designing a listening syllabus for grade 10 english gifted students at thai nguyen specializing upper secondary school = thiết kế chương trình nghe cho học sinh chuyên anh 10 trường thpt chuyên thái nguyên

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Charts Chart 1: Students' self evaluation on their English ability Chart 2: Students’ responses regarding their attitudes forwards listening skill Chart 3: Stud

- -

PHẠM TUYẾT LINH

DESIGNING A LISTENING SYLLABUS FOR GRADE 10 ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN SPECIALIZING

UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

THIẾT KẾ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH NGHE CHO HỌC SINH CHUYÊN ANH

10 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN THÁI NGUYÊN

M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

SUPERVISOR: MAI THỊ LOAN, M A

HA NOI - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Scope of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Syllabus design 4

1.1.1 Definition of syllabus 4

1.1.2 Types of syllabus 5

1.1.3 Steps in designing a syllabus 6

1.2 Needs analysis 7

1.2.1 Definitions of needs analysis 7

1.2.2 Reasons for choosing need analysis 7

1.2.3 Components of need analysis 7

1.2.3.1 Target needs 7

1.2.3.2 Learning needs 8

1.3 An overview of listening comprehension 8

1.3.1 Definitions of listening comprehension 8

1.3.2 Listening strategies 9

1.3.3 Listening process 10

CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS 12

2.1 Questionnaire 12

2.1.1 Aims of the questionnaire 12

2.1.2 Participants 12

2.1.3 Findings and data analysis 12

2.1.3.1 Learning situation 12

2.1.3.2 Student’s needs 15

2.2 Listening test 18

2.2.1 Aims of the listening test 18

2.2.2 Participants 18

2.2.3 Findings and data analysis 18

2.3 Interview 19

2.3.1 Aims of the interview 19

2.3.2 Participants 19

2.3.3 Findings and data analysis 19

2.3.3.1 Teaching situation 19

2.3.3.2 Teachers’ needs 20

2.3.3.3 Currently used materials 22

2.4 Summary 25

CHAPTER 3: A PROPOSED SYLLABUS 26

3.1 Introduction 26

3.2 The proposed syllabus 26

3.2.1 The descriptions of the syllabus 26

3.2.2 Goals and objectives of the syllabus 26

3.2.2.1 Goals of the syllabus 26

3.2.2.2 Objectives of the syllabus 27

3.2.3 Time frame 27

3.2.4 The content of the syllabus 28

3.2.4.1 The topics of the syllabus 28

3.2.4.2 The listening skill 28

3.2.4.3 The listening tasks 29

3.2.4.4 Grammar 29

3.2.4.5 Vocabulary area 29

3.3 The proposed syllabus 30

3.4 A sample unit 34

3.5 Suggestions 34

3.5.1 Suggestions for teaching methods 34

3.5.2 Suggestions for assessment of students 34

3.6 Summary 35

PART III: CONCLUSION 36

1 Summary of the study 36

2 Limitations and suggestions for further research 37

REFERENCES 38 APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS I APPENDIX 2: THE INTERVIEW FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH V APPENDIX 3: LISTENING TEST VI APPENDIX 4: RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONNAIRE VIII APPENDIX 5: RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONAIRE IX APPENDIX 6: RESULTS OF THE LISTENING TEST X APPENDIX 7: RESPONSES TO THE INTERVIEW XI APPENDIX 8: A SAMPLE LISTENING UNIT XII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TNSUSS: Thai Nguyen Specializing Upper Secondary School IELTS: The International English Language Testing System

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Charts

Chart 1: Students' self evaluation on their English ability

Chart 2: Students’ responses regarding their attitudes forwards listening skill

Chart 3: Students’ responses referring to difficulties in listening

Chart 4: Students’ perception of listening comprehension

Chart 5: Students' responses concerning their perception of the teacher's role

Chart 6: Distribution of students’ responses referring to listening tasks they expect to improve Chart 7: Distribution of students’ responses referring to listening skill they expect to learn

Tables

Table 1: Students’ learning places

Table 2: Students’ background of learning English

Table 3: Perceived English skills important to study

Table 4: Students’ expectations of the topics in listening class

Table 5: Results of listening test

Table 6: Teachers’ perceptions of their students’ difficulties in listening

Table 7: The tasks relevant to English 10 gifted students

Table 8: Teachers’ perceptions of topics and situations

Table 9: Teachers’ perception of listening skills needed by their students

Table 10: Distribution of students’ responses and teachers’ responses referring to listening syllabus

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

TNSUSS was founded in 1988 with the mission to select and train gifted students for Thai Nguyen province Every year, the English gifted students in grade 11 and 12 of the school have to take the national exam for gifted students To help the students gain the best results, the teachers of English specializing classes have to work very hard to prepare the materials for their teaching This work takes them a lot of time and money, and they always feel tired of preparing the materials as they have to select the materials themselves from different sources such as: internet, different textbooks, magazines etc As a result, the selected topics are monotonous, and the content is illogical and unsystematic The teachers cannot only use the current textbook for their teaching because it is designed for only normal students, not for gifted students Up to now, MOET has not edited a standard syllabus to meet the current requirements and difficulty level of the national exams for gifted students at specializing upper secondary schools Thus, if the English gifted only learn this type of the documents, they will not get high scores in national exam, especially

in listening part According to Anh (2006:14) the objectives of the new textbook for listening part are: “After the course, students can understand and identify main ideas, specific details of the conversations, monologue or spoken texts with 150 words to 200 words at low speed” Whereas, the format of the listening test in national exam is based on the format of IELTS tests It means that students have to listen to the spoken text with from

250 to 350 words at rather high speed Thus, it is necessary to design a listening supplementary for teachers and gifted students at TNSUSS to reduce the teachers’ workload in finding and selecting materials Moreover, as mentioned above, the students find it challenging in listening skill, not only because of the materials but also due to their neglect The students who want to enter TNSUSS have to take an entrance exam But in the format of the English paper, there are only grammar, vocabulary, and reading parts and there is no listening part Besides, MOET has not integrated this skill in the periodical exam for secondary schools Hence, the students only learn what are involved in the English papers and listening skill is completely neglected A lot of the students have command of grammar, reading skill, vocabulary but their listening level is not high To improve their listening abilities, they need to practice more with a supplementary logical

and systematic syllabus For these reasons, I decided to design a listening syllabus for grade 10 English gifted students at TNSUSS

2 Aims of the study

The aims of the study are:

- to investigate learning situation and students’ needs

- to identify students’ listening proficiency level

- to find out teaching situation and teachers’ needs

- to propose an appropriate listening syllabus for grade 10 English gifted students

3 Research questions of the study

1- What are learning situation and students’ needs?

2- What is students’ proficiency listening level?

3- What are the teaching situation and the teachers’ needs?

4- How to design the listening syllabus for the grade 10 English gifted students at TNSUSS?

4 Significance of the study

The study is carried out in response to the urgent demand of TNSUSS, gifted students

in grade 10 and teachers in teaching and studying listening and improves students’ listening skill Moreover, the ultimate outcome of the study will be an appropriate syllabus for gifted students in grade 10 The proposed syllabus is to give substantial assistance to designing supplementary syllabi for grade 11 and 12 English gifted students, especially for gifted students of national team

5 Methods of the study

To find the answers for the research questions above, the researcher used both quantitative research method and qualitative method Data were collected through three data collection instruments A survey questionnaire was distributed to 37 grade 10 English gifted students to find out learning situation and students’ need Besides, a listening test was designed

to evaluate students’ listening proficiency level And an informal interview was conducted among 5 teachers of English specializing classes to investigate teaching situation and teachers’ needs To analyze data, the researcher followed statistical procedure, from reporting, counting data to coding questionnaire data and data of listening test, classifying, and summarizing data Besides, the recorded interviews and stimulated recalls were transcribed, analyzed and synthesized in order to provide a deeper insight into the matter of concern

6 Scope of the study

The focus of the study is on designing a listening syllabus for grade 10 English gifted students at TNSUSS Since, to design a series of supplementary syllabi for English gifted students in grade 10, 11 and 12 would require a lot of time and effort from the designers Therefore, the researcher concentrated on designing a listening syllabus for only gifted students in grade 10

7 Design of the study

The study was organized in three parts:

Part I- Introduction- provided the rationale, aims, research questions, significance, methods and design of the study

Part II- Development- included three chapters:

Chapter 1 presented an overview of related literature on syllabus design, need analysis and listening comprehension

Chapter 2 was concerned with finding and data analysis From the results of the questionnaire, the learning situation, as well as, students’ needs was analyzed The students’ listening proficiency level also is revealed in listening test Besides, the teaching situation, teachers’ needs, together with strong points and drawbacks of currently used materials were also discussed based on the finding of the interview

Chapter 3 proposed a listening syllabus for grade 10 English gifted students It also suggested some suggestions for the implementation of the syllabus including suggestions for assessment and teaching methods

Part III- Conclusion- summarized the study and made some suggestions for further research

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter aimed at revising: The first part presented the definitions of syllabus, types of syllabus and steps in designing a syllabus The second part mentioned a need analysis as a point of departure for the process of syllabus design, components of need analysis: target needs and learning needs In the third part, listening theories were reviewed They included the definitions of listening comprehension, the strategies of listening comprehension, and listening processes These discussions would lay the foundation for the design of the listening syllabus presented in the next chapter

1.1 Syllabus design

1.1.1 Definition of syllabus

The term “syllabus” is not new in language teaching, but it is rather difficult in defining what a syllabus is, according to Nunan (1988:5): “there is some different disagreement about the nature of “the syllabus” And he points out the roof of the problem is that the syllabus design is defined based on two views: the broad and the narrow approach

Some language specialists, who back up the narrow view, such as Widdowson (1984 cited

in Nunan 1988:5), and Nunan (1988:5) indicate that syllabus and methodology should be kept separate In narrow view, Nunan (1988: 5) states “ syllabus design is seen as being concerned essentially with the selection and grading content, while methodology is concerned with the selection of learning tasks and activities” Allen (1984: 61 cited in Nunan 1988:5) advocates by defining: “Syllabus is concerned with a specification of what units will be taught as distinct from how they will be taught, which a matter for methodology is” According to Widdowson (1984: 26 cited in Nunan 1988:5): “the syllabus is simply a framework within which activities can be carried out: a teaching device to facilitate learning” Hutchinson & Waters (1987:80) point out: “A syllabus is a document which says what will (or at least what should) be learnt”

In contrast to the narrow view, some other scholars adopt a “broader view”, which argues that with the advent of communicative language teaching, the distinction between content and task is difficult to sustain One of the authors who advocate broad view, Dave (1990:1) defines: “The syllabus specifies what is to be learned and the methodology tells us how to

be learned” He also states that “there need be no conflict between the two We can specify

a syllabus in whatever way seems sensible; and can then use whatever methodology we

want in order to transmit our syllabus content” More specifically, Yalden (1984:14, cited

in Nunan, 1988:5) states: “The syllabus replaces the concept of method, and syllabus is now seen as an instrument by which the teacher, with the help of the syllabus designer, can achieve a degree of fit between the needs and aims of the learner (as social being and as individual and the activities which will take place in the classroom)” Obviously, Dave and Yalden support the view that the selection and gradation of content are combined with the methodology in so-called ‘syllabus”

To sum up, there have been a number of definitions of “syllabus” from the narrow to broad approach The issue is that in designing a syllabus for a certain group of learners, the designer must decide which view to follow The researcher of this thesis backed up the broad view that the selection of content, the selection of learning tasks and activities were combined with methodology in the syllabus Thus, the teacher, with the help of the designer, could easily use the syllabus to obtain the fit between the needs and the aims of the students

Besides the definition of syllabus, to be aware of syllabus types is also necessary for any syllabus designer It has a contribution to make the design of a fully realized, integrated

syllabus and the discussion on the syllabus types is being presented in the next part

1.1.2 Types of syllabus

This section presents several different kinds of syllabus, along with their advantages and disadvantages It will then be the foundation for the researcher of this study comes to a decision of which syllabus to choose

According to Dubin & Olshtain (1986:37), syllabi can be classified into some major types such as the structural-grammatical syllabus, the semantic-notional syllabus, the functional syllabus, and the situational syllabus

Ur (1996: 177-178) divides syllabuses into smaller types: grammatical, lexical, grammatical-lexical, situational, topic-based, notional, functional, notional, and mixed or

‘multi-strand’ procedural and process syllabus It is clear that in Ur’s view about types of syllabus, there are some differences from Dubin’s As for Ur, mixed or ‘multi-strand’ syllabus is the one that is combining different aspects in order to be maximally comprehensive and helpful to teachers and learners

Nunan (1988: 26-40) summarizes two main types of syllabus: the product – oriented syllabuses and the process – oriented syllabuses

The former contains the following types: Grammatical syllabuses, functional – notional syllabuses, analytic syllabuses, which focus on the knowledge and skills learners should gain as a result of instructions

The latter includes such types as: procedural syllabuses, task – based syllabuses, content syllabuses, which focus on the learning experience themselves

There have been many different classifications, each has its own advantages and disadvantages Choosing or employing which syllabus type will depend on a consideration

of the learners’ needs and the objectives of the course

In the study, the researcher chose skills-based syllabus for the study

* Skill - based syllabus

The second type of the syllabus I chose for my study was skill- based syllabus I used it in this study on account of its primary purpose was to learn the specific language skill Skill-based syllabus traditionally gathers linguistic abilities (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as writing business letters, listening to spoken language for the main idea, oral skills for business people, giving effective oral presentations, and so on Moreover, Robinson (1991:37) defines skill- based syllabus as “something of a half way house between content or product syllabuses on the one side and method or process syllabuses on the other” The content of the language teaching is a selection of competences that may play a part in using language

1.1.3 Steps in designing a syllabus

According to Munby (1983: 58), designing a syllabus involves a logical sequence of three stages: The first step is need analysis, the second one is content specification, and the last

is syllabus organization

Nunan (1988) has a different idea He believes that there are four steps in syllabus designing: The first stage is need analysis, the second one is setting goals, the third one is selecting and grading content and the last is selecting and grading learning tasks

As can be seen above, there are different opinions about the stages of designing a syllabus

In the next section, I would focuse on reviewing the theory of need analysis because if the researcher wanted to design successful, she had to know the target needs and learning needs Thus, the syllabus could meet the demand of students’ need, lack and want In the

next section, there would be two main parts The first one would be need analysis, which investigates the meaning of “needs”, the purposes of needs analysis and the kind of information that a needs analysis tell us The second one would be components of need analysis: target needs and learning needs

1.2 Needs analysis

1.2.1 Definitions of needs analysis

Nunan (1988:75) defines needs analysis as “a family of producers for gathering information about learners” Munby (1978:58) also states that “need analysis is concerned

to find out the learners’ needs in the use of target language (i.e who is communicating with whom, why, how, where, when, at what level, about what, and in what way)” The researcher of the study advocated the view of Munby, as it was more clear and detailed

1.2.2 Reasons for choosing need analysis

The researcher thought that need analyzing was an essential stage in designing a syllabus Because if I knew well what my students need, lack and want I would design an appropriate syllabus which can meet the demand of the students The significance of need analysis is stated by Richterich (1987:5) as: “Bearing in mind a wide range of needs, a needs analysis is considered a prerequisite in any course design” A needs analysis is now seen as the logical starting point for the development of a language program Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 53) also have the same idea of the significance of needs analysis: “If learners, sponsors and teachers know why the learners need English, that awareness will have an influence on what will be acceptable as reasonable content in the language course, and on the positive side: what potential can be exploited”

In needs analysis, we should consider two components: target needs and learning needs

1.2.3 Components of need analysis

1.2.3.1 Target needs

Target needs can be defined in terms of necessities, lacks and wants as follows:

The first component of target need is necessity Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 55) claim that “necessities is type of need determined by the demands of the target situation, that is, what the learner has to know in order to function effectively in the target situation” The researcher agreed with their view, I found that investigating the necessity would bring benefit to my study Because by determining the demand of the target situation the researcher would know what linguistic features should be involved in the syllabus

The second component of target need is lacks According to Hutchinson & Water (1987:54) “Lacks refer to the starting points, that is, you need to know what the learner knows already, so that you can then decide which of the necessities the learner lacks” In this study, it was very necessary for the researcher to know what the learner had already known and what the learner wished to achieve at the end of the course Furthermore, the researcher wanted to know the gap between the target proficiency and the existing proficiency of her learners

The last component of target need is wants Hutchinson & Water (1987:54) state that wants concern to what that destination should be Wants are learners’ awareness of needs, which

is a matter of perception Wants are subjective needs Thus, the researcher would like to find out the students’ wants in order to know what they were interested in listening comprehension, what topics, and tasks they preferred

1.2.3.2 Learning needs

Besides the target needs, I thought that learning needs is also important in designing a syllabus Because, it indicated what were necessary for students to study The definition of learning needs is clarified by Hutchinson & Waters (1987: 60) According to them, the learning need is “what the learner needs to do in order to learn” They use the analogy of the course as a journey in which “lacks” is regarded as the starting point, “necessities” as the destination and “how we are going to get from the starting point to destination” indicates “learning needs”

Being aware of the importance of need analysis in designing a syllabus, this study will conduct a need analysis based on both target needs and learning needs of the English grade ten gifted students of TNSUSS

1.3 An overview of listening comprehension

1.3.1 Definitions of listening comprehension

A variety of definitions of listening have been documented in the EFL literature For many years, people have thought that listening and reading are passive skills But in fact listening

is more complicated Helgesen and Brown (2007:5) point out “Instead of thinking of listening as passive, it is useful to understand it, along with reading, as a receptive skill According to Byrne (1984:13) “listening means comprehending information communicated through speech, or obtaining meanings and ideas from the spoken words Listening is a perceptive skill, which involves identifying, and retaining information

aurally perceived It means that in order to listen successfully, it is necessary to be able to work out what speakers mean and not simple to understand the words they hear” So it is

up to the listener to recognize and interpret the other factors that are used to convey the message This means that an effective listener is not passive and like a tape recorder talking in sound Rather, they need to be able to interpret what they hear Rubin (1995:7 cited by Helgesen and Brown 2007:3) defines “listening is conceived of as an active process in which listeners select and interpret information in order to define what is going

on and what the speakers are trying to express” This definition asserts that listening is active, not passive as perceived traditionally, and like other human activities, it is purposeful Listeners always have a reason for listening, i.e listening for what is relevant, necessary, or meaningful Listening is active because listeners are involved in a complicated mental process to interpret accurately what the speaker means to say

To sump up, although listening has been defined in various ways, all the above-cited definitions share common things about the listening, which can be seen as a mental activity deliberately undertaken by listener to interpret the meaning of spoken messages and to store information that he or she is interested in For the purpose of the study, I used Rubin’s definition of listening in designing the supplementary listening syllabus because of its clarity and simplicity

1.3.2 Listening strategies

In order to listen successfully, the students (the hearers) need to learn the strategies that are suitable to their levels The mastery of these skills enables students to listen with more understanding In the study, the students whom I was designing going to design a supplementary syllabus for are at intermediate level, thus in order to understand the message, students may need to be able to do the following: The first strategy is predicting, the second one is inferring, the third one is monitoring, the fourth is clarifying, the fifth one is responding the last one is evaluating (Helgensen and Brown (2007:70)) Moreover, Rixon (1986:88) points out that in order to understand the message students may need to

be able to do the following strategies: the first stage is following instructions correctly, the second one is matching or recognizing information in the text, the third one is picking out the relevant information, the fourth one is “turning into” a passage, the fifth one is inference and listening ahead, and the last one is recognizing the speakers’ mood, attitude and relationship

Among of many listening strategies the designer must consider which are the most suitable for her students The researcher of the study chose the Helgensen’s view because it was easy to use

1.3.3 Listening process

These are two distinct processes involved in listening comprehension: top-down and bottom-up According to Helgesen and Brown (2007: 6): “Bottom- up makes sense what

we hear by focusing on the different parts: the vocabulary or functional phrases, sound, etc

It is like you are at the bottom of the wall, looking at it, brick- by- brick It is easy to look

at the parts of the wall but you cannot get an overall view of it Hedge (2000: 230) has the same view: “With bottom-up processing, the students start with the component parts: words, grammar, and the like In the bottom - up part of listening process, we use our knowledge of language and our ability to process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speakers present to us In other words, we use information in the speech itself

to try to comprehend the meaning We segment speech into identifiable sounds and impose a structure on these in terms of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and intonation patterns At the same time, we use whatever clues available to infer meaning from the developing speech”

Top-down listening is the opposite of bottom-up listening, it is like “you are at the top of the wall You have a good view of the landscape and look at different directions and you miss a lot of details but you can generally understand the scene You don’t even notice bricks that are supporting you, and your view is very different from that of the person looking at the parts” Helgesen and Brown (2007: 7) According to Hedge (2000:232):

“Top-down comprehension strategies involve knowledge that a listener brings to a text, sometimes called “inside the heard” information Top-down listening infers meaning from message and various types of prior knowledge which listeners hold their heads.” Listeners use ‘top-down’ processes when they use prior knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term memory as schemata (typical sequences or common situations around which world knowledge is organized) Listeners use content words and contextual clues to form hypotheses in an exploratory fashion

Each process has its weak points and strong points, I thought that it was better to adapt an interactive, interpretive process of bottom-up and top-down where my students used both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages This could help my students to succeed in learning listening

In the second part, the need analysis approach the researcher chose was one that combined both the learning needs and target needs Hence, the syllabus would satisfy the demands of the learners

In the third part, the research reviewed definitions of listening comprehension and she would like to emphasize that listening was a two-way process: understand what we hear and respond to the message we receive And she also supported the idea that comprehension was always only selective and partial

CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter aimed at providing readers with detail descriptions of the study The first section was the findings of the questionnaire Based on the data, the researcher would analyze the learning situation and students’ needs The second one was the result of the listening test In the third section, teaching situation, teachers’ needs, and currently used materials were analyzed and discussed based on the results of the interview

2.1 Questionnaire

2.1.1 Aims of the questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed to gather information from students 13 questions in the questionnaire focused on finding out the learning situation, students’ needs, especially their wants and lacks so that the syllabus can be made appropriate and useful to the students (See appendix 1)

2.1.2 Participants

37 grade 10 English gifted students at TNSUSS were involved in the questionnaire

2.1.3 Findings and data analysis

2.1.3.1 Learning situation

The students’ background knowledge of English is quite good Because before entering the school, they had to take an entrance exam, which included three compulsory subjects: mathematics, literature, and English Many students have gifts for learning foreign languages and always show their interest in learning English and leave no stone unturned

in their attempt to learn English This creates advantageous conditions for the teachers to nurture and foster the gifted students Besides the advantages mentioned above, there are some disadvantages From informal interview I found that the purpose of the students to enter TNSUSS was contrary to the training purpose of TNSUSS Most students believed that studying in this school enabled them to enter the universities more easily, because this was the best school to study in Thai Nguyen province Almost students stated that they did not like to take part in the national examination for choosing gifted students and it was a waste of time because even if they got high marks in this exam, they would still not be given priority to those who did not (a few years ago, those who won the third place or higher in the national exam could go straight to any university they liked without taking a university exam) Whereas the purpose of training national gifted students of Thai Nguyen

province in general and of TNSUSS in particular is to train students to become talented so that they can pass the national examination for gifted students through which we can pick out distinguished ones

To make the things worse, although the students have passed the entrance exam, their listening ability is limited because they only learn what they have to take in the entrance examination Moreover, the format of the paper is only composed of grammar, pronunciation, writing and reading skill parts; there is not any listening part in the paper

As a result, listening and speaking skills were neglected and the students’ abilities of listening are rather low (see the result of listening test in part 2.2.3.1) In addition, the materials and equipments for students to learn English, especially to practice listening skill also affect students’ learning Although TNSUSS is the only specializing upper secondary school in Thai Nguyen province, but the facilities for language study is insufficient There

is no language laboratory, internet, videos, English magazines or multi- media room There exists only some cassette players, and tapes in poor condition, which are always shared among teachers The materials are not enough and available, especially there are no supplementary materials for listening skill in the school’s library Therefore, the students

do not know what kind of the books, tapes they should buy from the bookstores to practice listening skill

2.1.3.1.1 The students’ profile (question 1, 2, 3)

The results in table 1 and 2 (see appendix 7) show that the students’ age ranges from fifteen to seventeen years old Besides, almost (86, 4%) the students in English class come from Thai Nguyen city, only some (13, 5%) of them come from different districts of the province, and nobody is from remote areas This means that they have rather good conditions to learn English, especially to practice listening skill with tapes, cassettes, or computers at home Moreover, the majority of the students (83, 7%) said they have learned English for 5 years and 27, 3% of all had learned English for 7 years

2.1.3.1.2 Students' self evaluation on their English (question 4)

When the teacher asked the students to evaluate their strong points in learning English, nearly half (18/ 37) of the students stated that they were good at grammar than others The item which had the second rank was reading (11/37) The chart 1 below also shows that the weakest skill of the students was listening skill, the majority of the students thought that

their listening skill was poor

Chart 1: Students' self evaluation on their English ability

12

14

16

18

2.1.3.1.3 Perceived English skills important to study (question 5)

Table 3: Perceived English skills important to study

Second priority

Third priority

Fourth priority

Fifth priority

Sixth priority

Listening 14/ 37,8% 9/ 24,3% 2/ 5,4% 2/ 5,4% 0/ 0% 2/ 5,4% Speaking 8/ 21,6% 6/ 16,2% 5/ 13,5% 1/ 2,7% 5/ 13,5% 2/ 5,4% Reading 0/ 0% 3/ 8,1% 3/ 8,1% 4/ 10,8% 8/ 21,6% 7/ 18,9% Grammar 1/ 2,7% 0/ 0% 6/ 16,2% 6/ 16,2% 4/ 10,8% 8/ 21,6% Writing 2/ 5,4% 2/ 5,4% 6/ 16,2% 6/ 16,2% 6/ 16,2% 4/ 10,8%

5

Vocabulary 2/ 5,4% 3/ 8,1% 6/ 16,2% 2/ 5,4% 9/ 24,3% 3/ 8,1% The result reveals that the English language skill that the students wanted to improve was listening They gave the first priority to the listening skill with the highest percentage (37,8%) The second priority belonged to speaking skill (21,6%) Writing and vocabulary received the third priority with 5,4% Others items which were ranked the fifth and sixth priorities got lower percentages, however the data were not very different from each other The data indicated that listening was a very important skill for teaching English at TNSUSS It should be paid much more attention to together with speaking, writing and vocabulary This suggested that designing a listening syllabus for English grade 10 gifted students at TNSUSS to help them improve listening skill was very necessary

2.1.3.2 Student’s needs

This section provides the information to identify students' learning needs lacks and wants

concerning their attitudes, motivation, self-perceived difficulties, obstacles prevented them from completing tasks in the classroom Based on this information, the content of the course will be selected appropriately to specified students and it can help to give the strategies facilitating the implementation of the syllabus

2.1.3.2.1 Students’ attitudes towards listening skill in their use of English (question 6) Chart 2: Students’ responses regarding their attitudes forwards listening skill

As the result shows, the majority of the students viewed listening as the very important skill in their use of English (75,7%) Only 13,5 % stated that it was important and the rest

of the students (10,8%) considered listening to be fairly important Nobody stated that it was not important and that they did not know the importance of listening skill

2.1.3.2.2 Students’ difficulties in listening (question 8)

It was interesting to note the results revealed from the chart 3 (see appendix 4) It showed that students encountered almost the items given 64,9,8% of the students thought that listening to speaker’s stress, pronunciation, and speed was the biggest obstacle 56,8% of the students thought that they lacked vocabulary to listen effectively The students also encountered difficulties in identifying main ideas and identifying details with the percentage was 43,2%, followed by quality of tapes (27%), and identifying the general meaning of the conversation or monologue and recognizing individual words (21,6%) They had fewer difficulties in remembering the content or information (18,9%), lacking background knowledge about the topics (16,2%) and following instructions and directions (13,5%) And the students did not find it hard to concentrate

2.1.3.2.3 Students’ perception of listening comprehension (question 9)

According to the data shown in the chart 4 (see appendix 4), students had rather good background of listening comprehension Nearly two third (59,5%) of the responses of the students indicated that getting main ideas was the most important in listening comprehension Identifying specific details ranked the second with 43,2%, the third was identifying the general meaning of the conversation or monologue (24,3%) Only few students (16,2%) misunderstood what listening comprehension was They considered understanding all words and sentences in the spoken text to be significant and 13,5% of the students thought that being able to translate all things into Vietnamese was important in listening comprehension These students seemed to be familiar with grammar- translation method From the researcher’s point of view, the students’ misunderstanding led to the dissatisfaction with the listening lessons

2.1.3.2.4 Students’ expectations of the teachers (question 10)

Chart 5: Students' responses concerning their perception of the teacher's role

in advance

To translate everything into Vietnamese

To play the tape as many times

as possible

To pause the tape after each sentence for you to listen

To ask you

to repeat all sentences

To do all the textbook tasks in order

To give mark

to your work

To encourage students

0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0

As the chart show, the majority (64,9%) of the students would like the teacher to teach them listening strategies, nearly half of the respondents expected the teachers to play the tape as many times as possible (40,5%) and to pause the tape after each sentence as many times as possible (43,2%) A slightly lower percentage of the students’ expectation (37,8%) would like the teachers to teach them all new words in advance 32,4% expected the teachers to give clear explanations for the tasks in advance and to ask them to repeat all sentences was 10,8% Very few (8,1%) students expected the teachers to do all the tasks

in order and 5,4% of the students would like the teachers to get mark to their work

Especially, all the students did not expect the teachers to translate everything into Vietnamese

2.1.3.2.5 Students’ expectations of the topics in listening class (question 11)

The data presented in the table 4 (see appendix 5) showed that the topics the students expected most were looking into future and hobbies (78%), famous people (75%), followed by travelling, cities, and at the university (72%) They were also interested in topics such as education and environment with 70,2% Besides, students took interest in love and marriage (56%), words and feelings (54%) and sports and games (45%) However, there were some topics which did not receive much of the students’ interest such

as the interview (32, 4%), science and technology (35, 1%) The topics which received the least interest of the students were at the hotel (21%) and diseases (16,2%)

2.1.3.2.6 Students’ expectations of the tasks in the listening class (question 12)

Chart 6: Distribution of students’ responses referring to listening tasks they expect to improve

18 23

29.7 21.6 21.6

32.4

0.0 16.2 16.2

0 5 10 15 20 25

Short answer Multiple choice Matching Classification Summary

completion

Notes, summary, sentence or gap completion

Diagram completion and labelling

Table completion

Form completion 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0

70.0 Frequency (n=37) Percentage (%)

Another interesting finding was that the students did not like diagram completion and labelling task, followed by form and table completion (16,2%) 62,2% of the students preferred doing multiple choice task and short answer task came in second in the students’ responses (48,6%) 32% wished to learn notes, summary, sentence or gap completion, whereas 29,7% expected to do matching task and 21,6% was for classification

2.3.1.2.7 Students’ perceptions of listening skills needed (question 13)

As the result shown in the chart 7 below, listening for the main idea was the skill the students considered as the most necessary and extremely important for their studying (75,7%) Understanding all new words received 54,1% Besides, 45,9% of the students wanted to learn identifying speaker’s attitude from tone and voice and identifying the major topic skills were students’ needs 40,5% would like to improve skill of listening for specific information and 29,7 % for skill of listening for general meaning Ignoring irrelevant vocabulary received the least interest of the students with 21,6%

Chart 7: Distribution of students’ responses referring to listening skill they expect to learn

Listening for the general meaning

Listening for specific information

Identifying speaker’s attitude from tone and voice

Identifying the major topic

Understanding all new words.

Ignoring irrelevant vocabulary

Frequency (n=37) Percentage (%)

2.2 Listening test

2.2.1 Aims of the listening test

The aim of the listening test at pre-intermediate level was to identify the students' listening proficiency level The researcher used listening test to gather wealth information about specific problems that the students may be having with the language That was the foundation for the researcher to ascertain what further teaching is necessary (See appendix 2)

2.2.2 Participants

37 grade 10 English gifted students at TNSUSS took part in the listening test

2.2.3 Findings and data analysis

Results of listening test

The table 5 ( see appendix 6 ) shows that only 8% of the students got marks 9-10, 18,9% of them got marks 7-8, while 51,3% got marks 5-6 Some (21%) got marks under 5 From the

results, the researcher found that some students did not reach the pre-intermediate level with high scores as expected Therefore, it was necessary for them to practice more

2.3 Interview

2.3.1 Aims of the interview

The purpose of the interview was to select the detailed information about teaching situation, teachers’ needs and currently used materials (See appendix 3)

of teaching and getting more medals from national examination for school Moreover, lacking syllabi for gifted students also made training gifted students difficult In normal classes there were four periods each week, and they used the text book “Tieng Anh nang cao” But in English specialized classes, there were nine periods for gifted students each week Therefore, the teachers could not only use “Tieng Anh nang cao” for our students; we needed more syllabi, documents, materials for our teaching The teachers had to select the documents themselves from many sources, which wasted much time and made the materials illogical and unsystematic Being aware of the difficulties the teachers and students were suffering, the

authorities of Thai Nguyen province and TNSUSS decided to project designing syllabi for gifted students of all subjects in order to not only reduce teachers’ workload in selecting materials, help gifted students have logical and systematic syllabi but also enhance students’ level and raise the number of medals

2.3.3.2 Teachers’ needs

2.3.3.2.1 The teachers’ assessment of students’ ability (question 1)

Regarding the English language skills that the teachers considered to be the weak points of the students in their studying, speaking and listening skills (as indicated by 5 out of 5 respondents) were ranked the highest in the priorities, followed by writing and vocabulary (3/5) Reading skill came third in teachers’ responses (2/5) The strongest point of students was grammar (1/5)

2.3.3.2.2 The difficulties teachers thought their students met in listening (question 2) Table 6: Teachers’ perceptions of their students’ difficulties in listening

Having trouble in remembering content 2 40%

The data in the table 6 showed that the students had special difficulties in identifying details, recognizing individual words (4 out of 5 teachers), and identifying main ideals, lacking vocabulary, bad quality of tapes (3 teachers), having trouble in remembering the content and lacking background knowledge (2 teachers).The teachers also blamed that their students sometimes cannot concentrate during the process of listening (1 teacher)

2.3.3.2.3 Tasks relevant to English grade 10 gifted students (question 3)

As the table 7 shown below, all teachers were interested in filling the form, choosing the best answer (5 out of 5), 4 of them expected their students to give short answer and tick true or false 3 of them suggested filling in the chart and diagram and matching Spotting

mistakes and putting the pictures in order were given less preference (2 out of 5) Only one teacher suggested completing the text Besides, the teachers would help students to improve listening skills such as listening for specific ideas for stress and key words or guessing the general ideas

Table 7: The tasks relevant to English 10 gifted students

Notes, summary, sentence or gap completion 3 60%

2.3.3.2.4 Teachers’ perceptions of necessary topics/ situations (question 4)

Table 8: Teachers’ perceptions of topics and situations

6 Words and feelings

7 Sports and game

2.3.3.2.5 Teachers’ perception of listening skills needed by their students (question 5)

As the results shown in the table 9 (see appendix 7), all the teachers suggested that the supplementary listening syllabus should focus on identifying main ideas, listening for details, listening for specific information 80% recommended that guessing unknown words based on the spoken context, getting the key words, ignoring the irrelevant words should be in the syllabus Two of them suggested identifying speaker’s attitude from tone and voice And the researcher also had the same ideas, so these listening skills will be involved in the syllabus

2.3.3.3 Currently used materials

In this section, an analysis of testing format of national tests and the text book “Tieng Anh

10 nang cao” were taken in order to know the target and learning needs

2.3.3.3.1 Testing format and results of the national tests

The English tests for national gifted students always involve with the following parts: listening, lexical and grammar, use of English, reading, and writing The content of the tests are changed and updated every year The listening part is at upper-intermediate level because the exercises are the format of IELTS tests And when taking the tests, the students are only allowed to listen twice Therefore, they find it hard to get the high score

in this part and the total scores are also affected Among forty – two prizes, there are only four second prize, seventeen third prize and the rests are stimulating ones In the informal interview with the teachers, they stated that their students often found it easier to do the

tasks of grammar, reading, use of English than those of listening and writing Obviously, it

is writing and listening skills that cause the reasons for getting low prize Thus, it is high time for the teachers to equip students with effective strategies, techniques, and ask them to practice as much as possible so that they can get higher scores in national tests And this requires the teachers to have various materials for preparing the lessons carefully To make this task less hard, designing specializing syllabus for English gifted students is one of the best solutions

2.3.3.3.2 The textbook “Tieng Anh 10 nang cao” (question 6)

In TNSUSS, the textbook “Tieng Anh 10 nang cao” is used for teaching not only grade 10 English gifted students but also the students of social science department There is no specializing syllabus for English gifted students Normally, the training officially lasts thirty-seven weeks, divided into two terms Each week, there are four periods of English subject in social science department classes and the total periods of English subject each year is 148 but in English specialized class there are nine periods of English subject each week Thus, the total periods of English subject in English specialized class is twice the social science department classes’ As a result, the grade 10 English gifted students and the teachers of English specializing class lack materials to teach and learn

2.3.3.3.2.1 The good points of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10 nang cao” (question 6)

The aim of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10 nang cao”, according to the “Guidelines for application of the new English textbook for teachers” (2006: 6), is that the students after the course can:

- Understand the fundamentals of the English system that is suitable to the pupils' age

- Use the four language skills as a means of communication at basic level to meet the demand for specializing in social science

- Get general knowledge of the cultural background of English speaking countries

- Form language skills and develop thought

With those purposes, the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10 nang cao” is designed with

some new points, in which the points on language skills, themes and teaching methodology are the ones should be taken into consideration In this textbook, the theme is considered as the basis for selecting and sequencing the content Under these themes, there are various topics and situations related to many fields of life such as school talk, special education, and the medial, life in the community, national parks and others Particularly, some topics

are related directly to different cultures of English speaking countries in the areas and in the world Almost topics of the textbook are rather interesting and various This attracts their students to the lessons Besides, when answering the question 7 in the interview, all the teachers also stated that the advantages of the new textbook were that it was designed

to develop students’ four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking And all the activities in the book intended to develop their students’ ability and students were considered centre in learning process Moreover the teaching approach of this text book was an emphasis on communicative skills This teaching approach was represented by task-based teaching It was advantageous to their students because it was more student-centered, allowing more meaningful communication This also created opportunities for their students to use all the languages they know and are learning, rather than just the 'target language' of the lesson Furthermore, as the students were familiar to tasks (e.g music, mass media) students would be engaged, which might further motivate them in their language learning These new points of the new textbook were different from the old English textbook, which traditionally focused on providing pupils with English structures and grammatical items

2.3.3.2.2 The drawbacks of the textbook “ Tieng Anh 10 nang cao” (question 7 in the questionnaire and question 6, 7 and 8 in the interview)

Although the new textbook has many good points, it also has some drawbacks to the English gifted students at TNSUSS When being asked to give opinions about the weaknesses of the textbook (question 6), the teachers said that even though the contents of this book were rather interesting as mentioned above, the students were rather familiar with some topics such as: music, sport, mass media, technology, which motivated students much in learning but some were not their much concern such as special education, Pacific Rim, historical places and so on These topics were not closed to the students’ everyday life so they didn’t take much interest Four of the teachers claimed that too much emphasis was placed on vocabulary and grammar and there were lacks of the activities recreating learned language, as well as, improving communicative skills They also thought that the close connection among the parts of a unit or among units was not paid much attention to

so their students could not remember all the things that were only presented once in the textbook 100% of the teachers stated that more tasks and activities should be added to the listening sections In this one, there were very few exercises; especially the tasks were too