kích hoạt kiến thức nền để nâng cao kĩ năng nghe cho học sinh trung học phổ thông activating prior knowledge in improving listening skills of high school students kích hoạt kiến thức nền để nâng cao kĩ năng nghe cho học sinh trung học phổ thông

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ LAN ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IN IMPROVING LISTENING S

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ LAN

ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IN IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS OF HIGH

SCHOOL STUDENTS

KÍCH HOẠT KIẾN THỨC NỀN ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO

HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60.14.10

Hanoi - 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ LAN

ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IN IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS OF HIGH

SCHOOL STUDENTS

KÍCH HOẠT KIẾN THỨC NỀN ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO

HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60.14.10

Supervisor : Dr, Huỳnh Anh Tuấn

Hanoi – 2013

DECLARATION

I, hereby, certify the thesis entitled “Activating prior knowledge in improving listening skills of high school students” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts at the University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, and this thesis has not, wholly or partially, been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions

Hanoi, 2013

NGUYEN THI LAN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all those who have supported me in doing this independent study

Firstly, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my supervisor,

Dr Huynh Anh Tuan for his valuable time and useful guidance towards the completion of this study

Secondly, I am extremely grateful to the staff members of the Faculty of Post

- graduate studies for their helpful lectures

My special thanks are also sent to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates,

as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments and criticism and also for their continued interest and encouragements

Thirdly, I appreciate the assistance and cooperation given to me by teachers and students at Giao Thuy B high school Without their sincere participation, this paper would not have been possible

Last but not least, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my beloved people, my parents, my husband and my children for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement

ABSTRACT

In recent years more and more studies have focused on language learning strategies and their importance, especially learning strategies in listening skill Sharing the same concern, this research aims at providing some information relating

to the perception of activating prior knowledge in improving listening skill to high school students Firstly, the author briefly reviewed some literature concerning this issue Then data were collected by two instruments, namely questionnaires for both students and teachers, and class observations Nine teachers and 221 students in grade 10 and 11 were sampled The Microsoft Excel was undertaken to analyze the data The final results indicated that the teachers and students had inadequate knowledge about the role of activating prior knowledge in listening lessons The study also showed the difficulties that students encounter due to lack of prior knowledge in listening Lastly, the study offered some implications for activating students’ prior knowledge in teaching and learning listening skill

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration ……… ……… i

Acknowledgements……… …… ii

Abstract……… ……… iii

Table of contents……….……… iv

List of tables and figures……… vii

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale……… 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study……… ,,, 1

3 Scope of the study……… 2

4 Significance of the study ……… 2

5 Research methodology……… 3

6 Design of the study……… ,.3

PART TWO DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW I THEARETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Theories on listening comprehension 1.1.1 The concepts of listening comprehension 5

1.1.2 The processes of listening comprehension ……… 6

1.2 Theories on activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage 1.2.1 Definitions of activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage……,,8

1.2.2 Roles of activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage …………,9

1.2.3 Activities to activate prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage 10

1.2.4 Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities 11

1.3 Schema 1.3.1 Definitions of schema 12

1.3.2 Characteristics of schema 13

1.3.3 Types of schema 13

II LITERATURE REVIEW ………… ……… 14

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research questions 16

2.2 Research approach……… 16

2.3 Data collection methods……….…… 16

2.3.1 The questionnaire for the teachers……….… 17

2.3.2 The questionnaire for the students……….… 17

2.3.3 Classroom observation 18

2.4 Data collection procedure 2.4.1 The setting of the study 18

2.4.2 Participants’ background information……….19

2.4.2.1 The teachers……… 19

2.4.2.2 The students……….… 19

2.4 3 Procedure……… 20

2.5 Data analytical units 20

CHAPTER3 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.1 DATA ANALYSIS OF THE TEACHERS’ SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IN CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SHEET 3.1 1.The teachers’ attitudes toward the difficulties that high school students encounter when their prior knowledge is not activated 21

3.1.2 The situation of applying the techniques of activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage at Giao Thuy B High School 23

3.1.3 Teachers’ comments on the roles of activating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities… ……… 26

3.2 DATA ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS’ SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IN CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SHEETS 3.2.1 The students’ attitudes toward the difficulties that they encounter when their prior knowledge is not activated 28

3.2.2 The students’ attitudes toward the situation of applying the techniques of

activating prior knowledge in pre-listening stage at Giao Thuy B high

school 30

3.2.3 Students’ comments on the roles of activating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities……… 33

3.3 SUMMARY……… ……… 35

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 4.1 BENEFITS OF ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE TO TEACHING LISTENING 4.1.1 For the teachers……… 37

4.1.2 For the students……… 37

4.2 RECOMMENDATION 4.2.1 To the curriculum designers ……… 39

4.2.2 To the teachers……….… 39

4.2.2.1 Raising awareness of the role of pre listening activities……… 40

4.2.2.2 Exploiting background knowledge… 40

4.2.2.3 Improving pre-listening activities in the material 40

4.2.2.4 Using pre-listening activities appropriately and flexibly 41

4.2.3 To the students……… 43

PART THREE CONCLUSIONS REVIEW OF THE STUDY……… 44

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY……… 45

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH……… …… 45

REFERENCES……… 46

APPENDIX……….I

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables

Table 1: Teachers’ remarks about activities used to motivate students’ prior knowledge in the pre listening stage (appendix 3, page V)

Table 2: Students’ attitudes toward activities teachers carry out in the pre listening stage (appendix 3, page V)

Figure11 Students’ comments on the importance of activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage.(appendix 4, page XI)

Figure 12: Students’ comments on the benefits of motivating prior knowledge (appendix4, page XI)

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Listening comprehension is a fundamental language skill Nunan (1988:1) stated: “Listening is a basic skill in language teaching Without listening skill, learners will never learn to communicate effectively” In many ESL and EFL situations, listening is a big challenge for both teachers and learners in their teaching and learning Students of English in ESL and EFL situations have difficulties in comprehending spoken language due to many reasons which may range from their inadequate background knowledge, their limited reservoir of vocabulary and grammatical structures, their lack of preparation for the task etc (Boyle, 1984) Foreign language learners have particular needs to be adjusted or tuned in - the term Underwood, 1989, rather than being plunged straight into a listening task without any orientation to it Therefore, pre-listening activities are crucial to good second language learning and teaching During this critical phase of the listening process, teachers prepare students for what they will hear and what they are expected to do Pre-listening activities help students make decisions about what to listen for and, subsequently, to focus attention on meaning while listening Pre-listening activities have been carried out in listening lessons at Giao Thuy B High School However, they are quite not effective One of the reasons is assumed

to be students’ background knowledge not being activated Consequently, many students understand very little of what they are supposed to listen to As a teacher of Giao Thuy B High School, in the hope of improving the listening skills of my

students, I have decided to do the following research entitled: “Activating prior

knowledge in improving listening skills of high school students”

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The study aims at helping high school students improve their listening skills by activating their prior knowledge In order to achieve the aim, the study has to fulfill the following objectives:

- investigating problems that SLL in general and high school students in particular encounter while listening when prior knowledge is not activated in the pre-listening stage

- exploring the process of activating prior knowledge by the teachers and students in the pre-listening stage at Giao Thuy B High School

- finding out teachers’ and students’ comments on the role of activating prior knowledge in the development of listening skill

- giving some suggestions for successful implementation of activating students’ background knowledge to help ease the difficulty of listening

3 Scope of the study

Various forms of support and factors have a valuable role to play in teaching listening skills but the researcher’s particular concern in this research is activating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities which interferes with the students’ ability to demonstrate the level of listening comprehension More specifically, the author concentrates on the difficulties in pre-listening activities that teachers and students at Giao Thuy B high school have to cope with Based on that, some recommendations are given for teachers to improve their pre-listening activities to activate students’ background knowledge to cope with their listening problems in the class

4 Significance of the study

As one of the uninvestigated issues in teaching listening for high school students in Vietnam, the present study on activating prior knowledge in pre-listening stage will make certain contributions to the development of listening skills among high school students The study is at the same time hoped to benefit teachers, educationists and researchers of related fields

• For the students, the results of the study will give impact to the improvement

of their listening The student knows how to make full use of background knowledge to become an effective listener

• For English teachers, the findings of this study will give valuable and useful information on the implementation of the teaching of listening The study firstly will help teachers to realize the role of pre-listening activities and know how to adapt in different lessons

• The educationists may base on the implementation of pre-listening stage to make necessary changes in terms of curriculum, facilities to exploit pre-listening activities to the full

• The research will serve as the foundation for further related researches Other researchers may also take the strengths and weaknesses of the study into account to better theirs

5 Research methodology

In order to seek answers to the research questions, a survey research is adopted in this research Survey questionnaires and classroom observations are the two main instruments to collect the data The data from the observations are of great assistance to ensure the validity of the information gathered from the survey questionnaire The observations were done through the checklists They were made

by the researcher in concerning with teacher’s pre-listening activities and students’ involvement and attitudes towards the pre-listening activities Finally, all data were analyzed through coding, classifying, and recorded in the check list Thanks to these, the result is more reliable and helps the researcher suggest ways of activating prior knowledge more easily

6 Design of the study

This minor thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion

Part I: Introduction This part presents the rationale, the aim and objectives of the study, scope of the study, method of the study and design of the study

Part II: Development It is divided into 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background and literature review This chapter discusses the theoretical background and previous studies relevant to the study

Chapter 2: Research methodology It discusses the research questions, the approach adopted, the methods of collecting data, the data collection procedure (timeline), and data analysis methods

Chapter 3: Data analysis and discussion It shows the detailed results of the surveys and covers a comprehensive analysis on the data collected from questionnaires and class observations

Chapter 4: Findings and recommendations This part shows the findings and suggests some techniques in activating prior knowledge

Part III: Conclusions This part includes a review of the study, suggestions for further research and limitations of the study

Most of the students at Giao Thuy B High School have been learning English since they were 6th grade students That is to say they have had four years of learning English at lower secondary school However, their levels of English proficiency vary from individual to individual

PART II DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Theories on listening comprehension

1.1.1 The concept of listening comprehension

There are various points of view on listening comprehension

Traditionally, listening is considered as a passive language skill alongside the reading skill It means that learners are almost passive in practicing listening skill in

the classroom like “tape recorder or trained parrot” (Anderson and Lynch,

1988:18) Learners just hear what they are to listen without paying sufficient attention to the discourse such as the background knowledge of the speakers as well

as their intentions, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning, etc This view

of listening comprehension seems to be inappropriate and inadequate because it does not capture all the relevant features of comprehension

Therefore, many researchers like O’Malley, Chamot and Kupper (1989), Rost (1994) and Underwood (1989) have to come to another view in which the role of the listeners is thought to be active, not passive anymore Theoretically, listening is

viewed as an “active process in which individuals focus on selected aspects of aural

input, construct meaning from passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge” (O’Malley, Chamot and Kupper, 1989: 418) In order to construct the

message that the speaker intends, the hearer must “actively contribute knowledge

from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources” (Buck, 2001: 1-2) Anderson and

Lynch (1988:35) also share this point of view that the role of the successful listener

has to be thought of as an “active model builder” The listener plays an important

part in the process, by activating various types of knowledge, and by applying what

he knows to what he hears and trying to understand what the speaker means

In conclusion, listening comprehension has been defined in many different ways Nevertheless, the active role of listeners has been emphasized in every

definition The effective listener actively engages in the process of comprehension, not passively receive or record anymore

1.1.2 The processes of listening comprehension

Schema is the guiding structure in the comprehension process Schema is

defined by Anderson and Lynch (1988: 14) as “a mental structure, consisting of

relevant individual knowledge, memory and experience, which allow us to incorporate what we learn into what we know” If the incoming information is

matched with the schema, then the listeners have succeeded in comprehending the text; if they are not compatible, either the information or the schema will be discarded or modified The principle of schema leads to two basic modes of information processing: bottom-up processing and top-down processing These two processing intersect to develop an interactive processing Thus, models for listening process fall into three types: bottom-up processing, top-down processing and interactive processing

Bottom-up processing is activated by the new incoming data Schema is formed hierarchically, from the most specific at the bottom to the most general at the top According to this type of processing, listening is a process decoding the sounds, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts Hence, phonemic units are decoded and connected together to construct words, words are connected together to construct phrases, phrases are connected to make utterances, and utterances are connected to make a complete and meaningful text Brown

(1990: 151) states that “Learners who have progressed to the point of being able to

use the phonological code competently have a good chance of being able to recognize what most of the words intended by the speaker were, how they were grouped into phrases, how they were structured into larger clauses (or sentences) and how these related to each other” That is to say, meaning is arrived at the last

step of the process A chain of coming sounds trigger schema hierarchically organized in a listener’s mind – the phonological knowledge, the morphological knowledge, lexical and syntactical knowledge This process is associated with the

listener’s linguistic knowledge However, bottom-up process has its weak points Understanding a text is an interactive process between the listener’s previous knowledge and the text Efficient comprehension that associated the textual material with listener’s brain does not only depend on one’s linguistic knowledge

Top-down processing is explained as employing background knowledge in comprehending the meaning of the message Carrell and Eisterhold (1983: 557) point out that in top down processing, the system makes general predictions based

on “a higher level, general schemata, and then searches the input for information to

fit into these practically satisfied, higher order schemata” In terms of listening, the

listener actively constructs the original meaning of the speaker employing new input

as clues In this reconstruction process, the listener employs prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening occurs to understand what he/ she hears Context and situation involve such things as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speaker(s) and the correlation with the situation, as well as with each other and

previous events It is mentioned by Buck that in top down processing “the various

types of knowledge involved in understanding language are not applied in any fixed order – they can be used in any order, or even simultaneously, and they are all capable of interacting and influencing each other” (Buck, 2001: 2) We must

realize if the incoming information the listener hears is unfamiliar to him, it can’t evoke his schemata and he can only depend heavily on his linguistic knowledge in listening comprehension Besides, although the listener can trigger a schema, he might not have the suitable schema expected by the speaker Thus, only replying on top- down processing may result in the failure of comprehension

The interactive processing overcomes the disadvantages of bottom-up and top-down processing to augment comprehension However, it is now more generally accepted that both top-down and bottom-up listening processing should be combined to enhance listening comprehension Complex and simultaneous processing of background knowledge information, contextual information and linguistic information make comprehension and interpretation become easy If the

content is familiar with the listener, he will employ his background knowledge at the same time to make predictions which will be proved by the new input If not, he can only depend on his linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of information Underwood (1989: 2) divides the aural process into two stages There are two levels of activities of the aural process:

“recognition and selection” The first level is that the structure and relationship

between syntax and phonology of the language are recognized At this level, the

sound goes into a sensory store called the “echoic memory” “Echoic memory” is

just the short term memory because there is continuous arrival of new information before the listener has opportunity to deal with it That is why there is the following

stage which is called “selection” In this level the listener selects what he finds most

interesting or important or comprehensible in the utterance At this point, words or groups of words are checked and compared with information already held in the long term memory and the meaning is extracted from them (Underwood, 1989) Therefore, the listener usually remembers the meaning rather than the exact word spoken when he has to recall what has been said The basis of listening comprehension is the ability to recognize and select the specific details in the discourse

1.2 Theories on activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage

1.2.1 Definitions of activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage

Using prior knowledge is an important part of listening comprehension for

students They relate listened word to their previous experiences to make listening more active, helping them both understand and remember what they have listened Some experts believe that activating prior knowledge in the pre listening stage is the most important aspect of the listening experience

Rixon (1986: 63) defines activating prior knowledge in the listening stage

pre-listening as “Things to do before the students hear the passage, to help them get the

out most of what they are going to hear.” It means that in this stage, the teacher has

to prepare the students to achieve the most from the passage More specifically,

Underwood (1989:9) mentions pre-listening is a kind of “preparatory work” that students should be “tuned in” or provided some relevant information so that they

know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks Ur (1992: 4) also

shares his view that “It would seem a good idea when presenting a listening

passage in class to give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening.” When teaching pre-listening stage

teachers should use some teaching techniques to help students effectively activate prior knowledge when listening i.e.: pre teaching vocabulary, providing background knowledge and creating opportunities and a framework for students to continue building background knowledge

In conclusion, pre-listening work should be done in an as natural way as possible and time for pre- listening activities in a listening lesson must be allocated appropriately and should not be rushed

1.2.2 Roles of activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage

There is widespread agreement that prior knowledge influences learning, and that learners construct concepts from prior knowledge (Resnick, 1983; Glaserfeld, 1984) Activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage plays an important role

in a listening lesson Buck (1995) mentions pre-listening activities can provide a context for interpretation and can activate background knowledge Mendelsohn (1995: 140 ) also points out that the important role for pre-listening activities is to “

activate the students‟ existing knowledge of the topic in order for them to link what they comprehend and to use this as a basis of their hypothesis – information, prediction, and inference”

Brown & Yule (1983) found four clusters of factors which can affect the difficulty of spoken language: the speaker (the number of the speakers, speech rate, the types of accent), the listener (the role of listener, the level of response, the interest in the subject), the content (vocabulary, grammar, information structure, background knowledge), and support (visual aids to support the text – pictures, diagrams, etc It is believed in the literature that among these factors learners’

background knowledge and content schemata can affect the quality of listening comprehension to a large extent Research in reading supports the notion that activating background knowledge and applying this knowledge to new input greatly facilitates processing and understanding (Graves & Cook, 1980) Listening has been considered, like reading, as an active process of interpretation that goes beyond the simple decoding of the signal In addition, its major purpose is the construction of meaning (Rost, 2002) by matching what listeners hear with what they already know, i.e their background knowledge

According to Underwood (1989: 44), “ Pre-listening work is the „build-up‟ to the

actual listening and serves not only to assist with comprehension but also to motivate students to want to listen” Many students are fearful of listening, and can

be disheartened when they listen to something but they understand very little It is also harder to concentrate on listening if you have little interest in a topic or situation 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 (Byrnes, 1984) 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 them

In conclusion, prior knowledge comes in diverse forms It affects how students interpret instruction It is active at levels ranging from perception to conception to beliefs about learning itself Moreover, its effects are widespread through lay and professional population, from young children through to adults, and from low to high ability students Neglect of prior knowledge can result in the audience learning something opposed to the educator's intentions, no matter how well those intentions are executed in an exhibit, book, or lecture

1.2.3 Activities to activate prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage

Activating prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage can consist of a whole range of activities According to a lot of ideas from Oxford’s Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (Oxford, 1990) and other researchers, there are many kinds of activities that teachers should apply to activate students’ prior knowledge in the pre- listening stage:

- Predicting of the content of the listening text

- Pre- teaching new vocabulary or grammatical structures

- Using visual aids to introduce the topic of the text

- Discussing the topic of the listening passage

- Eliciting to main information that students may listen in the listening test

- Brainstorming to some possibilities or suggestions of the topic

- Previewing the listening tasks

- Using games to introduce the topic of the listening passage

Each of these activities helps to focus students’ minds on the topic by narrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating relevant prior knowledge and already known language The pre-listening activities are not used separately; many pre-listening activities can be used in a listening lesson to gain best effects

1.2.4 Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities

In order to gain the best result in activating prior knowledge in the listening stage of a listening lesson, the teacher should take the following factors into account:

Underwood, (1989: 33)

The last item on the list “the nature and content of the listening text” is very important when choosing activities Some kind of activities are simply not appropriate to some types of text, and in other instances, the text itself very naturally makes one type of activity especially appropriate

Listening texts which naturally rise to certain kind of top-down activities are particularly useful and generally quite motivating for the students

When the instructor designs these kinds of activities, they should also take the time element into consideration You cannot have a fifteen- minute activity for a passage which will last only three minutes Remember the pre-listening process should not last longer than the actual listening activity The learners' proficiency is also a factor

to consider The activities should not be too demanding, otherwise the students will lose their interests

1.3 Schema

1.3.1 Definitions of schema

Prior knowledge is organized in schemata (the plural form of schema): abstract, generalized mental representations of our experience that are available to help us understand new experiences Schema theory has been one of the prevailing theories in the field of language teaching in the past two decades or so It’s rooted

in Barrett’s studies on human remembering – their past experiences (Aron, 1986: Carrell and Eisterhold 1983: Cook 1992: Nelson 1987) Schema is people’s general knowledge of the world, namely one’s “pre-existing knowledge” or “background knowledge” The theory of how a reader or a listener makes use of his schematic knowledge to achieve efficient comprehension during reading or listening is called schema theory In the pre-listening stage, the teacher organizes some warm-up activities such as discussing questions about the related topic or the key words in order to help students set up the new schemata and activate the previous schemata stored in students’ minds

Researches have given a large number of different definitions of schema Rumelhart (1980) defines schemas as “building blocks of cognition” (p.34) and “skeleton around which the situation is interpreted” (p.37) “A schema is a cognitive structure that consists in part of the representation of some defined stimulus domain The schema contains general knowledge about that domain, including a specification of the relationships among its attributes, as well as specific examples or instances of the stimulus domain” and “the schema provides hypothesis about incoming stimuli, which include plans for interpreting and gathering schema-related information” (Taylor and Crocker, 1981, p.91) For Alba and Hasher (1983), schema is “general knowledge a person possesses about a particular domain” (p.129) Brewer and Nakamura (1984) explain that “schemas are the unconscious cognitive structures that underlie human knowledge and skill” (p.136) Cohen et al (1993) define schemas as “packets of information stored in memory representing general knowledge about objects, situations, events, or actions” (p.28) Cook (1997)regards schema as “a mental representation of a typical instance” (p.86)

_ Schema change moment by moment as information is received

_ They may also be reorganized when incoming data reveals a need to restructure the concept

_The mental representations used during perception and comprehension, and which evolves a result of these processes, combine to form a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts

1.3.3 Types of schema

Schemata are classified into two types: content schemata and formal schemata (Carrell, 1983) The content schemata refer to “background information” on the topic, provides readers with a foundation, a basis for comparison (Carrell & Eisterhold 1983; Carrell, Pharis & Liberto 1989) Formal schema, often known as

textual schema It relates to “knowledge about how discourse is organized with

respect to different genres, different topics, or different purposes (e.g., transactional versus interactional), including relevant sociocultural knowledge” (Celce-Murcia

and Olshtain, 2000, p.102) It can include knowledge of different text types and genres, and also includes the understanding that different types of texts use text organization, language structures, vocabulary, grammar, level of formality/register

differently Besides, Juan and Flor (2006 : 93 ) insist that “content schema are

networks of knowledge on different topics and formal schema are derived from our knowledge of the structure of discourse is being listened to make it easier to engage

in top-down processing strategies, such as predicting and inferring” Carrell and

Eisterhold (1988) assert that listeners lack culture-specific content schema

seriously It is of importance that “in English listening, the content schema must be

activated for the learners to access their prior knowledge” (Lingzhu, 2003, p.9)

To sum up, schema plays an important role in text comprehension both in L1 and L2 context For example, whether reading or listening in a first or second language, one can assume that both native and non-native learners will understand more of a text when they are familiar with content, formal, and linguistic schema

II LITERATURE REVIEW (Previous studies relevant to the study.)

There are some small research exists regarding the activities’ effectiveness in improving learners’ performance on a listening comprehension task

Hong (2006) studied on pre-listening techniques to motivate students at Lomonosov upper-secondary school to improve the listening skills The finding of her study shown the role of the pre-listening techniques to the students motivation in listening lesson There still existed the differences between teachers’ and students’ preferences for activities done before listening

Another research which is also related to pre-listening stage is a study on pre-listening techniques to motivate Non-English major students to develop their listening skills at the Faculty of Electro-Mechatronics at Phuong Dong University in Hanoi by Le (2006) The findings of the study revealed several techniques used at the first stage of listening lessons with the textbook “Lifelines” by Tom Hutchinson The students’ preferences for these techniques were also highlighted Then, basing

on the teachers’ and the students’ comments, some suggestions to improve the situation of teaching and learning at Phuong Dong University were made

A research on the effects of pre - listening activities on the listening

performance of non-major 10th grade students at Nguyen Gia Thieu High School, Hanoi by Nguyen Dieu Huyen (2010) Most of the teachers and the students are satisfied with the pre-listening available in the textbook and a small number of them find the pre-listening activities not various and interesting enough However, the study cannot cover all the factors affecting the students’ performances in listening lessons

Besides, Berne (1995) investigated how varying pre-listening activities affect second language listening comprehension According to the study, comparison of the listening comprehension of second language learners completing three different pre listening activities after one and two exposures to a passage shows that scores for subjects completing the question preview activity were higher than for subjects completing the filler activity and that additional exposure improves comprehension

In addition, Chang and Read (2006) investigated the effects of four types of listening support on a listening test: previewing the test questions, repetition of the input, providing background knowledge about the topic, and vocabulary instruction

In conclusion, all the above studies are related to the pre-listening activities I found that they are quite general and difficult for adapting effectively in Vietnamese schools So in my study, I focus on the topic: “activating prior knowledge to motivating listening skill in the pre-listening stage.”

CHAPTER2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the methodology used to activate students’ prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage There are four main parts in this chapter: the research questions, the approach adopted the methods of collecting data, the data collection procedure (timeline), and data analysis methods

2.1 Research questions:

In order to find out whether activating prior knowledge improves students’ listening skill and motivates them to learn, this study was designed with the following questions:

1 What difficulties do high school students encounter in listening if their prior knowledge is not activated in the pre-listening stage?

2 What are the teachers’ and the students’ comments on the role of activating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities?

3 What is the situation of applying the techniques of activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage at Giao Thuy B High School?

2.2 Research approach

So as to seek answers to the research questions, survey research is adopted in this research Survey questionnaires and classroom observations are the two main instruments to collect the data The data from the observations are of great assistance to ensure the validity of the information gathered from the survey questionnaire The observations were done through the checklists They were made

by the researcher in concerning with teacher’s pre-listening activities and students’ involvement and attitudes towards the pre-listening activities Finally, all data were analyzed through coding, classifying, and recorded in the check list Thanks to these, the result is more reliable and helps the researcher suggest ways of activating prior knowledge more easily

2.3 Data collection methods

To conduct this study, two instruments applied are survey questionnaires and classroom observation The questionnaires are administered for both teachers and

students “Questionnaire was opted with consideration for its apparent advantage and particular suitability for quantitative research” (Dörnyei, 2003) The questionnaire was utilized in this research and is composed of three sections: the difficulties, the activities to activate prior knowledge and some comment on the role

multi-of motivating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities and suggestions for successful implementation of activating students’ background knowledge The entire questionnaire for students was worded in Vietnamese to ensure their full understanding of all respondents, thus, increase the validity of responses 221 questionnaires were delivered to the participants and 200 completed responses were returned for the response rate of 90,49%

2.3.1 The questionnaire for the teachers

With the help of three teachers for doing piloted questionnaire, the researcher could fully complete the questions The questionnaire for teachers is written in English There are 8 questions in this questionnaire Most of them are multiple choice questions The last question is an open question Teachers can share their ideas about teaching pre-listening skill In general, all questions are aimed at finding out the teachers’ attitudes towards the role of prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage (question no 4, 5) and the current situation of activating prior knowledge (question no 3, 6, 7), the problems they encounter when motivating students’ prior knowledge (question no 1, 2), and their suggestions to make activating prior knowledge more effective (question no 8)

2.3.2 The questionnaire for the students

The questionnaire for students is written in Vietnamese to make sure that they are fully understood The questionnaires were also piloted with the help of five students before delivering to the large number Six questions are multiple choices and one is yes – no question so it’s quite easy for them to answer There is

an open question so that they may have chance to contribute their opinion to help teacher in teaching pre-listening skill These are focused on discovering factors that hinder students’ performance in listening lessons if their prior knowledge is not

activated (question no 1,2) students’ preferences for activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening activities (question no 3,4,6) , the benefits the students get from the teachers’ motivating activities(question no.5,7), and their suggestions on making prior knowledge more effective in the pre-listening activities (question no 8)

2.3.3 Classroom observations

In order to check the reliability of data collected from the questionnaire and hopefully find out what has not been done through the questionnaire, the researcher carried out classroom observation in two grade 10th classes and one in grade 11th These classes are those which are delivered the questionnaires at first The reason for choosing these classes is also the same as for the subjects of the study

The observation was carried out in different units in these classes For each lesson, the researcher observed all activities the teachers and students were doing in the real classroom setting in forty-five minutes, especially during pre-listening stage, were recorded in the checklist The checklist for listening classroom observation made by the researcher concerns teacher’s motivating background knowledge and students’ involvement and attitudes towards the role of prior knowledge in the pre-listening activities

2.4 Data collection procedure

2.4.1 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at Giao Thuy B High School, which was established 45 years ago in a coastal district Since its foundation, Giao Thuy B High School has always proved itself to be a school of good teaching and learning quality and has made considerable contributions to the education and training course of the nation In the school year 2012 - 2013, our school has 36 classes with more than 1,600 students, so there are about 45 students in a class One thing worth noting here is that the entry level of students entering Giao Thuy B High School is not very high They mostly come from rural areas where English teaching and learning has not been paid much attention

Because of living in rural area, most students and teachers have little chance

to improve their social knowledge through web and other means of communication These prevent students from achieving topic’s prior knowledge

Besides, teachers are not really good at computing skill so it is difficult for them to design suitable activities for their teaching work

English is taught here as a compulsory subject like other upper-secondary schools Students have three periods of English a week The new textbook of English 10, English 11, and English 12 aims at enabling the students to communicate in the target language with four language skills

In fact, most of the teachers here focus on teaching grammar structures to help students overcome all their given exams Although there has been much innovation in English teaching methodology, and communicative language teaching (CLT) method has been much paid attention to, few students really achieve communicative competence Listening skill is still a big challenge for students

2.4.2 Participants’ background information

The study was carried out with the participation of 9 teachers and 221 students who pursue non- specialization and specialization in natural sciences modules

2.4.2.1 The teachers

9 teachers of English at Giao Thuy B high school were selected to be informants Most of them graduated from the English Department of the College of Foreign languages, VNU, Hanoi The oldest teacher has got more than 20 years of experience of teaching English The youngest teacher has been teaching English for

5 years Most of them have had experience in teaching English

Those teachers are supposed to provide the researcher through a questionnaire what pre-listening activities are currently applied and their opinion of the need of activating prior knowledge in listening skill

2.4.2.2 The students

135 students of three 10th grade classes and 86 students of two11th grade classes were chosen for the study Those students do not major in English Most of the students at Giao Thuy B High School have been learning English since they were 6th grade students That is to say they have had four years of learning English

at lower secondary school

2.4 3 Procedure

The process of collecting data was carried out in the following phases First, the researcher delivered 9 copies of questionnaires written in English to 9 teachers of English at Giao Thuy B high school They were all willing

to cooperate with the researcher and complete all the questions in the questionnaire

Second, 221 copies of questionnaires written in Vietnamese were delivered to students in 3 classes of grade 10th and 11th However, 21 out of them were not returned and some others were incompletely filled, leaving 200, respectively, for analysis

Third, the researcher conducted classroom observations in different listening lessons The classroom observations were all recorded in the checklists made by the researcher It takes the researcher two weeks to complete all 3 classroom observations

2.5 Data analytical units

The data from questionnaire were keyed into the computer and analyzed by using EXCEL Descriptive statistics, including frequencies, means, standard deviations and percentages, were implemented in order to investigate the use of language learning strategies Besides, information from class observation was also synthesized

The data collected from the survey questionnaire and class observation was analyzed in figures to find out the difficulties, the activities to activate prior knowledge and the role of motivating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities Basing on the findings, some recommendations for implementing of activating students’ background knowledge are given

CHAPTER 3 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter shreds the light on the findings achieved from the questionnaires and observation carried out in several high schools in Hanoi The results visualized by different figures and tables are given detailed analysis and devoted to answer the three research questions

3.1 Data analysis of the teachers’ survey questionnaire and their performance in classroom observation sheet

3.1.1 The teachers’ attitude toward the difficulties that high school students encounter when their prior knowledge is not activated

When being asked about the difficulty in activating prior knowledge in the pre listening stage, most of the teachers admit that it’s quite difficult( see appendix 1) This accounts for 67% None of them says it is not difficult at all 22% of them find it very difficult And the rest of the teachers think it is not difficult (see the figure below) Their opinion is also clearly illustrated in the classroom observation When attending the listening period of grade 10A2, 10A7- the two classes that have many students better at English than others, the teachers also do some pre-listening activities They asked students to work in pairs to ask and answer the questions given in the text book Then they introduced some new words that may be heard in the listening lesson Although the teachers tried to encourage students to participate

in their activities, some of them are not eager in speaking and listening That may cause their bad performance in listening comprehension

The below figure illustrates the difficulty in activating prior knowledge in listening stage

Figure1: Teachers‟ comment on the difficulty in activating prior knowledge in pre-listening stage

For further information, the researcher asks the teachers about the difficulties that

their students may encounter if their prior knowledge is not activated (question no.2 in the appendix1 page I)

In question no.2 appendix 1 page I, teachers are asked about the difficulty that their students have to cope with if their prior knowledge is not activated

The difficulties students encounter if their

prior knowledge is not activated

Figure 2: Teachers’ comment on the difficulties students encounter if their prior knowledge is not activated in the pre-listening stage

According to the figure, most of the teachers in Giao Thuy B high school – accounts for 89% - reveal that there is a majority of their students get difficulty in keeping up with the speech as native speakers often speak at high speed and they use quite a lot of accent 67% of teachers agree that lack of prior knowledge causes

A =.Students cannot complete difficult tasks

B = Students cannot deal at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures

C = Students cannot absorb knowledge about the content of the listening task

D = Students get difficulty in determining the meaning of the words in context

very difficult quite difficult not verydiifcult Not difficult at all

The difficuty in activating priorknowledge in pre-listening

stage

incomplete tasks in one listening lesson From the observation in class 10A7, we can see clearly that the students are not performing well in task 1- number the pictures in correct order Their result is good, but when the teacher asks for the cues for each picture, they cannot give them out That means students guess the answer from the given picture without catching key information

More than half of responses show that students get stuck in determining the meaning of the words in context And only 33% report that their students are not able to absorb knowledge about the content of the listening task without activating prior knowledge

3.1.2 The situation of applying the technique of activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage at Giao Thuy B High School?

In question no.3 (appendix 1 page I), the researcher asked about the frequency of activating prior knowledge in pre listening stage

pre-listening stage In fact, the teachers are not fully aware of pre listening activities The traditional way of teaching, such as, introducing some new difficult words, asking students to ask and answer on given question and so on can cause students’ poor performance As a matter of fact, we can say that how well students had done in class depends mostly on how well they had been warmed up From this point of view, English teachers should start taking concrete measures to reconsider the methodology they can apply in their listening courses and try to improve their teaching of listening from a new approach We should use some techniques that are effective and interesting in teaching listening courses, thinking as much as possible about the needs of students concerned

Actually, pre-listening stage has certain effects in a listening lesson and different pre-listening activities have different purposes That explains why the next question of the survey is raised to find out sorts of activities the teacher often use to motivate students’ prior knowledge in pre-listening activities (see question no 6 in appendix 1 page I )

As can be seen from the below table, we see that all teachers in Giao Thuy B high school agree that they teach new words or grammar structures and organize discussion about the content of the listening part in before you read Meanwhile, a small percentage of teachers use three techniques previewing the listening task, brainstorming to some learned words that related to the topic and eliciting to main information that students may listen in the listening lesson Their responses have been proved in all of the researcher’s observation In five attended classes, all teachers introduced new words and structures as well as organized discussion on the topic of the listening lesson In fact, the effectiveness of these activities is not good enough That leads to students’ low competence in listening skill From the table we also see that, there is a smaller in number of teachers uses techniques as predicting the content of the listening passage, using audio visual aids to introduce the topic of the listening passage and using games to introduce the topic of the listening passage This accounts for 89% However, two of them use these

techniques, may be they have little time to prepare or they do not want to ask students to study in multi-room They only make full use of some suggested activities in the text book If only they were more enthusiastic in teaching listening, there would be a good tendency in listening skill

A Predicting the content of the listening passage 89%

B Pre-teaching new vocabulary or grammar structures 100%

C Using audio visual aids to introduce the topic of the listening

D Organizing discussions about the content of the listening task 100%

F Brainstorming to some learned words that related to the topic 44%

G Eliciting to main information that students may listen in the

Figure 4: Teachers‟ remark about the problems when motivating prior knowledge

3.1.3 Teachers’ comments on the role of activating prior knowledge in pre- listening activities

In question no 4 the researcher asked the teachers about the importance of activating prior knowledge in the pre listening stage

in the listening stage

pre-Figure 5: Teachers‟ remark about the importance of activating prior knowledge in the pre-listening stage

We can see that 89% of the teachers think that pre-listening activities are very important and quite important Only 11% of them find it not very important Apparently, being aware of the importance of pre-listening activities, the teachers at

A- designing techniques is difficult

B - designing activities is consuming

time-C - handling activities is out of control

D - the activities used sometimes are not interest