẾU TỐ GÂY MẤT HỨNG THÚ TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH KHỐI 10 TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT SỐ 1 THÀNH PHỐ LÀO CAI A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Supervisor: Nguyen Quynh Trang, MA. Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2012 6 LIST OF TABLES AND DIAGRAMS No. Table/diagram Content of table/diagram Page 1 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for students’ questionnaire responses (N=110) 24 2 Table 2 Teacher’s techniques to motivate their students at listening stages 28 3 Table 3 Reasons for overcoming demotivation in listening. 31 4 Diagram 1 Research methodology. 20 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Candidate’s statement i Acknowledgment ii Abstract iii List of tables and diagrams iv Table of contents v PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Rationale 1 1.2 Aims of the study 1 1.3 Research questions 2 1.4 Research methodology 2 1.5 Scope of the study 2 1.6 Contribution of the study 3 1.7 Organization of the study 3 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1 Overview of listening 5 1.1.1 Definition of listening 7 1.1.2 Listening process 7 1.1.3 Listening in second language learning 7 1.1.4 Teaching listening 8 1.2 Overview of motivation 9 1.2.1 Definition of motivation 9 1.2.2 Types of motivation 10 1.2.3 Characteristics of motivated students 11 1.3 Overview of demotivation 12 1.3.1 Definition of demotivation 12 1.3.2 Previous studies of demotivation 12 1.3.3 Characteristics of demotivation students 16 1.4 Possible demotivating factors in listening 16 8 1.4.1 Students- related factors 16 1.4.2 Learning conditions 18 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 19 2.1 Research questions 19 2.2 Participants of the study 19 2.3 Method of the study 20 2.4 Instruments 21 2.4.1 Questionnaire for students 21 2.4.2 Questionnaire for teachers 21 2.4.3 Interview for teachers 21 2.5 Data collection and data analysis 21 2.5.1 Data collection 21 2.5.2 Data analysis 22 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 23 3.1 Demotivating factors in listening 23 3.2 Teachers’ teaching strategies 27 3.3 Overcoming demotivation in listening 30 PART THREE: CONCLUSION 33 3.1 Conclusions 34 3.2 Implications 35 REFERENCES 36 Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 9 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Despite being aware the importance of English to career prospects, a large number of students seem to lose their interests in learning this international language. English has taken an important role in not only Vietnam but also countries around the world. In Vietnam, it cannot be deniable that one’s English proficiency has become his passport to a better job in all aspects of modern life. In fact, Vietnamese students have learnt English through compulsory programs at school for many years. Despite teachers’ efforts and the shift from the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching, English is still considered as a compulsory subject that needs to be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication. As a result, most of learners find themselves unable to use English for day-to-day communication after having passed the English national examination as a requirement for the General Education Diploma. Although “listening is fundamental to speaking skill” in second language acquisition (Nunan, 1997), students’ low proficiency in listening is deniable. At No.1 Lao Cai High School, students are bored in listening lessons. Most of the learners have passive attitudes in listening lessons because of underlying reasons that need to be investigated. A large number of researches have been conducted on language learning demotivation in general, but few studies have addressed possible demotivating factors in listening skill particularly. It is necessary for teachers to be aware of the possible demotivating factors that cause students lose their motivation in listening lessons. Hopefully, the major findings of the study will provide the teachers with students’ possible demotivating factors in listening lessons as well as factors that might assist their students to overcome demotivation. With those factors in mind, they might 10 have more appropriate teaching method to help their students make process in listening. 1.2 Aims of the study The study aims at investigating possible demotivating factors in listening lessons of the 10th grade students at No.1 Lao Cai High School. The main purposes of the study are summarized as follows: 1. To investigate main demotivating factors that reduce students’ interests in listening lessons. 2. To explore techniques used by teachers of English to motivate their students in listening lessons. 3. To investigate factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening lessons. 1. 3 Reasearch questions This study aims to answer the following questions: 1. What are the dominant demotivating factors affecting students’ listening lessons? 2. What are techniques used by teachers to motivate their students in listening lesson? 3. What are factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening lessons? 1.4 Research methodology This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods. For quantitative method, two questionnaires were delivered to four teachers and 110 students. A semi structure interview for teacher was also conducted to collect data qualitatively. 1.5 The scope of the study This study focused only on demotivation in listening lessons of student in grade 10 at No.1 Lao Cai High School. In details, the study was carried out to investigate students’ main demotivating factors in listening lessons, to discover techniques used 11 by teachers to motivated students in listening lessons and to discover main factors that assist students to overcome their demotivation in listening. 1. 6. Contribution of the study This is one of the first studies discovering demotivating factors in a particular skill- listening. There have been a large number of studies on students’ demotivation generally in learning English as a second language such as Christophel & Gorham, 1992; Gorham and Millette, 1997; Kearney, Plax, Hays, & Ivey ,1991; Zang’s 2007; Ikeno, 2002; Arai, 2004; Falout & Maruyama, 2004; Hasegawa, 2004; Kikuchi, in press; Tsuchiya, 2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b; Kojima, 2005. However, few studies focus on demotivating factors that prevent learners from enjoying studying English in a particular skill, especially in listening skill. The study’s contribution can be summarized as follows: Theoretically, this study will shed a light on research area that few researchers have addressed: demotivation in listening. Practically, findings of this study will provide teachers of English at No.1 Lao Cai High School with deep understanding of demotivating factors encountered by their students in listening lessons so that they might have more appropriate teaching method. To students, the findings suggested some factors that might help them to recover their interests in listening. 1. 7. Organization of the study This study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion Part 1: Introduction This part presents the Rationale, Aim of the study, Scope of the study, Research questions, Method of study, and The content of the study. Part 2: Development This part consists of three main chapters. 12 Chapter 1: Literature review This part presents theoretical background of motivation and demotivation, reviewing studies of demotivation in second language acquisition, and brief view on concepts of listening and demotivating factors in listening. Chapter 2: Methodology Research questions, participants, method of the study, instruments, data collection and data analysis are discussed in this chapter. Chapter 3: Research findings and discussion This chapter presents major research findings and discussion in details. Part 3: Conclusion This part presents conclusions and implications. 13 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. Overview of listening. 1.1.1 Definition of listening. Scholars claim that listening is a complex and active process. Wipf (1984) states that listening is an invisible mental process in which listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance . According to Rost (2002), listening is a process of receiving what the speaker actually says; constructing and representing meaning; negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding; and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy. 1.1.2 Listening processes According to Richard (1990), there are two distinct processes in listening: top-down and bottom-up, and listeners need to use both of them in their listening comprehension. Listeners apply “top-down” processes when they use prior knowledge to understand the meaning of a message. Prior knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term memory. Listeners use content words and contextual clues to form hypotheses in an exploratory fashion. On the other hand, listeners apply “bottom-up” processes when they use linguistic knowledge to understand the meaning of a message. They build meaning from lower level sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message. Listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up 14 processing, but an interactive, interpretive process where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages. The degree to which listeners use the one process or the other will depend on their knowledge of the language, familiarity with the topic or the purpose for listening. For example, listening for gist involves primarily top-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, involves primarily bottom-up processing to comprehend all the desired details. Byrnes (1984) emphasizes that context takes an important role in listening process. Research from cognitive psychology has shown that listening comprehension is more than extracting meaning from incoming speech. It is a process of matching speech with what listeners already know about the topic. Therefore, when listeners know the context of a text or an utterance, the process is facilitated considerably because listeners can activate prior knowledge and make the appropriate inferences essential to comprehending the message. Therefore, teachers need to help students organize their thoughts, to activate appropriate background knowledge for understanding and to make predictions, to prepare for listening. This significantly reduces the burden of comprehension for the listener. In listening process, Richards (1990) states the learners need to be aware of the purpose of the task. He differentiates between an interactional and a transactional purpose for communication. Knowing the communicative purpose of a text or utterance will help the listener determine what to listen for and, therefore, which processes to activate. Listeners listen selectively according to the purpose of the task. This determines the type of listening required and the way in which listeners will approach a task. Interactional use of language is socially oriented, existing largely to satisfy the social needs of the participants such as small talk and casual conversations. Therefore, interactional listening is highly contextualized and two- way, involving interaction with a speaker. A transactional use of language, on the [...]... 15 18 12 22 21 19 13 21 22 8 22 6 7 25 11 11 13 5 8 15 4 2.28 39 20 26 4 11 2.99 3.22 2.67 3.04 2.45 2.6 3.3 2. 41 2.58 2.09 2. 61 23 15 32 18 29 27 18 25 29 46 23 30 17 17 20 25 20 26 32 23 20 23 24 19 20 23 24 30 0 25 21 16 35 21 29 14 18 16 12 20 13 15 15 8 12 20 17 21 6 11 36 5 12 3 11 3.03 2.89 24 21 23 16 31 30 20 19 12 14 3.49 3 .19 3.64 11 11 15 14 23 17 15 22 3 35 24 19 25 20 46 4.78 3. 51 3.39... and students strategies, data collected via questionnaires and interviews were analyzed qualitatively 30 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3 .1 Demotivating factors The first question aimed to identify main demotivating factors that caused 10 grade students at Lao Cai High School lose their interests in listening lessons 35 demotivating items were classified into 8 groups of factors: i listening. .. answering the three following questions: 1 What are dominant demotivating factors affecting students in listening lessons? 2 What are techniques used by teachers to motivate their students in listening lesson? 3 What are the factors that assist students to overcome demotivation in listening? 2.2 Participants of the study Four teachers of English and 11 0 students participated in this study The students attend... 3.39 0 17 20 30 1 5 6 26 3 23 21 27 18 20 21 4 79 35 32 32 Listening difficulties 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lack of self-determination 7 8 9* 10 * 11 12 Xenophobia 13 Teacher’s style and competence 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Inadequate school facilities 25 26 Lack of target language environment 27 28 29 Exam- orientation 30 31 32 33 XXXII Domination of other languages 34 35 2.44 2.85 30 39 26 12 27 31 4 11 As... of responses using the following values: Not true :1 Mostly not true:2 Neither true nor untrue:3 To some extent true:4 True:5 31 No of items (1- 35): see appendix 1 Demotivating factors / no of items M 1 (%) 2(%) 3(%) 4(%) 5(%) 2.33 3.48 3.85 3.66 3.47 33 24 10 9 15 24 9 3 12 12 25 5 20 14 11 13 19 21 34 35 5 43 45 31 27 3.34 15 13 20 27 25 2.33 2.8 1. 97 1. 94 2.95 2.05 38 24 49 57 21 51 21 20 21 15 18 ... were not demotivating items Three items 21, 22,23 relating to teachers’ negative attitudes had low mean scores (below 2.6) Most of students found that their teachers had possitive attitudes and good ways of managing class The results showed that inadequate school facilities (25-26) was a demotivating factor of 10 th grade students at No .1 Lao Cai high school One third of the students agreed that the quailty... domination of other languages also had the mean scores below 3.0 Although both English and Chinese are taught at No .1 Lao Cai high school, English still remains its domination XXXIII 13 17 Teachers-related factor (14 -24) was one of the factors that caused students demotivated in listening One third of students agreed that they were fed up with the repitition of listening practice (33%), boring lessons. .. possible demotivating factors, the five factors such as listening difficulties factors, teachers’ style and competence, inadequate school facilities, lack of target language environment, and exam- orientation were the dominant factors that prevented 10 th grade students at No .1 High School from motivating in listening lessons 3.2 Teachers’teaching techniques The second research question aimed at exploring... staff In addition, a semi structure interview with the teachers was carried out to get deeper understanding of relevant information 2.4 .1 Questionnaire for students The purpose of this questionnaire is to identify main demotivating factors which affect 10 grade students listening at No .1 Lao Cai High School and possible factors that help students to overcome demotivation The questionnaire contains three... interests in listening 19 % (N= 21) of students had no idea for the question: In your opinion, what are some possible reasons that help you recover your interests in listening lessons? 81 student’s responses were analyzed qualitatively XXXVIII Table 3: Reasons for students to overcome demotivation in listening Category N Percentage 13 16 .1% Personal reasons - have better listening method - get progress in listening . lessons of 10 grade students at No. 1 lao cai High School NHỮNG YẾU TỐ GÂY MẤT HỨNG THÚ TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH KHỐI 10 TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT SỐ 1 THÀNH PHỐ LÀO CAI A MINOR THESIS. possible demotivating factors in listening lessons of the 10 th grade students at No. 1 Lao Cai High School. The main purposes of the study are summarized as follows: 1. To investigate main demotivating. 1. 1.2 Listening process 7 1. 1.3 Listening in second language learning 7 1. 1.4 Teaching listening 8 1. 2 Overview of motivation 9 1. 2 .1 Definition of motivation 9 1. 2.2 Types of motivation 10