Using authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials for teaching listening to 2nd year students at VNU_ULIS.PDF

Limitation of the study 25 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS 26 3.1 Description of the survey questionnaire & interview 26 3.2.2.2 Benefits of using online materials 47 3.2.2.3 Wa

1 Statement of the problems and the rationale for the study 1

PART B

1.1 Communicative view on teaching listening 6

1.1.3 Types of Listening and Listening Tasks 9

1.2 Authentic materials used for teaching listening 15

1.4 Suitability of the present study in the research field 18

2.5 Limitation of the study 25 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS 26 3.1 Description of the survey (questionnaire & interview) 26

3.2.2.2 Benefits of using online materials 47 3.2.2.3 Ways of using online materials 48

CHAPTER 4: USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON WEBSITES AS

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS

TO 2nd YEAR STUDENTS

51

4.1 Ways to exploit online materials for teaching listening skills 51

4.2 Sample designed listening tasks using online material 55

4.4 Incorporating online materials into the listening syllabus of the second year 64

List of Figures

Figure 1: Top-down vs Bottom-up Listening Process……… 10

Figure 2: Seniority in teaching listening……… 27

Figure 3: Popular materials in use……… 28

Figure 4: The use of online materials……… 28

Figure 5: Reasons for not using online sources……… 29

Figure 6: Reasons for using online sources……… 30

Figure 7: Ways of using online materials……… 31

Figure 8: Prospects of utilizing online materials……… 32

Figure 9: Types of speech normally used with online materials………… 33

Figure 10: Problems when using online materials……… 33

Figure 11: Frequency of online materials using in class……… 34

Figure 12: Evaluation of students’ progress after using online materials… 35 Figure 13: Supplementary materials in use……… 36

Figure 14: The use of online materials……… 36

Figure 15: Frequency of online materials using……… 37

Figure 16: Types of speech normally used with online materials………… 37

Figure 17: Ways of using online materials……… 38

Figure 18: Students’ attitude towards the application of online materials 39

Figure 19: Students’ expectation of ways online materials should be used 40 Figure 20: Students’ self-evaluation of progress after using online materials………

41 Figure 21: http://www.esl-lab.com 57

Figure 22: http://www.englishlistening.com 58

Figure 23: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml 59

Figure 24: http://www.voanews.com 60

Figure 25: http://www.discovery.com 60

Figure 26: http://abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish 61

Figure 27: http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/education/education.html 62

Figure 29: http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/sall.htm 64

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problems and the rationale for the study

In the light of the communicative approach for language teaching and learning, “communicative competence” is a stressed element or in other words, it is the “goal” of the teaching and learning process (Richards & Rodgers, 1995: 67) In order to master the communicative competence, second language learners are supposed to study the four skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing Among these four skills, listening is often claimed to be the most important skill to be acquired as “in the foreign environment, the ability to make sense of these messages is often crucial for survival” (Hood: 65) As a result, listening has taken much attention and efforts of language researchers and teachers Much research has been conducted on how to teach and learn listening skills effectively For instance,

on the web site www.abax.co.jp/listen, an article named “Teaching Listening Better: Is listening being taught as well as it could be?” provides readers with

a thorough overview of how listening should be taught; Penny Ur (1992) dedicated a nearly-two-hundred-page book on “Teaching Listening Comprehension” and Gillian Brown (1984) also wrote “Listening to spoken English” All these contributions are very useful for enhancing the listening skills However, as far as I have investigated, most of the research focuses largely on methods of teaching and learning rather than exploring new sources of authentic materials for teachers to make use of

Meanwhile, nowadays, together with the already diversified published materials for teaching listening, there co-exists a new abundant source of listening materials on the World Wide Web The Internet was given birth not long ago, in the 1960s, but its presence has changed the world dramatically The Internet is said to be the information highway, which host almost every

data available Therefore online resource for teaching listening is no exception If we just put into consideration the television and radio programs,

it is a greatly rich source available for every listening teacher to utilize Let us count how many English-speaking countries there are in the world, how many media stations there are in each of those countries and how many media stations in the non-English speaking countries that offer English version for their programs there are Then most of them have their own websites, on which they upload their broadcast programs with various topics These programs are available in many forms convenient for different categories of Internet users People can listen to them online or download them to their computers for later listening Exploiting this new electronic source has been a hot topic among the education circle worldwide Yet in Vietnam, where Internet was not known until more than 20 years after its birth, it is still fresh and teachers are hesitant to use it

Bearing in mind the two aforementioned reasons, I decided to choose “Using

authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials for teaching listening skills to second year EFL students at VNU-ULIS” the topic of my

thesis with a view to filling in the pointed gap in the research field and bringing about some benefits for EFL teachers who teach listening skills

2 Aims and objectives of the study

Conducting this study, my aim is to address two main issues:

(1) How listening skills are taught to second year EFL students at VNU; to be more specific, what materials lecturers are using as supplementary listening materials for their students

(2) Outline possible prospects to use authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials to teach listening skills to second year EFL students

at ULIS-VNU

I do hope that this study will be beneficial not only to lecturers who teach listening skills for second year EFL students; to the students in their self-study but also to the students who are becoming teachers in the near future since it would, hopefully, serve as a useful resource they can refer to Conducting this thesis, I also wish that in applying these materials in teaching listening to the second year EFL students, teachers could familiarize their students with the current language in use and at the same time help them enhance their social background knowledge, which is said to be poor among today students

3 Scope of the study

Due to time constraint, my thesis would only be narrowed to a small scale Firstly, its subject is specifically second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU Studying at university for two years would equip students with more self-study skills, which is a factor that can facilitate the use of online listening materials Moreover, it is time their English reach proper level of intermediate and upper-intermediate, which is suitable to use these materials

to supplement their listening

Secondly, the paper would focus mostly on ways to develop the use of online supplementary listening materials for second year students

I am aware that this study could cover only a small part of the teaching process if teachers want to use these online materials as supplementary ones for their students Therefore, I believe further research is necessary to fulfill this gap

4 Methods of the study

In order to address the two aforementioned issues, first of all, intensive and extensive reading helps equip myself with sufficient background knowledge and also helps obtain data for the literature review

For the main part of the thesis, both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed Questionnaires will be delivered among teachers of the second year students to investigate the situation of how listening skills are taught and what materials lecturers are using as supplementary listening materials for their second year EFL students The questionnaire is as well used to see teachers‟ attitude towards using online materials as supplementary listening materials

To obtain “rich” data (Burnes, 1999: 23), in-dept interviews will also be carried out among those teachers who have already used online materials The aim is to examine which ways they are dealing with these materials

In applying triangulation, it is hoped to overcome any shortcomings in either the quantitative or qualitative methods Hence, the findings are qualified with reliability and validity

5 An overview of the rest of the paper

The paper has three parts Part A is the introduction to the study In part B, chapter 1 reviews the literature on the communicative approach on teaching listening and the current authentic materials used for teaching listening Chapter 2 justifies the use of the qualitative and quantitative methodology for this research Chapter 3 presents and discusses the findings of the survey investigating into how the teachers are exploiting listening materials to teach their second year students and what their attitude towards using online sources for listening materials is Chapter 4 gives some recommendations on

how to use authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials for teaching listening skills to second year students Part C is the conclusion to the study

PART B CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Communicative view on teaching listening

1.1.1 The importance of listening

The importance of listening to foreign language teaching and learning has been reflected in a 30-year shift towards interaction-based acquisition (Krashen 1981, 1985; Pica et al., 1987; Swain, 1985), rather than learning through the translation of written text and through formal grammar learning Though once regarded as a passive skill, listening is actually an active process which requires the listeners to activate all their knowledge of different fields such as phonology, vocabulary, culture and their life experience and so on in selecting and interpreting information (1983, Richards; 1995, Rubin, quoted from Duzer, http://www.cal.org)

Listening skills are obviously important as first of all, a good speaker needs

to be a good listener Although listening is described as the most difficult of the four skills the beginner of a foreign language has to develop (1987, Eastman quoted in http://www.melta.org.my), it has traditionally been considered secondary to speaking comprehension (Bower and Cirlio 1985; Brown and Yule 1983, quoted in http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu) in that listening tasks tend to be viewed as supplementary to reinforce grammar learning Nunan, a famous linguist, in his featured speech at the 4th Pan-Asian Conference in Taiwan in November, 2002 remarked that listening is “the Cinderella skill in second language learning” (http://www.nunan.info) What

is meant in Nunan‟s comment is shared by Belasco (1965) that listening comprehension has also been called the "most underestimated and least understood aspect of foreign language learning" (quoted in

http://www.melta.org.my) Despite the fact that listening is a critical element

in the competent language performance of second language learners, this skill has not been taken enough attention of in comparison with other skills such

as speaking, reading and writing A classic study of listening conducted by Rankin (1930) suggests that adults spend 42.1% of their communication time listening, in contrast with 39.1% speaking, 15% reading and 11% for writing Moreover, real communication in the classroom should be based on effective input through listening or reading According to Lewis, “almost all the world's natural language output is spoken rather than written” (1993: 32, quoted in http://www.developingteachers.com) therefore listening takes up a major proportion in communication time as Sam Smith noticed, that is at least 90% of his interaction time (http://www.developingteachers.com) Listening is, in fact, the most crucial medium for input in learning a foreign language and by increasing students‟ ability to perceive speech and thus aiding language acquisition (1993, Lewis, quoted in

Brubridge (1986) and Penny Ur (1996) they all agree upon the common characteristics of listening as follows:

First to mention, looking at the characteristics of listening is actually looking

at those of spoken language Spoken language is normally disorganized due

to the fact that it is spontaneous The speakers talk impulsively rather than reading aloud some thing written beforehand As a result, the speech is full of incomplete sentences, paraphrases, hesitation, repetition and interruptions This is also the explanation for the fact that so many students good at listening task using artificial dialogues are not necessarily good at real-life listening

The understanding of spoken language could be facilitated a great deal by non-verbal clues It is said that people listen more effectively when they can see the speaker‟s facial expressions, gestures or even be directly involved in the environment where the speech is happening In turn the speakers may rely

on such hints to interpret listeners‟ implication so that they can adapt their speech accordingly to attain a successful communication These non-verbal cues could reveal what the speaker means better than just listening to the speech alone because both listeners and speakers are put in a certain context

In real-life listening, listeners often know in advance some information to aid their understanding such as to whom they are listening, what they are going

to hear and why they are listening Therefore, listening teachers should always bear in mind this characteristic so that they can have suitable pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are to hear Penny Ur additionally thinks that listening is an interactive process Listeners do not passively just listen to what the speakers say They in turn take the alternative

to speak and vice versa for speakers They actively involve in the communication because they listen for a purpose

1.1.3 Types of Listening and Listening Tasks

1.1.3.1 Types of Listening

Much as research has pointed out, adults spend almost half of their communication time listening and for students, the figure mounts up to 90% Listening is the most widely used skill though it is also “the least understood aspect of language of foreign language learning” (Belasco, 1965, quoted from

http://www.melta.org.my) There is no fixed set of criteria for different types

of listening It is categorized from various views

1.1.3.1.1 Top-down Listening Process vs Bottom-up Listening Process

Based on the ways listeners process and comprehend what is heard, listening

is said to be composed of two opposite processes, namely top-down and bottom-up processes (Helgesen, Brown, 1994)

Top-down Listening:

It is listener based The listener privies to background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language (Richards, 1990) This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next

According to David Nunan, the top-down view suggests that the listener actively constructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clue (http://nunan.info)

Bottom-up Listening

It is text based The listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning (Richards, 1990)

experience

Life-Vocabulary

Structure

Top-down

Bottom-up Activation

Figure 1: Top-down vs Bottom-up Listening Process

(Helgesen and Brown, 1994, xii)

The bottom-up processing model assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts

The distinction between Top-down and Bottom-up Listening Processes is visualized vividly by Helgesen and Brown as they employ the metaphor of a brick wall, “If you are standing at the bottom looking at the wall brick by brick, you can easily see details It is difficult, however, to get an overall view of the wall And if you come to a missing brick (for e.g., an unknown word or unfamiliar structure), you are stuck If, on the other hand, you are sitting on the top of the wall, you can easily see the landscape Of course, because of distance, you‟ll miss some details” (Helgesen and Brown, 1994: xii)

1.1.3.1.2 Real-life Listening vs Classroom Listening

Additionally, listening can be realized according to the space where it occurs

To put it most general, listening may be divided into real-life listening and classroom listening

Real-life Listening

This is what we have to do in our daily life We hear music, radio, the noise and people talking, etc Sometimes, people just listen without paying much attention People may listen and do something else at the same time This

kind of listening is called Casual Listening (cited in Bang Nguyen, Ngoc

Nguyen, 2002) On the other hand, people listen with a certain purpose in mind, hence, they really concentrate to get the content of what is said, which

constitutes another type of real-life listening, namely Focused Listening

(cited in Bang Nguyen, Ngoc Nguyen 2002)

Classroom Listening

Penny Ur argues that classroom listening should be addressed accurately as Real-life listening in the classroom Though a paradox can be sensed in this way of addressing, it is not only true that classroom listening is not real-life listening; but a clear envision of the notion “classroom listening” is also created All the listening activities in the classroom aims at equipping students with skills to deal with real-life listening Even in classroom

listening, it can be subdivided into intensive and extensive listening as

collected and classified by Bang Nguyen and Ngoc Nguyen (2002)

According to Broughton et al (1978) extensive listening is concerned with the more general listening to natural English It serves the function of letting the student hear the vocabulary items and structures which are unfamiliar to him Rixon (1986) added that extensive listening is listening for pleasure and interest without having to pay a lot of attention to content and language

Extensive listening keeps the student's motivation and interest high, as well

as gives valuable extra contact with English in its spoken form

In contrast, intensive listening is much more controlled, with one or two specific points Intensive listening can be primarily for language items as part

of the language teaching program or it can be for general comprehension and understanding (Broughton et al 1978) Rixon (1986) also stated that intensive listening is the more widely used form in the classroom In intensive listening, students have to collect or organize information The listening passages used usually contain more concrete information and may be quite densely packed

On Allen‟s stand, listening is categorized as follows (1976):

 simple listening - hearing sounds without any particular meaning to the sounds

 discriminative listening - listening to hear and identify the likenesses and differences in sounds

 listening for information,

 listening to organize ideas,

 listening for main points,

 listening for varied points of view,

 critical listening

 creative listening

Meanwhile, Burns and Lowe (1966) categorized listening into three types:

 appreciational (enjoying the development of a story; listening for pleasing rhythm; reacting to the mood set by the author);

 informational listening for the answer to a specific question; listening

to follow directions; following sequence; listening for main ideas);

 critical (discriminating between fact and opinion; detecting prejudice and bias; sensing the speaker's purpose

According to Burns and Lowe (1966) some authors have also suggested levels of listening such as little conscious listening, half listening, listening passively, listening and expressing some reaction and listening with a real meeting of the minds However Burns and Lowe (1966) pointed out that there

is no research evidence to indicate such levels

1.1.3.2 Types of Listening Tasks

Having investigated into the characteristics of listening as well as the types of listening, I now move on to review different listening tasks that reputable educators have suggested in order to develop students‟ listening skills These listening tasks are various Though sorted respective to the way listening is viewed from different perspectives, they consist of a rather fixed set of tasks

As held by Penny Ur, the kinds of listening tasks are classified by the natures

of students‟ response

No overt response

Students‟ concentration and understanding of the listening are revealed mostly through their non-verbal language especially their facial expression Students actually “do not have to do anything in response to the listening” (Penny Ur, 1996, 113) The main listening tasks are: story-telling, songs, entertainment The only task for students is that they enjoy and understand the general content of the listening

- Ticking off items: Learners tick beside the items that they hear in the listening

- True/False: Identify which statement is either true or false based on the listening

- Detecting mistakes: Some fact is mentioned with intentional mistakes for the students to point out

- Cloze: Students make a guess of what can be filled in the blanks in the listening text

- Guessing definitions: Students listen to a definition and give the answer

- Skimming and scanning: Learners have to make out some general ideas (skimming) and details (scanning) of the listening

Moreover, “multiple choice items” is introduced by Bang Nguyen and Ngoc Nguyen To do this task, learners listen to the listening and choose the most

suitable option from the list of option given in advance

Longer response

- Answering questions: Based on the content of the listening, students are required to give longer and full answer to questions

- Note-taking: Students take note of the talk

- Paraphrasing and translating: students use their own words to rewrite or retell the listening text either in the same language or in their mother tongue

- Summarizing: Learners write a summary of the content of what they have just listened

- Long gap-filling: Similar to cloze exercise, the only difference is that the information to be filled in the gap is more

- Dictation is also a recommended kind of task which can boost learners‟ listening skills a lot as Bang Nguyen and Ngoc Nguyen argue that students

must have comprehended what they hear first before they can write it down (2002)

Extended response

Problem solving and Interpretation are two typical tasks However, these are better classified as follow-up listening tasks to integrate the teaching of other skills

If listening tasks are built up for students to practice their listening skills by developing the top-down and bottom-up listening strategies, they can be put thereby (http://www.nclrc.org)

Top-down strategies include:

 listening for the main idea

 predicting

 drawing inferences

 summarizing

Bottom-up strategies include:

 listening for specific details

 recognizing cognates

 recognizing word-order patterns

1.2 Authentic materials used for teaching listening

Materials play a very crucial part in the teaching process According to Nunan, syllabus is the bone and material is regarded “flesh on the bones of these specifications” (1991: 208) Richards and Rodgers (1995) add that instructional materials can provide “specifications of content even in the absence of a syllabus” (208, quoted from Nunan, 1991) Consequently, a good set of listening materials and tasks is one of the guarantee factors for the

success of teaching Great effort has long been invested in developing materials Hereafters, we will look at different sources for listening materials

1.2.1 Traditional sources

The most familiar resource that teacher could rely on is published materials They are written by experienced textbook writers Nunan (1991) has pointed out the reason for teachers to advocate this traditional source of materials is that they are prepared for the majority to use, hence, intensive research on learners‟ needs and motivation has been done beforehand Although the effective usage of the material for a particular group of students needs further effort of the teacher to adapt it appropriately because it aims at serving a general population, teachers find it safe to use these materials as prior to publication, they have undergone careful piloting What is more, it lessens the burden of teachers in designing the listening materials from scratch (Nunan, 1991)

Nevertheless, most textbooks for listening programs emphasize product (right

or wrong answer) over process (how to get meaning) (http://www.nclrc.org); and, as Nunan comments, those materials are “theory-laden” (1991: 214) As

a result, a new form of materials has been taken into consideration

1.2.2 New sources

In addition to the already well-established sources of listening materials as mentioned earlier, teachers can take advantage of many other sources such as movies, songs, TV and radio programs, etc Moreover, together with the popularity of the “information highway”, a brand- new source of listening materials has come into being, that is online materials This type of materials

is not simply listening tasks that are posted on the Internet It actually comes into different shapes and sizes, contributing to the richness of listening pool Though using these sources of materials demands greater workload from the

teachers, it offers more room for teachers‟ creativity Yet, this source of materials has not been utilized to its fullness and little literature has been

spared on the field

1.3 The needs to vary the sources

The most widely used for listening teachers is uncontroversially course books However, any course books will be incapable of catering for the diversity of needs although users are embarrassed by their riches Language teachers need a source that provides them with recordings with which they can freely tailor the tasks for a particular group of students

Another reason is that course books are made to be used for a long time; therefore the language and topics may no longer stay up to date Meanwhile, students are more motivated by what is fresh and interesting As held by Ur,

“motivation makes teaching and learning immeasurably easier and more pleasant, as well as more productive” (1996), it is time a source that can enhance students and teachers‟ motivation be found and put into practice

It is the fact that when using commercially produced materials, it is easy to run the risk of studying what students have already learnt Thus, it is suggestible that teacher-developed materials should be employed as supplementary task

Students may have access to well-established materials at ease for their own practice; hence class-hour would be more productive and attracting if learners are exposed to a unique set of listening materials

Moreover, as the aim of language learning is communicative competence, students need to be familiarized with real-life listening which is a huge gap from simulated ones in listening textbooks, few of which provide opportunities for “genuine communication with a real purpose” (Nunan, 1991: 214)

Last but not least, with the teacher-developed materials, teachers can kill two birds with one arrow, one of which is that they gain self-development in doing so

For all grounds above, it is inevitable for teachers to seek for a satisfactory source There raises a question whether such a source exists

The answer is Internet Internet, since its birth, has proved to be a useful tool

to store and transfer information It is a virtual world that can connect people globally In education, Internet has also turned out to be an advanced source Particularly speaking, in language teaching and learning, Internet has opened

up a totally new way of teaching and learning Students are provided with better opportunities to be exposed to native language environment, especially

in listening Recordings of various topics, various types of speech, various lengths, are 24 hours available on the information highway In the following chapters, we will look at possible ways of using online listening materials to supplement the official syllabus

1.4 Suitability of the present study in the research field

As far as I have researched, in the research field of teaching and learning listening in second language acquisition, the focus is rather theoretical Most

of the research emphasizes on analyzing the nature of listening and how to teach this skill, how to help students acquire this skill rather than developing new materials

What is more, digital material has been a newly-found source since the development of the information highway Therefore, there is still a research gap on making use of this profuse source

Furthermore, this research is done specifically based on the specific situation

of teaching and learning at Vietnam National University-University of

Languages and International Studies Hence, it is hoped to be tailor-made for the teaching and learning in this university

In brief, with the high practicality of the thesis, it is worth carrying out with a view to bridging the research gap and assisting teachers in the course of their teaching

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2 1 A qualitative and quantitative study

This research was conducted as a qualitative and quantitative study, in

which I used interview, information collection and analysis as well as questionnaire to collect data The reason for my choice lies in the aims of this study, in which I would like to answer two questions as follows:

1 What materials are lecturers using as supplementary listening materials for their students?

2 What are the possible prospects of using authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials to teach listening skills for second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU?

As Bouma has stated “both qualitative and quantitative approaches are essentials to the research process in social sciences” (1996: 173); moreover, each methodology has its own strengths and weaknesses, thus could not alone help to find out satisfactory and sufficient information As a result, I chose to make full use of both approaches rather than advocate one and dispose the other so as to achieve the reliable results

One of the outstanding features of the quantitative methodology is its

objectivity According to Burnes (1999), the quantitative approach is employed when the researcher aims at attaining objectivity and control as it is held that it can “offer ways of testing hypotheses that are widely accepted or standardised” (1999: 22) Hence, to obtain an overview of the situation how online listening materials are conceived and used by the teachers, I conducted

a survey among the teaching staff of second year students Moreover, to have

a comprehensive picture, a similar questionnaire is delivered to the second year EFL students In doing so, I would like to cross-check the real situation

of listening teaching for second year students and online supplementary listening material using

On the other hand, according to Burnes (1999) qualitative research is the

methodology of studying the participants‟ opinion, actions and experiences through interview, observation and published information Correspondingly, this method was made use of in the phase of collecting, analyzing and synthesizing basic knowledge for the Literature Review for in this part I needed to have a deep understanding about the setting of the study, the history of relating studies, ideas, facts and figures

One strong point of the qualitative method is that the data collected is usually

“extensive” and “detailed” (Burnes, 1999: 23) or as held by Larsen Freeman

& Long, it supplies researchers with “real”, “rich” and “deep” data (1991:12) For these reasons, I decided to carry out interviews with a few of the listening teachers for the second year students as I would like to gain profound understanding of how they view the use of online materials and if they have already used such materials, in which way they have been using them Their insights are of great use for the process of analyzing data

2.2 Selection of participants

In order to investigate into the situation how listening skills are taught for second year EFL students and what materials lecturers are using as supplementary listening materials for their students, I conducted the survey among two different groups of subjects The first one is the teachers who teach second year students The second one is the second year students There are a few reasons for this selection of mine

I chose to carry out the survey among both the students and teachers to have a thorough and objective overview of the teaching listening situation If the questionnaire had been delivered only to the teaching staff, there would be no guarantee that what the teachers think coincides with what their students think On the part of the teachers, I would like to see how they have utilized the available supplementary listening materials The questionnaires were as well distributed among 30 second year students, which accounts for 10 percent of the total second year student group to test what they think of the practicality and usability of the current supplementary listening materials Additionally, small-scaled interviews were conducted among a few teachers who in the questionnaires said they had been using online materials to see how they have been developing these materials, as a ground for later analysis

of ways to use online materials as supplementary listening materials to teach listening skills for second year EFL students at VNU-ULIS

2.3 Methods of data collection

This thesis used questionnaires and interviews as the main sources for data collection According to Burnes, “triangulation involves gathering data from different sources so that the research findings or insights can be tested out against each other” (1999: 25) Moreover, triangulation, as he suggested, could bring about both quantitative and qualitative data and thus making the paper more persuasive (1999) As a result, the reliability and validity of the research are better ensured It is also the motive for me to exploit this method

In the present study, both techniques in surveying such as questionnaire and interview were used as I am aware that “results from one form of data will help inform and refine the other data” (Verma, 1999:115) According to Verma, questionnaire is a fundamental tool in the collection of data for many

researchers (1999) Firstly, by using questionnaires, the researchers can obtain data quantitatively, which later on will assist their study with persuasive numbers concerning issues investigated In addition, it well serves the purpose of the study economically (Verma, 1999) Within a certain period

of time, they may have many people answering their questions In this study,

I employed the self-completion questionnaire with semi-closed questions As its name suggests, surveyees would complete the questionnaire by themselves without the assistance of the interviewer In using the self-completion type, I could seek better cooperation from the part of respondents as they might complete the questionnaire, given sufficient time to think over the answers Furthermore, being aware that if the questionnaire consisted of only closed questions, not all possible options would have been covered, I flexibly created one more open option for most questions, in which respondents could give their own opinion As a result, data collection was not only quantitatively but also qualitatively valuable Before actually sending out questionnaires to the target population, it was piloted among a similar group

of second year students at VNU- ULIS in order to get feedbacks for the questionnaire After that, some clarifications, revision and adjustments to it were made to better serve the study purpose (For questionnaire, refer to the Appendices)

By using interviews, I could have more in-depth information on certain aspects that could not be unveiled from questionnaires (Fraenkel & Wallen, 1996) Furthermore, in the present study, I intended to use interviews for a group of teachers who took part in the questionnaire and were found out to have been using online materials for their students As defined, an interview

is “a conversation between two or more people where one or more of the

participants takes the responsibility for reporting the substance of what is said.” (Powney & Watts, 1984: 122, cited in Verma & Mallick, 1999) Hence any clarification or further inquiry towards a question could be made conveniently In this research, interviews were conducted among a few teachers from those taking part in the questionnaire, who have been using online materials to ask for their insights on using this type of supplementary materials Bearing in mind that neither “structured” nor “unstructured” interview would help elicit proper response, I decided to take up „semi-structured” interview, which left a “continuum between the two extremes” (Verma, 1999:123) Before the interview, I had prepared a set of questions Additionally, I had also anticipated some possible follow-up questions to ask for further information (For interview questions, refer to Appendices) All of the interviews were recorded so that I could concentrate on observing interviewees‟ behaviour without wasting time taking notes Their facial expressions sometimes unveiled more information than words could These interviews were carried out individually in an informal setting Each interview took about 30 minutes and was arranged at the interviewees‟ convenience Enough time was spared for interviewees to think of proper answer The recordings were then subjected to careful transcription

The steps of the study were as follows:

1 Piloting the questionnaire

2 Delivering the revised questionnaires and gathering back Qs

3 Interviewing the selected teachers

4 Analyzing data and discussing the findings

5 Giving recommendations

2.4 Data analysis

The researchers applied the data summarization methods proposed by Bouma (1996), i.e categories and graphs to deal with the quantitative data obtained from the questionnaires The data were synthesized into a table with percentages calculated from the questionnaire Those percentages were then coded into charts of different categories such as types of supplementary listening materials in use, advantages of using online listening materials, etc Based on the categories and charts that had been established, the analysis and interpretation were presented, summarized and conclusions were drawn out With the data taken from the interviews, I employed the approach provided

by Strass and Corbin (1990) The audio-taped interviews were transcribed and presented with line numbers Afterwards they were used for discussion and analysis

2.5 Limitation of the study

Due to limited time and small scale of this research, I could not check its posteriori validity though I am aware that some factors may affect the reliability of the research such as the different background knowledge of individuals taking part in the interviews and questionnaires Inevitably, the study could not cover all aspects of the research matter Therefore, further research is required to reach the most valid and reliable evaluation and recommendation on the matter of utilising online listening materials to develop the supplementary listening materials for second year EFL students

CHAPTER 3:

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

3.1 Description of the survey (questionnaire & interview)

This survey was undertaken during the period from April, 11th to 24th among the teaching staff of second year students as well as second-year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS – VNU Surveying the matter, I aim at investigating to what extent, teachers have been utilizing online materials in supplementing listening for their students and what are the difficulties they have been confronted with in doing so Conducting the survey among students, I hope to review their attitudes towards the use of this new source Another reason is that I would like to triangulate the data got from two different subjects of the survey

In-depth interviews supplemented and triangulated the main source of data collection, which were questionnaires

In this chapter, I would firstly present the findings from questionnaires and interviews Next, some discussions of the findings would be accordingly given

3.2 Findings analysis

3.2.1 Findings

3.2.1.1 Findings from questionnaires

3.2.1.1.1 Questionnaires for Teachers

Subjects: 13 teachers teaching Listening to second year students

For specific questions, refer to the Appendix 1

a Background of the surveyees

Seniority in teaching listening

31%

38% 6-7 years

4-5 years 2-3 years

Figure 2: Seniority in teaching listening

The target population of this survey caters among three main groups of listening teachers:

 Teachers who have been teaching listening for second year students for six to seven years

 Teachers who have been teaching listening for second year students for four to five years

 Teachers who have been teaching listening for second year students for two to three years

The number of teachers in these three groups is approximate to one another The quantity of teachers of six to seven years of seniority is equivalent to that

of those of four to five years of seniority, both of which accounts for 31 percent of the surveyees The remaining group takes up 38%

Popular materials in use

46.15

92.3

23 0

20 40 60 80 100

IELTS TOEFL Radio &

T.V programs

Others

Percent

Figure 3: Popular materials in use

As revealed in the questionnaires, the most popular material employed by teacher is radio and T.V programs (92.3%) Next comes IELTS series (53.85%), which is a commercially-produced set of practice books TOEFL books are the least to be used by teachers at 46.15% Additionally, in the survey, 23% of teachers also acknowledge their use of other kinds of materials such as ready-made videos, VCD, online materials and soft wares, etc

The use of online materials

85%

15%

Yes No

Figure 4: The use of online materials

Though online source is a newly-developed one, up to 84, 62% of the teachers asked say they have used online materials A modest rate of more than 15% has not yet tried out this source

b Reasons for the current situation of online materials using

Reasons for not using online sources

B inconfidence of the authenticity of online materials

C inability to spend much time designing tasks

Figure 5: Reasons for not using online sources

There are many reasons accounting for the fact that several teachers still hesitate to use online materials In this survey, two major problems emerge, i.e that teachers are not confident of the authenticity of online materials and that they are not able to spend much time designing listening tasks The former takes up half of the answer meanwhile the latter gets a full 100 percent

Reasons for using online sources

72.72 72.72 72.72

68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82

Percent

A to update your students with what is going on around them

B to familiarize your students with real-life listening

C to familiarize your students with different types of listening

D to enrich your students‟ vocabulary of different fields

Figure 6: Reasons for using online sources

For teachers who have ever used online materials to supplement their teaching of listening, a variety of reasons encourage them 72.72% of the 11 teachers who partly rely on online sources acknowledge that using this kind

of materials satisfies their multi-purpose as to familiarize their students with real-life listening, with different types of listening and to enrich their students‟ vocabulary of different fields A slightly larger number of 81.81% says learners are updated with what is going on around them when they are exposed to digital materials

c Ways of using online materials

For teachers who have ever used online materials

A using materials that are accompanied by ready-made tasks

B using the recordings only and designing the tasks yourself

C assigning the recordings to your students and asking them to design the tasks themselves to share in class

Figure 7: Ways of using online materials

Listening teachers actively and creatively make up different ways of applying the innovative source to their teaching Due to the lack of time to design the tasks themselves, 63.63% of them use materials that have accompanying ready-made tasks However, nearly half of them (45.45%) make great efforts designing listening tasks for learners based on the listening passage archived online

For teacher who have never used online materials

100

50

0 20 40 60 80 100

C having a collection of recommendatory websites for you to choose

Figure 8: Prospects of utilizing online materials

For those teachers who have never used online materials, different envisions

of how they will exploit the source are given Similarly to those who have used online materials, time constrains drive all of them to a preferable choice

of having a ready-made compilation of selected online materials accompanied with piloted tasks Sharing the same proportion of surveyees‟ response of 50% are two options, both of which are evidence that teachers really wish to be involved in the material-development process It is understandable as they either want to explore the source themselves, which includes searching for suitable websites and materials, designing the tasks and piloting teaching or want to have a collection of recommendatory websites for them to choose

d Difficulties in using online materials

Figure 9: Types of speech normally used with online materials

It could clearly be seen from the above chart that there is a serious bias in the types of speech used for listening The mostly used one is news report occupying 100% of the teachers‟ choice The next to most popular one is speech with 27.27% The two least accounting for only 18.18% of the responses are lecture and interview

B hard to choose suitable length of the recordings

C hard to vary the types of speech

D prone to get recordings of a single accent (either only American or English accent)

Figure 10: Problems when using online materials

Besides the problems of types of speech‟s variation which is claimed by 9.095 of the surveyees, many other problems also arises Though Internet harbors a vast stock of information, still nearly one tenth of the teachers claims they cannot locate suitable topics for their teaching 63.63% of them complain about the difficulty in choosing listening passages with the right length Finally, one fifth says it is hard to diversify the accents They are prone to get recordings of a single accent (either only American or English accent)

Figure 11: Frequency of online materials using in class

Once a week is the frequency with which up to 46% of teachers agree that they have time for online materials A ratio of 27% always supplements online materials for their students The same figure is shared by those who just sometimes try to turn to them

e Evaluation of students’ progress after using online materials

55%

27%

18%

Not much Quite good Good

Figure 12: Evaluation of students’ progress after using online materials

Evaluating the progress of learners after studying online materials, there are controversial opinions However, more than half of the teachers (55%) think their learners do not improve much of their listening skills Similar troubles still remain 27% believe that learners now can handle listening tasks better Students are active in listening is the answer of 18% of the respondents

3.2.1.1.2 Questionnaires for Students

Subject: 30 second year students

For specific questions, refer to Appendix 2

a Supplementary materials in use