A study on the teachers' application of task-based method and the 10th form students' use of learning strategies in their listening lessons at Tran Phu High Sch

The students’ better learning strategies in listening lessons 39 APPENDIX I Survey questionnaire for students III APPENDIX II Survey questionnaire for teachers V APPENDIX III The tape-sc

Department of Post-graduate Studies

 -

đặng Thị Thu Thuỷ

A STUDY ON THE TEACHERS’ APPLICATION OF

STUDENTS’ USE OF LEARNING STRATEGIES IN

THEIR LISTENING LESSONS

AT TRAN PHU HIGH SCHOOL IN VINH PHUC

NghiÊn cứu về việc áp dụng ph-ơng pháp

dạy học giao nhiệm vụ của giáo viên và việc sử dụng các thủ thuật của học sinh lớp 10 trong các

bài học nghe tại tr-ờng T.H.P.T trần phú

Department of Post-graduate Studies

 -

đặng Thị Thu Thuỷ

A STUDY ON THE TEACHERS’ APPLICATION OF

STUDENTS’ USE OF LEARNING STRATEGIES IN

THEIR LISTENING LESSONS

AT TRAN PHU HIGH SCHOOL IN VINH PHUC

NghiÊn cứu về việc áp dụng ph-ơng pháp

dạy học giao nhiệm vụ của giáo viên và việc sử dụng các thủ thuật của học sinh lớp 10 trong các

bài học nghe tại tr-ờng T.H.P.T trần phú

CHAPTER II : THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

I.1 Language teaching methods focusing on developing grammatical competence 5 I.2 Language teaching methods focusing on developing communicative

competence

6

I.3 Task-based Method – the strong version of CLT 10

II.1 Synthetic syllabus versus analytic syllabus 12

III.3 Common methods in teaching listening 19 III.4 Three stages in a listening lesson 20 III.5 Foreign language learners’ listening problems 21 III.6 Foreign language learners’ listening comprehension strategies 22

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS AND SOLLUTIONS 25

II.1 The students’ performance in listening lessons 27 II.2 The students’ preparation for listening lessons 28 II.3 The students’ motivation before listening 29 II.4 The student’s learning strategies used in listening lessons and their

experiences to listen effectively

30

II.5 The frequency of the teachers’ activities to motivate the students before

listening

32

II.7 The frequency of using pair-work and group-work in listening lessons 33 II.8 The teachers’ treatment with listening tasks 34 II.9 The combination of reading, speaking, and writing skills in listening lessons 35

III.2 Facilitating the students with the language inputs before listening 37

III.4 Using more pair-work and group-work in listening lessons 38 III.5 Using more reading, speaking and writing skills in listening lessons 38 III.6 The students’ better preparation before listening 39 III.7 The students’ better learning strategies in listening lessons 39

APPENDIX I Survey questionnaire (for students) III APPENDIX II Survey questionnaire (for teachers) V APPENDIX III The tape-scripts of listening texts VII APPENDIX IV Different kinds of tasks in listening lessons XVIII

APPENDIX V Class observations XX

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

TABLES

Table 1: The students’ performance in listening lessons

Table 2: The students’ preparation for listening lessons

Table 3: The students’ learning strategies used in listening lessons

Table 4: The pre-listening activities

CHARTS

Chart 1: The students’ motivation before listening

Chart 2: The students’ learning experiences to listen effectively

Chart 3: The frequency of teachers’ activities to motivate the students before

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

I RATIONALE

Together with the development of international relationships between Vietnam and other countries in the world, the need to learn English in our country is sharply increasing English has become a compulsory subject in every Vietnamese school and university However, the fact in Vietnam shows that there is now not only an urgent lack of the number

of people speaking English fluently somewhere but also an impressive demand for the quality

of English teaching and learning in the whole Vietnamese education system In order to solve these problems, we have no alternation but to apply innovations to the process of teaching and learning English in our country

Theoretically, the innovations in second language (L2) teaching and learning over the time have always based on the findings that come from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Research Moreover, they can take place in two parallel directions: changing in teaching method as well as in syllabus design The theories also state that there must be a mutual relationship between innovations in these two directions They must be relevant to each other

to contribute to the success of language teaching and learning

In the late twentieth century, we have witnessed the successful application of TBM in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in many places all over world In Vietnam, TBM has gradually replaced traditional teaching methods Together with the new textbook series, it has resulted in outstanding outcomes in teaching and learning English, especially in improving speaking and listening skills However, we must confess that these outcomes are quite different when we observe various English classes in Vietnam

Being an English teacher at high school, I myself have seen not only the success of the new method and the new textbook series but also the difficulties and sometimes failures when applying them One of these failures that attracts my most attention is my students‟ bad performance in listening lessons This explains why I choose to carry out a study on the use of the new method in teaching listening for my students in this thesis, which is hopefully designed to help my students to overcome the problems

II AIMS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS OF THE STUDY

The study firstly aims to draw out the mutual relationship between the new method and the new textbook which ensures the success of our lessons In addition, the thesis is designed

to investigate the teachers‟ application of TBM and the 10th form students‟ use of learning strategies in their listening lessons at TPHS in Vinh Phuc Next, a comparison is made to test whether the application of the new method here is relevant to the new textbook Last but far from least, the study is concluded with some solutions, which help these students improve their listening skill

In order to implement the study, two research questions are raised: (1) Whether the teachers‟ application of TBM and the 10th form students‟ use of learning strategies are effective in their listening lessons at TPHS in Vinh Phuc? and (2) Is there a close relevance between the teaching methods used to teach listening for these students and the textbook? III SCOPES OF THE STUDY

Due to the time limit as well as the lack of knowledge on the part of the writer , it is impossible to cover all aspects of teaching listening in this thesis Therefore, my study will only discuss the effect of using TBM in teaching listening, which is considered one the most important factors contributing to the success of each lesson

IV METHODS OF THE STUDY

It is obvious that the thesis would not be in this form without qualitative method used during the writing process First of all, the data were collected from two survey questionnaires, informal interviews with the teachers and classroom observations The data, then, required systematical classification to put them into different parts Finally, logical contrastive analysis was of great help

V DESIGN OF THE STUDY

While this thesis generally presents the topic: “A Study on the Effect of Using TBM in Teaching Listening for 10th Form Students at TPHS in Vinh Phuc”, each of the chapters carries out its own task far different from that of the others The first chapter states rationales for, aims, scope, method and organization of the study The theoretical background in the chapter II covers issues most relevant to the topic The next one focuses on analyzing figures

and giving out some findings We also find in this chapter some solutions to solve the given problems Finally, the forth chapter concludes the study

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Before studying the teachers‟ application of TBM and the 10th form students‟ use of learning strategies in their listening lessons at TPHS in Vinh Phuc, we should now have an overview of changes in language teaching and learning through out the history with two directions: innovations in language teaching methods and innovations in syllabus design

I INNOVATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING METHOD

It is necessary now to distinguish these three confusing concepts: approach, method and technique A scheme was proposed by Edward Anthony (1963, pp.63-67) In his view point, approach is at the top, method is in the middle and technique is at the bottom of a vertically hierarchical line Approach determines method, then method determines technique Here three concepts is distinguished clearly However, the limited point of this distinction is that the hierarchical line only goes downward The determination is only in one direction, there is no interaction between these three concepts

Richards and Rodgers (1986, pp.18-20) make this distinction quite clear In their point

of view, approaches are views of the nature of language or language teaching An approach is axiomatic Whereas method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material A method is procedural No part of a method contradicts and all of the method is based upon a selected approach And lastly, techniques are the actual activities the teachers

do in the classroom In the expression „innovations in language teaching methods‟, the term

„method‟ is used with a broad meaning so that it takes over other terms

Looking at the flowered development of SLA Research and the history of language teaching methods in the past few decades, we can find that there is a close relationship between researches in SLA and the changes in language teaching methods, that is, the latter has reflected recognition of changes both in the kind of proficiency learners need and in theory

of the nature of language and language learning, resulted from the former

Based on the proficiency learners need, we can classify language teaching methods through out the history into two groups The first group helps to develop grammatical competence and the second one communicative competence

I.1 Language teaching methods focusing on developing grammatical competence

Most of traditional teaching methods belong to the first group which concentrates on the development of grammatical competence, that is the ability to recognize and produce the grammar with a set of distinctive forms and rules, the lexicon and the phonology of a language and the ability to use them effectively in producing grammatically or phonologically accurate sentences in the target language

Focusing on developing grammatical competence, traditional language teaching methods have undergone two different periods: focusing on meaning and on forms The former aims at developing learners‟ proficiency of reading comprehension and sentence writing, whereas the latter pays much more attention to the rules and structures

The Grammar-Translation Method is one example of teaching language focus on meaning With this method, the students‟ native language (L1) is the medium of instruction It

is used to explain new items and to enable comparisons to be made between L2 and L1 Furthermore, grammar is taught deductively and explicitly, that is, by presentation and study

of grammar rules, which are then practiced through translation exercises From these aspects,

we can see the distinctive feature of the method, i.e the sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice and much of the lesson is devoted to translating sentences into and out

of the target language

Although this method has been used widely and considered a very effective one, it still has some drawbacks A lot of SLA researchers have shown that numerous errors appearing in the process of L2 acquisition are the result of L1 transfer That is because the two languages are not the same, so we cannot have a proper translation between them In addition, when the method has been put into practice it has only been proved effective for the very beginners of language teaching All these problems cause the Grammar-Translation Method in particular and language teaching methods focusing on meaning in general to change

The second period of language teaching methods, focusing on forms, is evident in the Traditional Approach Under the light of this approach, language learning is a process of accumulating distinct entities Learners are required to treat language primarily as an object to

be studied and practiced bit by bit and to function as students rather than as users of the

language Grammar is also taught explicitly Moreover, each lesson is traditionally carried out

in three fixed steps : presentation, practice and production (P-P-P)

Although the procedure with three steps P-P-P has been quite famous and applied in many English classes all over the world, Traditional Approach in particular and teaching methods focusing on forms in general have still revealed some unreasonable aspects Firstly, the approach does not motivate learners‟ creation The rules and the forms are quite fixed and

it is the teacher but not the learners who decide which ones to teach and how the lesson takes place in the classroom Secondly, the aim of the method is to ensure the accuracy of the rules and structures but not the meaning and the actual use of language in communication That is why there is a restriction in the use of language outside the classroom

From the investigation of the two above language teaching methods, we find that concentrating on developing only grammatical competence will not provide the learners with the ability to produce sentences or utterances which are appropriate to the context or to interpret perfectly such utterances

I.2 Language teaching methods focusing on developing communicative competence

Now, it is time for us to discuss the second group of teaching methods which concentrates on developing communicative competence

The term communicative competence, which was coined by Dell Hymes (1971, p.96),

is the development of Noam Chomsky‟s notion of linguistic competence cited in Ellis (1994, p.12) Chomsky defines linguistic competence as the ability of a speaker-hearer to speak and understand language in a grammatically correct manner In other words, linguistic competence

is the use of grammatical rules of a language in communication Hymes then expands on Chomsky‟s view by considering the social factors of a culture‟s language So, communicative competence, in Hyme‟s definition, is the use of not only grammatical rules of a language but also social language rules in communication

According to Hymes (1971, p.98) communicative competence consists of four components: grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence He states that the first two components, which constitute linguistic competence, reflect the use of the linguistic system itself and the last two, which constitute

pragmatic competence, define the functional aspects of communication

Now, let us consider these four components in detail Grammatical competence is knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics and phonology It is the competence that we associate with mastering the linguistic code of a language Next, discourse competence is considered the complement of grammatical competence in many ways It is the ability we have to come at sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterance The third component, sociolinguistic competence, is defined as the knowledge of socio-cultural rules of language and of discourse This type of competence reveals an understanding of the social context in which language is used, of the roles of the participant, of the information they share and of the function of the interaction Only in a full context of this kind can judgments be made on the appropriateness of a particular utterance Finally, strategic competence is the verbal and nonverbal strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variable or due to insufficient competence

We can explain the shift from language teaching methods focusing on develop grammatical competence to those concentrating on developing communicative competence under the lights of the researches in SLA Firstly, many researchers such as Krashen (1981, p.72) makes a clear distinction between acquisition, that is, the subconscious process of picking up a language through exposure and learning, that is, the conscious process of studying a language These researches also indicate that acquisition is much promoted in a communicative classroom where students are exposed to continuous communication Besides, Krashen‟s Comprehensible Hypothesis (1981, p.206) states that an important condition for language acquisition to occur is that the acquirer must understand the inputs and the inputs must be comprehensible, i.e slightly beyond his or her current level of proficiency This rejects the teacher‟s opportunity to teach what they want without paying attention to learners Then, Long‟s Interaction Hypothesis cited in Brown (2007, p.132) adds explanation for the shift The hypothesis claims that inputs can be made comprehensible via interactional adjustments or negotiation of meaning in interlanguage talk (the communication among learners) and in teacher talk (the communication between teacher and learners) Finally, we

can consider innovations in teaching method according to Skehan‟s Motivation Hypothesis cited in Ellis (1994, p.258) which concludes that motivation promotes L2 acquisition and learners quickly acquire what they pay attention to

With the theories of communicative competence, we have seen the emergence of Communicative Approach in the late 1960s and the wide application of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the last two decades The preference of this new teaching method can be attributed to the fact that it provides learners with activities selected according

to how well they engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use rather than merely mechanical practice of language patterns In order to promote learning, these activities must ensure the CLT principles of communication, task, and meaningfulness That is, activities in CLT classes are designed in form of different tasks which exposing learners to real and meaningful communication

Howatt (1984, p.279) distinguishes between a strong and a weak version of CLT The former which has become more or less standard practice in the last 10 years, stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purpose and characteristically attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching The latter, on the other hand, advances the claim that language is acquired through communication, so that it is not merely a question of activating an existing but inert knowledge of the language, but also a question of stimulating the development of the language system itself We can see that while the week version of CLT could be described as learning to use English, the strong one entails using English to learn it

In order to have a clearer look at characteristics of CLT, Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983, p.91) contrast the major distinctive features of the Audio-Lingual Method and the Communicative Approach:

Attends to structure and form not meaning Meaning is paramount

Demands memorization of structure based

dialogues

Dialogues if used center around communicative function and are not normally memorized

Language items are not necessarily

contextualized

Contextualization is a basic premise

Language learning is language structures,

sounds or words

Language learning is learning to communicate

Mastery or over-learning is sought Effective communicative is sought

Drilling is a central technique Drilling may occur but peripherally

Native speaker like pronunciation is sought Comprehensible pronunciation is sought Grammatical explanation is avoided Any device that helps the learners is

accepted varying according to their age, interest, …

Communicative activities only come after a

long process or rigid drills and exercises

Attempts to communicate may be encourage from the very beginning

The use of the students‟ native language is

forbidden

Judicious use of native language is accepted where feasible

Translation is forbidden at early level Translation may be used where students

need or benefit from it Reading and writing are deferred till speech

is mastered

Reading and writing can start from the first day if desired

The target linguistic system will be learned

through the overt teaching of the patterns of

the system

The target linguistic system will be learn best through the process of struggling to communicate

Linguistic competence is the desired goal Communicative competence is the desired

goal (the ability to use the linguistic system effectively and appropriately)

Varieties of language are recognized but not

emphasized

Linguistic variation is a central concept in material and methodology

The sequence of units is determined solely

by principles of linguistic complexity Sequencing consideration of context, function, or is determined by any

meaning that maintains interest The teacher controls the learners and

prevents them from doing anything that

conflicts with the theory

Teacher helps learners in any way that motivate them to work with the language

Language is habit so errors must be

prevented at any cost Language is created by the individual, often through trial and error Accuracy in terms of formal correctness is a

primary goal Fluency and acceptable language is the primary goal Accuracy is judged not in the

abstract but in context Students are expected to interact with the

language system, embodied in machines or

control materials

Students are expected to interact with other people either in the flesh, through pair or group work or in their writing

The teacher is expected to specify the

language that students are to use

The teacher cannot know exactly what language students will use

Intrinsic motivation will spring from an

interest in the structure of the language Intrinsic motivation will spring an interest in what is being communicated by the

language

I.3 Task-based Method – the strong version of CLT

Task – based Teaching can be regarded as a strong and recent version of communicative methodology and seeks to reconcile methodology with current theories of SLA Many researches indicate that while traditional teaching methods focus on meaning and

on forms in order to develop grammatical competence, Task-based Teaching focuses on form

to develop communicative competence According to Ellis, the term form is intended to include not only phonological, lexical and grammatical aspects of language but also pragma-linguistics ones

Being a version of CLT, TBM has all the above listed characteristics We now repeat the most important ones Firstly, the focus of teaching is on process rather than product Secondly, basic elements are purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize communication and meaning Last but not least, learners learn language by interacting communicatively and purposefully while engaged in the activities and tasks

From the characteristics of CLT in general and of TBM as particular, we can see that

in a task-based lesson, the teacher does not predetermine what language will be studied Instead, the lesson is based around the completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what happens as the students complete it

Now it is time to consider what exactly takes place within a task Willis (1996, 62) recommends different components in a framework of tasks: the pre-task stage, the task cycle and the language focus

pp.52-At the pre-task stage, the teacher first introduces the topic in the way that most motivates the students Then, clear instructions on what they will have to do with the task are also given If these steps are well planned and successfully complimented, they might help the students to recall some language from their outcomes that may be useful for the task The pre-task stage can also include playing a record of people doing the task This gives the students a clear demonstration of what they will be expected in the task Lastly, the students can take notes and spend time preparing for the task

The task cycle consists of some certain activities: task, planning and report In task activities, the students complete a task in pairs or groups using the language resources while

the teacher monitors and offers encouragement Then, it is the time for planning: A short oral

or written report is prepared by pairs or groups of students to tell the rest of the class what happened during their task They then practise what they are going to say in their pairs or groups Meanwhile the teacher is available for the students to ask any language related question they may have At the report stage, the students report back to the class orally or read the written report The teacher decides when they present their reports and may give them some quick feedback on the content and their performance

At the language focus stage, both analysis and practice activities take place First of all, that is the case of analysis activities The teacher highlights interesting features on the content and the performance of the students‟ reports Some serious errors that the students make in their reports can also be raised The students then discuss these interesting features as well as errors in their pairs or groups In practice activities, the teacher selects language aspects to practise based on the needs of the students and what emerged from the task and report phases The students then do their practice activities to build up their confidence and make a note of useful language contents

II INNOVATIONS IN SYLLABUS DESIGN

As said above, in order to ensure the success of English classes there must be a mutual relationship between teaching method and syllabus Therefore, SLA researches cause not only teaching methods but also syllabuses to change

Before looking at the innovations in syllabus, it is necessary to look at different views

of the importance of inputs in L2 acquisition It is self-evident that L2 acquisition can only take place when the learner has access to inputs in the L2, but the idea of the importance of inputs for and their contribution to the success of language classrooms is controversial

Behaviorist theories emphasize the importance of inputs They claim that the whole process of acquisition can be controlled by presenting learners with inputs in right-sized doses and then reinforcing their attempts to practice them However, Chomsky challenged the theories in the 1960s and concluded that there was a very poor match between the kind of language found in the inputs learners received and the kind of language they themselves produced

On the contrary, the mentalist view underemphasizes the importance of inputs It states that the mind or the „black - box‟ of learners is most important for L2 acquisition while inputs only function as a trigger setting off some internal language acquisition devices The mentalist view of inputs hypothesizes a set of mental processes which take place inside the mind of the learner and which convert the language in inputs into a form that the learner could store and handle in production However, researches in SLA took this view into consideration

by showing that interaction can provide learners with “scaffolding” that enables them to produce structures that would be beyond them

Next comes the interactionist view of inputs It emphasizes the importance of both inputs and interaction Researchers who advocate this view suggests that learners acquire a language through the process of learning how to communicate in it and inputs shaped through interaction contribute directly and powerfully to acquisition

Now, it is time we distinguished three confusing concepts: curriculum, syllabus and textbook According to Richards (2001, p.16), curriculum is on the top of a hierarchically vertical line and is the most complicated It is a generalization of needs of a group of learners, aims or objectives for a program to address those need, appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching method and materials, and an evaluation of the application of the language program

as well Whereas, a syllabus is at the next descending step of the line It is a specification of the content of a course of instruction and list what will be taught and tested A textbook, on the contrary, is the conveyance of the content of the course raised in the syllabus in forms of different activities such as tasks, exercises, and drills In this thesis, „syllabus‟ is used as a common term which takes over the two others

II.1 Synthetic syllabus versus analytic syllabus

According to Beglar and Hunt (1987, p.96), there are two kinds of syllabus: synthetic syllabus and analytic syllabus The former divides the target language into discrete linguistic items such as points of grammar, lexical items and functions The designers who use this type

of syllabus assume that learners will be capable of resynthesizing these discrete pieces of language into a coherent whole which they can use in communicative situations The latter is a noninterventionist, experiential approach which aims to expose learners to real-life

communication This type of syllabus supplies learners with samples of the target language which are selected with the purposes for which people use language In this case, the assumption is that learners will be able to analyze grammatical and lexical usage during the process of using the target language to communicate

Grammar-Translation syllabus is an example of synthetic syllabus The textbook here consists of statements of abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences for translation In addition, speaking foreign language is not the goal when the syllabus is designed, and oral practice is limited to students reading aloud the sentences they translate All the sentences found in the textbook are constructed to illustrate the grammatical system of the language and bore no relation to the language of real communication

From the description of Grammar-Translation syllabus as well as the characteristics of Grammar-Translation Method, we can see a clear relevance between how to teach (teaching method) and what to teach (syllabus) Theoretically, all the grammar rules, lists of vocabulary

as well as different kinds of sentences in the syllabus perfectly match the method of translation from L1 to L2 This helps to explain for the success of Grammar-Translation classrooms over the history of language teaching and learning

For analytic syllabus, White cited in Murphy (2003, p.352) lists its most salient characteristics as follows: (a) it is primarily concerned with how materials are learned (processes–oriented ); (b) some degree of negotiation between learners and teachers occurs; (c) the content is fundamentally defined as what the subject means to the learner and what the learner brings to the subject in terms of knowledge and interest; (d) assessment is partially decided based on the learners‟ own criteria of success; (e) the instructional situation is far more cooperative than in traditional classrooms

Task - based syllabus is an example of analytic syllabus According to Crookes and Long (1992, p.131), beside the characteristics just described above, task-based syllabuses are largely derived from what is known about SLA For instance, SLA Research supports a focus

on form which uses pedagogical tasks to draw learners‟ attention to particular aspects of the language code which are naturally embedded in the tasks Tasks also provide inputs to learners and opportunities for meaningful language use, both of which are generally considered

valuable in promoting language acquisition That explains why tasks hold a core position in the syllabus Moreover, the conclusion of some types of instructions on the formal aspects of the target language can be found in most recent formulations of task-based language instructions All these aspects of task-based syllabus enable real communication to take place naturally and frequently in the classroom

Here, we find another example of the relevance between teaching method and syllabus

We all see that tasks are not only the main activities in TBM to expose students to real-world communication but also the core element in task-based syllabus which are designed to promote students to communicate in real contexts

We now take an example of the irrelevance between how to teach and what to teach That is the case of the weak version of CLT While the syllabus is communicative, i.e a list

of notions and functions, the teaching method is traditional and non communicative, i.e P-P-P Advocators of the weak version of CLT base on the assumptions that the components of communicative competence can be identified and systematically taught in order to explain for the irrelevance to which its failure is attributed when the weak version of CLT has been put into practiced

From these above examples, we find that in order to theoretically ensure the success of language teaching and learning there must be a relevance between teaching method and syllabus

Now, let us have a brief look at the textbook designed to teach English for 10th form students in Vietnam in general and at TPHS in Vinh Phuc in particular who are the subjects of this thesis

The textbook “Tiếng Anh10” compiled by Van et al (2006) is among a new series of textbooks which are designed in task-based orientation in order to teach English for Vietnamese students in the school education system The design of the whole series of textbooks has adopted „the principle of relevance‟ that we mentioned above In this case, that

is the relevance between the use of the task-based textbooks and the application of TBM in every English classroom in Vietnam

II.2 Tasks in task-based syllabus

As can be seen from the characteristics of task-based syllabus, tasks can function as a useful device for planning a communicative curriculum, and that is why they provide the basis for the whole language curriculum in Task- based Language Teaching However the question

“What is exactly a task?” is quite controversial

Long cited in Ellis (2003, p.2) gives a broad definition which includes two types of tasks: tasks that requires language, for example, making an airline reservation and tasks that can be performed without language, for example, painting a fence Whereas Nunan‟s definition of task cited in Ellis (2003, p.2) is much narrower He defines task as an activity that necessarily involves language In my study, I advocate the definition by Bygate, Skehan and Swain (2001, p.57) “A task is an activity which requires learners to use language, with the emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective, and which is chosen so that it is most likely to provide information for learners and teachers which will help them in their own learning”

From the definition by Bygate, Skehan, and Swain, six criterial features of a task are listed (Ellis, 2003, p.9): (a) a task is a workplan; (b) a task involves a primarily focus on meaning; (c) a task involves real-world process of language use; (d) a task can involves any of the four language skills; (e) a task engages cognitive process; and (f) a task has clearly defined communicative outcome

There is a need to distinguish between task, i.e the core unit of task-based syllabus and exercise, i.e the main activities in traditional one Tasks and exercises have the same overall purpose, i.e learning a language The difference lies in the means by which this purpose is to be achieved While tasks are activities that call for primarily meaning-focused language use, exercise activities call for primarily form-focused language use A task is concerned with pragmatic meaning, i.e the use of language in context However, an exercise

is concerned with semantic meaning, i.e the systemic meanings that specific forms can convey irrespective of context

Before looking at the tasks in a task-based syllabus, it is necessary to make a distinction between different kinds of tasks: focused versus unfocused tasks, one-way versus two-way tasks, open versus close tasks

Both unfocused and focused tasks are used to stimulate communicative language use but the former is not designed with the use of a specific linguistic feature in mind On the contrary, when being designed the latter targets the use of a particular, predetermined feature

of language

One-way tasks and two-way tasks are distinguished in terms of whether the information to be shared is split one-way, i.e held by a single person or between two or more people In the case of one-way tasks, the burden of completing the task successfully is placed

on the participant who holds the information, although other participants can contribute by demonstrating when they comprehend or when they do not Conversely, in two-way tasks all the participants are obligated to participate in the tasks in order to complete it

Open tasks are those in which there is no predetermined solution In this case, many options can gap the task and learners are free to decide on the solution In contrast, close tasks are those that require the students to reach a single, correct solution or one of a small finite set

of solutions

Let us now look at listening activities designed in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” which

is also one of the subject of this study and shown in appendix IV There is a fact that some of these activities are only pseudo-tasks That is because they do not meet all the criteria of tasks given above For example, the exercises of true/false, numbering, and ticking in appropriate information do not involve real-world process of language uses and have not clearly defined communicative outcome

The rest of listening activities in the textbook, however, are of various kinds of tasks ranging from one-way tasks (e.g Work in groups, retell the story then report your result – After you listen, Unit 4) to two-way tasks (e.g Work in pairs, discuss the change in your own hometown or home village – After you listen, Unit 8); from closed tasks (e.g Match the pictures with the conversation – While you listen, Unit 2) to opened tasks (Work in group, answer the questions: what would you plan for a picnic with your class? – After you listen, Unit 6); from unfocused tasks (e.g Fill in the blanks with the exact words you hear - While you listen, Unit 6 ) to focused tasks (e.g Work in pairs or groups, ask and answer about Mr Lam then report your result – After you listen, Unit 1)

Breen (1987, p.184) distinguished between two terms task-as-workplan, i.e the designed task with the intension of the designer and task-as-process, i.e the learners‟ actual performance of the task Then, these two terms have widely used by other researchers

In Murphy‟s article (2003, pp.352-360), he states that learning outcomes are a product

of three main factors: the task-as-workplan, the task-as-process, and the situation in which the task is carried out So, the task itself is not enough to ensure the intended pedagogical objectives of the task designers In many cases, the task-as-workplan does not match the task-as-process That is because any pre-designed tasks can be changed by the way the learners interact it

According to Breen (1987, p.226), there are two main ways in which learners interact with the task If learners find that a task relates closely to their own learning needs, they will adopt an achievement orientation On the other hand, if they are unable to see the relevance of the task to their perceived needs, learners are likely to adopt a survival orientation and perform the tasks with minimal effort He also claims that even if the purpose of the task is found relevant and learners adopt an achievement orientation, they may still select procedures to carry out the task which differ from the direction given in the task-as-workplan That is why it

is vital for the pedagogical objectives of the tasks to be made clear to the learners

III THEORY IN LISTENING

III.1 Definition of listening

Among four language skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing, listening is often considered the most difficult one which challenges both teacher and learners in language classroom Now, it is time we had a look at the definition of this skill

According to Field (1998, p.38), “Listening is an invisible metal process, making it difficult to describe Listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance”

In my study, I adopt a simpler definition of listening by Anderson and Lynch (1988, p.21): “Listening comprehension means to understand what a speaker says: the listener has a crucial part to play in the process by activating various types of knowledge, by applying what

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

From the second definition we can find that listening is a complex, active process of interpretation in which listeners not only recall their comprehensive knowledge but also match what they hear with what they have already known

III 2 Classification of listening

Anderson and Lynch (1998, p.315) distinguish between reciprocal listening and nonreciprocal listening The former refers to listening tasks where there is the opportunities for the listener to interact with the speaker and to negotiate the content of the interaction The latter refers to tasks such as listening to the radio or a formal lecture where the transfer of information is in a direction only – from the speaker to listener

Let us take listening in classrooms as examples of these types of listening For reciprocal listening, it is the case of listening tasks that expose learners to communicate with each other or with their teacher Nonreciprocal listening takes place when students listen to the tape in the listening session

Richards and Schmidt (1983, p.129) classifies listening according to whether they require the learners to engage in bottom-up or top-down processing In bottom-up processing, learners rely on their linguistic knowledge to recognize linguistic elements – vowels, consonants, words, sentences to do the construction of meaning They build meaning from lower lever sounds to words, to grammatical relationship, and to lexical meaning in order to arrive at the final message In top-down processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make prediction about the text Prior knowledge can be that of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information stored in long-term as well as short-term memory

Listening comprehension is not either bottom-up or top-down processing but is an both interactive and interpretive process where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding message The degree to which learners use this process or the other will depend on their knowledge being familiar with the topic as well as the purpose for listening

III.3 Common methods in teaching listening

Underwood (1990, p.90) states that there are at least four common methods of teaching L2 listening: Grammar-Translation Method, Grammar Method, Audio-Lingual Method and TBM

When Grammar-Translation Method is applied in a classroom, the students certainly listen to a description of the rules of L2 in their L1 As a result, when L2 is used, the focus of any listening is on translation of lexical items or grammar structures

To follow Grammar Method, the teacher requires students to look at a written text while they listen to a recording This focuses the students to do several things: identify words

by their position in the sentence, work out the relationship between words and phrases, use forward and backward related cues, and make intelligent guesses based on textual cues

Audio-lingual Method of teaching listening emphasizes listening to pronunciation and grammatical forms and then imitating those forms by way of drills and exercises Dialogues and drills are the basis of classroom practice with this method Students are encouraged to listen carefully either to a taped recording of or a teacher reading out a dialogue or a drill Basically, the more the students repeat a correct phrase or sentence, the stronger of their memory of structures will be

In TBM, a stress is placed on activities or tasks that learners do in class in order to develop their communicative competence A task-based syllabus should be constructed according to the difficulty of the tasks required of the learners at different stages in a course

To sum up, the four methods of teaching L2 listening are not mutually exclusive and in reality they may be mixed in any particular course or classroom However, nowadays, with the appearance of CLT, teaching listening seems to be more meaningful to students due to the fact that they have chance to develop their listening skills and other language skills as well

III.4 Three stages of the listening lesson

In order to help learners get most from a listening lesson, a lesson plan of listening is usually divided into three stages: (a) things learners do before listening, i.e pre-listening; (b) tasks, exercises or activities are done by learners when the discourse is played, i.e while-listening; (3) things learners do after listening, i.e post-listening

There has been a definition of the pre-listening stage as follows: “Before listening, students should be „turn in‟ so that they know what to expect, both in general and particular tasks This kind of preparatory work is generally described as pre-listening work or just pre-listening” (Underwood, 1990, p.30)

Underwood also states that pre-listening work can consist of a whole range of activities, including: the teacher giving background information, the students reading something relevant, looking at pictures, at discussion of the topic, at a question and answer session and at written exercises as well as following the instructions for the while-listening activity and the consideration of how while-listening will be done

The while-listening stage consists of activities that students are asked to do The purpose of while listening activities is to help students develop their skills of listening to the spoken language Rixon (1986, p.253) points out the purposes of while listening stage is to challenge and guide students to handle the information and the message from the listening text Activities of this stage must be interesting and carefully chosen They must vary at different levels and in different cases

Appropriateness is considered a characteristics of while-listening activities Activities

of this stage should be suitable with students‟ ability This means that while-listening activities can be done by most students, from the slow students to the best ones Because failure can quickly discourage students to listen In the early stage, activities which are much above the students‟ level should not be used, but sometimes it is necessary to give students some challenges

Post-listening stage consists of activities that are done after the listening is completed Some of these activities are extension of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages but some relate loosely to the listening text itself

Underwood (1990, p.77) indicates that the attention should be given to the following factors in selecting post-listening activities: how much language work you wish to do in relation with particular listening text; whether there will be time to do much post-listening work at the end of the listening lesson; whether the post-listening work should consist of speaking, reading or writing; whether the post listening stage is seen as an opportunity for pair

group work; whether it is necessary to provide post-listening activities that can be done

outside the classroom; and how motivating the chosen activities will be

III 5 Foreign language learners’ listening problems

Before describing the problems that foreign language learners face in learning listening, let us look back at the basic difference between reciprocal listening and nonreciprocal listening In reciprocal listening, i.e real listening, there is the negotiation of meaning resulted from the interaction between learners and learners or learners and teacher Conversely, the information is transferred in only one direction in nonreciprocal listening and

no meaning negotiation takes place

Meaning negotiation plays an important part in listening comprehension as well as in communication It is the adjustments which are found in the language of the speakers addressed to the learners We can see these adjustments in foreigner talk, i.e the language used by native speakers when communicating with non-native speakers, interlanguage talk, i.e the language that learners use to communicate with each other, as well as teacher talk, i.e the language that the teacher used to address to the students

Apart from the problem of no meaning negotiation, listening comprehension in classrooms also causes various problems for the students All these problems can be divided into two groups: listening problems and language problems Underwood also indicates the seven listening problems as follows: (a) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (b) not being able to get things repeated; (c) the listeners‟ limited vocabulary; (d) failure to recognize the “signals”; (e) problems of interpretation; (f) inability to concentrate; and (g) establishing learning habits In addition to this, Yagang cited in Rixon (1986, p 310) attributes the difficulties of listening comprehension to four sources: (a) the messages; (b) the speaker; (c) the listener and the physical setting In order to make this clearer, the research on learners‟ listening problems cited in Underwood (1990, pp.172-178) shows ten problems which occurred during the cognitive processing phrases of perception Then, fives problems that are linked to word recognition and attention failure during perceptual processing are also given in the research: (a) do not recognize words they know; (b) neglect the next part when thinking about meaning; (c) cannot chunk streams of speech; (d) miss the beginning of texts;

(e) concentration to hard or unable to concentrate

III 6 Foreign language learners’ listening comprehension strategies

As can be seen in the definition of listening, listeners make use of two kinds of information to identify the meaning of listening text: their prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge Those who make effective use of the former can be said to use top-down processing On the contrary, those who make use of the latter are using the bottom-up processing and are forced to determined the meaning of individual words and then aggregate upwards to larger unit of meaning

According to Frch and Kasper cited in O‟Malley, et al (1989, p.421), listeners engage

in a variety of mental processes in an effort to realize linguistic features of the oral text as well

as to match what they know with what they hear All these processes are referred to as learning strategies

By definition, a language learning strategy is “an attempt to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language.” (Ellis, 1994, p.530) So, learners‟ strategies are conscious or potentially conscious, they represent the learners‟ deliberate attempts to learn The Oxford Dictionary (1989, p.1776) defines them as “behaviors or actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable.”

There are three major types of learning strategies: cognitive strategies (e.g relating new concepts to other information in memory), metacognitive strategies (e.g organizing a personal timetable to facilitate effective study of the L2) and social/affective strategies (e.g seeking out opportunities to converse with native speakers)

The first two types of learning strategies, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, are recorded to be used regularly by L2 learners (Wenden and Rubin cited in O‟Malley, et al

1989, p.437)

Cognitive strategies involve active manipulation of the learning task and include the following: (a) rehearsal, repeating the names of objects or items that have been heard, or practicing a long language sequence; (b) organization , or grouping information to be retained

in ways that will enhance comprehension and retention; (c) elaboration, or relating new information to information that has previously been stored in memory, or interconnecting

portions of the new text In these three strategies, elaboration is a particularly significant strategy because of the benefits for comprehension and retention that have been demonstrated with its use

Metacognitive strategies involve knowing about learning and controlling learning through planning, monitoring, and evaluating the learning activities Among these processes, monitoring has been described as a key process that distinguishes good learners from bad ones In listening comprehension, monitoring consists of maintaining awareness of the task demand and information content

From the above description, we find that metacognitive strategies are generally considered to be applicable across a varieties of tasks, whereas cognitive strategies may be more tailored to specific learning activities

Wenden and Rubin cited in O‟Malley, et al (1989, p.437), state that social/affective strategy is reported to be less often used by L2 learners but has an important role in instructional systems designed for these students That is because these strategies entail cooperative learning, questioning for clarification and affective control over learning experience

According to the research carried out by O‟Malley, et al (1989, p.422), significant differences are found between effective and ineffective listeners on self-monitoring, or checking one‟s comprehension or production while it is taking place; elaboration, or relating new information to prior knowledge or to other ideas in the new information; and inferencing,

or using information in a text to guess at meaning or to complete missing ideas

For the strategy of monitoring, ineffective listeners in the research who use bottom-up processing report that when they encounter an unknown word or a phrase in a listening text, they usually stopped listening and failed to be aware of their inattention or to try to redirect their attention to the oral text Effective listeners, nevertheless, use top-down processing and seem to be able to monitor their attention lapses and redirect their attention to the text, especially if they are interested in the material

For the question of inferencing, the research shows that students who are good at listening infer the meanings of important words for comprehension of the oral text by using

the context of the sentence or paragraph in which unfamiliar words appear Conversely, students who are bad at listening infer these meanings mainly through translation from L2 to L1

In the case of using elaboration as a learning strategy, all the students who participate

in the research by O‟Malley, et al (1989, p.422) report to make use of prior knowledge at two points, to assist comprehension and to assist recall However, effective listeners are able to relate new information to prior knowledge in all three ways through world knowledge, personal knowledge and self-questioning

The research finally offers some pieces of advice on how to listen effectively First and foremost, the general approach used by more effective learners is to use top-down processing and to rely upon bottom-up processing only as needed Then, students should make full use of useful learning strategies such as self-monitoring, elaboration and inferencing during their listening lessons

In short, all the information presented in this chapter will directly or indirectly help to explain for the objectives, the methods of as well as the findings and the solutions in the study

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS AND SOLUTIONS

I METHODOLOGY

I.1 Role of the researcher

The researcher is a teacher of English at TPHS in Vinh Phuc who has used the new textbook “Tiếng Anh10” compiled by Van et al (2006) for two years

I.2 Participants

The subjects for this study includes 437 participants belonging into two groups The first group consist of 432 10th form students at TPHS in Vinh Phuc The second one is composed of five teachers who are in charge of teaching English for these students

I.3 The textbook

Following are some basic characteristics of the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” involving the time distribution, the order of language skills, the content of the listening texts, as well as the listening tasks

For the time distribution, the contents of the textbook are taught in two terms, each term has eight units and three test yourself lessons In each unit of the textbook, there are five sections: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus All of five sections in one unit serve the same topic, i.e the topic of the unit

In the textbook, listening lessons are taught in the third period of each unit after reading and speaking lessons This is a reasonable arrangement although it is different from that in most of other textbooks and course books The order of language skills seen in many textbooks and course books is often reading, listening, speaking and writing That is because reading and listening are receptive skills, so they are often taught in advance with the aim to provide the students with the language inputs that they will practise later in productive skills, i.e speaking and writing However, it is not easy for most Vietnamese students to realize the language inputs in their listening lessons, let alone to receive them The facts that reading skill helps to provide most of the students‟ language inputs and the difficulties the students face during their listening lessons may discourage them explain why listening is taught after speaking in the textbook “Tiếng Anh10”

According to Jane and Barry‟s criteria of a listening text (1998, p.82) the listening texts of the textbook which are available in this thesis in appendix III have the following characteristics: (1) learning-centered, the materials promote learning and help students to develop their own strategies for learning; (2) humanistic, in the sense that the materials speak

to and interrelate with the learners as real people and engage them in interaction grounded in their own experience; (3) problem-solving, the listening texts have focused contents so as to engage students in cognitive efforts and thus, provoke meaningful interaction; (4) task-based, the materials enable students to engage in various kinds of tasks; and (5) interesting, the contents of the listening texts are familiar with the students and succeed in drawing their interest

As said in the previous chapter, some of the listening activities in the textbook are only pseudo-tasks The rest are various kinds of tasks ranging from focused to unfocused tasks, one-way to two-way tasks, and open to close tasks Besides, the listening tasks in the textbook are put in the order from easy tasks that require listening strategies for general ideas to difficult tasks that require listening strategies for specific information

I.4 Materials and equipment for listening lessons

At TPHS in Vinh Phuc, there are two labs that are used only for teaching English Each lab is well-equipped with forty-five computers connected with headphones for students, three main computers for teacher, a projector, a large screen and a volume system Besides, each English teacher is provided with a cassette-player, tapes and disks that they require for their teaching, as well as an amplifier in order to deal with large classroom

From the above list, we can see that all the necessary materials and equipments are available for teaching listening at TPHS in Vinh Phuc

I.5 Method of data collection

The study attempts to investigate the effect of using TBM in teaching listening for 10thform students at TPHS in Vinh Phuc In order to collect the data for the study, two survey questionnaires are conducted; then classroom observations and informal interviews with the teachers are also of great help

Survey questionnaires

There are two survey questionnaires used for the students and the teachers as the participants of this study The first survey questionnaires which is provided in appendix I include six questions which deals with the students‟ difficulties they face as well as the strategies they used in their listening lessons It is written in Vietnamese so that the students can understand the questions without extra explanation The survey questionnaire for the teachers shown in appendix II is written in English It consists of five questions which is designed to collect the teachers‟ opinions as well as experience on how to teach a listening lesson

Totally, 432 copies of the questionnaire are delivered to the students and five to the teachers However some of the copies are not returned from the students and some others are incompletely filled As a consequence, only 400 copies of the questionnaire collected from the students and five from the teachers are put into analysis

Classroom observations

The researcher carries out classroom observations by coming to three different classes

of three different teachers to observe how these participants of the study deal with their listening lessons

All the procedures of these lessons as well as the activities of the teachers and the students are carefully noted down for the purpose of researching in appendix V

Informal interviews

Informal interviews with five English teachers are also arranged to get some further information about the teachers‟ opinions on listening skill as well as the new method and the new textbook

II DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

II.1 The students’ performance in listening lessons

As can be seen from the data in table 1, 72.5 per cent of the students can finish from 50% to 100% of their listening tasks This is not a bad result However, when we put it in comparison with 32.25% of students who say that they look at reference books for the answers

of the tasks before their listening lessons (shown in table 2), we need to raise a question to this

result The result certainly does not reflect the learners‟ actual performance in their listening lessons

In order to find out the reason why the students are not very successful with their listening lessons, it is necessary now to have a look at both students‟ aspects (the students‟ preparation before the lessons, the learning strategies they use), as well as the teachers‟ aspects (the way the teachers help their students to deal with the listening tasks)

A finish 90% - 100% of the tasks

B finish 70% - 80% of the tasks

C finish 50% - 60% of the tasks

D finish under 50% of the tasks

6.25

26.5

39.75

27.5

Table 1: The students’ performance in listening lessons

II.2.The students’ preparation for listening lessons

From the figures shown in table 2, we can find that while 44.5 % of the students look

at the topic of listening section as well as the demand of the tasks in advance, there are up to 21.75% of students who do not make any preparation for their listening lessons This 21.75%

of the students certainly could deal with their listening tasks much better if they prepared for their listening tasks in some ways

Besides, when 17% of the students who review the words and expressions in the reading and speaking lessons before they listen is compared with 78.25% of the students who prepare for their listening lesson, we find that this 17% is a quite small proportion As said above, different sections in each unit of the textbook all serve the same topic Among other sections, reading is supposed to provide inputs whereas speaking is the process to put these inputs into communication and then in learners‟ long or short memory These inputs then often occur in the next lesson, i.e listening So, the revision of the linguistic features learned in reading and speaking lessons is a quite effective way for the students to get themselves ready for the listening tasks

In addition, there is not any research which shows that students can develop their