Improving students' listening comprehension through focused listening tasks = Nâng cao khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh thông qua các bài luyện tập kỹ n20150227

For all these reasons, I would like to do something to help improve listening skill of my students in English majored class by exploring the common problems that my students often encoun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATION ………

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………

ABSTRACT ………

TABLE OF CONTENTS ………

LIST OF TABLES………

PART A INTRODUCTION ……… ……

1 Rationale ……….….………

2 Aims of the study ……….……

3 Research questions………

4 Significance of the study ………

5 Scope of the study………

6 Methods of the study………

7 Design of the study………

PART B DEVELOPMENT………

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW………

I.1 Different views of listening comprehension……… …

I.2 Importance of listening comprehension………

I.3 Classification of listening comprehension………

I.3.1 Real - life listening………

I.3.2 Classroom - listening ………

I.4 Listening stages………

I.4.1 Pre-listening stage………

I.4.2 While - listening stage ………

I.4.3 Post - listening stage………

I.5 Definition of task………

I.6 Kinds of listening tasks ………

I.7 Language learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension ………

i

ii iii

iv

vi

1

1

2

2

2

3

3

3

5

5

5

7

9

9

11

12

12

14

15

16

18

20

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH ON CURRENT LISTENING TEACHING AND

LEARNING SITUATION IN BIEN HOA GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL………

II.1 Overview of current listening teaching and learning situation in Bien Hoa Gifted High School………

II.2 Participants……….……

II.3 Research method ………

II.4 Data analysis and discussion ………

II.4.1 Students’ attitudes towards listening skill………

II.4.2 Students’ experience in listening………

II.4.3 Students’ comment on the listening materials used in class…………

II.4.4 Students’ comment on factors causing difficulties in their learning listening… ……….………

II.4.5 Students’ difficulties in listening to English texts………

II.4.6 Teacher’s strategies to motivate the students………

II.4.7 The students’ expectation to their teacher………

II.5 Major findings ………

CHAPTER III: MAJOR SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION ………

III.1 Choosing the suitable listening texts………

III.2 Designing suitable tasks ………

III.3 Helping the students to prepare well for the listening through the

pre – listening stage ………

PART C CONCLUSION ………

1 Conclusions ………

2 Limitations of the research ………

3 Recommendations for further research ………

REFERENCES ……….………

APPENDIX ……….……….…………

24

24

24

25

25

25

26

27

27

28

31

32

32

35

35

36

36

40

40

40

41

42

I

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students’ attitudes towards listening skill

Table 2: Students’ experience in listening

Table 3: Students’ comment on the listening materials used in class

Table 4: Students’ comment on factors causing difficulties in their learning listening Table 5 & 6: Students’ difficulties in listening to English texts

Table 7: Teacher’s strategies to motivate the students

Table 8: The students’ expectation to their teacher

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It can not be denied that in the whole world English has become a more and more important role as the international means of communication in many fields of our life such

as aviation, business, service, culture, education, economy, and so on

Vietnam is not out of this circle; especially at this period since Vietnam joined in World Trade Organization, teaching and learning English have been paid more attention to However, for many years, Vietnamese students and teachers are familiar with the process

of teaching and learning in traditional ways As a teacher of Bien Hoa Gifted High School,

I find that the teaching and learning here still focus too much on grammar, vocabulary and structures Although students follow the English course book by the Ministry of Education and Training Department, in which each unit is designed to be composed of five parts - reading, listening, speaking, writing and language focus; assessment and testing only aim

at students’ knowledge of English grammar along with reading and partial writing Therefore, teaching and learning listening skill as well as speaking skill is paid less attention to After having taught for three years at Bien Hoa Gifted High School, I realize that there are many students who are good at writing and reading find it rather difficult to listen to English materials What’s more, we all know that language is used as a means of communication Therefore, students should be encouraged to develop all four skills which are closely related to one another

For all these reasons, I would like to do something to help improve listening skill of

my students in English majored class by exploring the common problems that my students often encounter in the process of learning listening and helping them get acquainted with the vital use of pronunciation, stress, intonation, linking, elision in speaking as well as different accents from authentic materials As the result, the title of the study is “Improving Students' Listening Comprehension through Focused Listening Tasks”

2 Aims of the study

This study aims at taking a closer look at the current situation of teaching and learning English for the English majored students at grade 11, Bien Hoa Gifted High School in listening lessons to find out the problems that these students usually encounter, and after all to improve their listening skill through listening tasks which focus on pronunciation, stress, intonation, linking, elision as well as different accents from authentic materials

3 Research questions

To meet the research aims, the study is carried out on the basis of using qualitative research method including survey questionnaire for students In brief, the ultimate goal of the study is to answer the following research questions:

1 What difficulties do English majored students at grade 11, Bien Hoa Gifted High School face in their listening lessons?

2 What are the possible causes of these students’ difficulties in acquiring listening skill in English?

3 Which focused listening tasks can help these students overcome their difficulties?

4 Significance of the study

To learn a foreign language well, learners need to develop all the four skills Listening to spoken language is an important way of acquiring language, of picking up structures and vocabulary We can not develop speaking skill unless we also develop listening skill

To have successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them Then the ability to understand spoken language may become very important for listening to radio, understanding foreigners, etc Listening comprehension is a very complex process that students often find most difficult in learning English This thesis, therefore, is carried out so as to help students to improve their listening skill

5 Scope of the study

Since Bien Hoa Gifted High School is a school for gifted students in many subjects including mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, literature, history, geography, English and Russian There are different sorts of students at different levels of English Teaching and learning English, especially listening skill, are so sophisticated and varied among these classes Within this study, the researcher will only focus on the students of English majored class of grade 11 to investigate the troubles that students at this class usually encounter, and then give some proposals to overcome discovered difficulties to help improve students’ listening ability

6 Methods of the study

The study is carried out on the basis of qualitative research method The questionnaire is designed as a means for researcher to collection data The questionnaire is given to students of English majored class of grade 11 with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their learning listening and their difficulties in listening lesson as well as their expectation from focused listening tasks

Based on the results of the survey, data analysis was done so as to put forwards some applications and suggestions in order to improve teaching and learning listening in English majored classes in Bien Hoa Gifted High School

7 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion

Part A, “INTRODUCTION”, presents the basis information such as the rationale,

the aim, the research question, the significance, the scope, the method, as well as the design of the study

Part B, “DEVELOPMENT”, consists of three chapters

- Chapter one, literature review, looks at different views of listening comprehension, importance of listening comprehension, classification of

listening comprehension, listening stages, definition of task and kinds of listening tasks as well as language learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension

- Chapter two deals with the current listening teaching and learning situation in Bien Hoa Gifted High School analysis on general teaching and learning situations at Bien Hoa Gifted High School Also in this chapter, there is a focus on data analysis and discussion as well as major findings

- Chapter three presents major solutions and recommendations to improve students' listening comprehension

Part C, “CONCLUSION”, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out some

limitations and provides suggestions for further study

PART B DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW

I.1 Different views of listening comprehension

The language learning is constituted from four main skills including reading, speaking, listening and writing These skills are closely related to one another What’s more, communication is the process of exchanging information and attitudes Therefore, language as a means of communication can not take place without listening Listening is a key second language skill, it has a vital role in the language acquisition process, and its development is of primary concern to language teachers It is also believed that listening is

a significant and essential area of development in a native language as well as in a foreign language So, there are numerous ways of defining listening

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), there are two influential views: traditional view and alternative view

Traditional view regarded listening as receptive skills, like reading skill Learners play a passive role in the listening learning process They just listen to the messages or recording and try to understand the meaning of the speakers’ utterances without taking any notice of such factors as attitude and shades of meaning This leads to a problem: teachers merely test students’ capacity of hearing and remembering utterance they hear in the recording, not students’ understanding of the conversation or talk For this perception, teaching listening, in the traditional way, is thought as teaching listening for sounds not for meaning Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as inappropriate and inadequate This notion is not a tenable one

Alternative view, on the other hand, considers the learner as an active model builder Listeners of this kind can combine the new information with their own background knowledge to reach full comprehension of what has been heard Both researchers agree with this view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of listeners on incoming information Other scholars supported this view as well

Little wood (1981) shares this view when saying that listening requires active involvement from listeners The nature of listening comprehension is that the listeners should be encouraged to be engaged in an active process of listening for meaning, using not only the linguistic cues but non linguistic knowledge as well

Listening comprehension can be facilitated when the listeners can understand what the native speakers say at a normal speed in natural situations Chastain (1976) suggests that to understand what native speakers say, the listeners do not need to pay attention to every word and all of the details in the text but they should focus on the content of the message in a natural situation They should try to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context of the spoken text To do so, they should make the best use of their background knowledge and relate their prior knowledge to the new information in the spoken text

In other words, listening is viewed as an active process in which individuals focus

on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and then relate what they hear to existing knowledge (Bentley & Bacon, 1996) Or listening is an active process

of constructing meaning and this is done by applying listeners’ knowledge to the incoming sounds in which numerous types of knowledge are involved including linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge (Gary Buck, 2001:31) because "comprehension takes place when input and knowledge are matched against each other" (Faerch & Kasper,

1986, p 264)

Therefore, from the teacher's point of view, the purpose of listening comprehension activities in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom is to help listeners extract meaning from the verbal and non- verbal information to assist listeners in recognizing cultural differences between the first language and the foreign language and in removing the cultural misunderstandings that may be distracted from the delivered non verbal information

Wolvin and Coakley (1985) also point out that listening as “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning to aural stimuli” To put it in another way, listening is

a complex problem-solving skill The task of listening is more than perception of sound

although perception is the foundation; it also requires comprehension of meaning This view of listening is in accordance with the second language theory which considers listening to spoken language as an active and complex process in which the listeners focus

on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley & Chamot, 1989)

In view of Yagang (1993), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning An able listener is cable of doing these four things simultaneously

In short, through many years, although there are numerous definitions of listening proposed as above, there is one common thing which can not be deniable: listening is not a passive but active process of constructing a message from a stream of sound with what the listener knows of the phonological, semantic and syntactic potentialities of the language, of receiving, attending and understanding auditory messages; that is message transmitted through the media of sounds

I.2 Importance of listening comprehension

Listening is an activity in which the learners pay attention and try to comprehend what they heard Due to the influence of the Grammar Translation method or Structural method in the early seventies, written language was paid more attention than spoken language Nowadays, due to the need for communication, the importance of speaking and listening is widely acknowledged all over the world Therefore, communication is not considered successful unless what is said or referred to is comprehended by the interlocutor

According to Adrian Doff (1995:198), "to have a successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them" Therefore, in learning a foreign language, the learners need develop listening skills independently from and together with other language skills

To be a successful listener, we need to work out what the speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, not simply to understand the words themselves What the speakers mean lies only in words spoken and the listeners must attend to what they heard, to process, to realize and to interpret the message they heard

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four skills of what is called

"indivisible range called communication' They are closely related to each other, but they are independent as well Oral communication can not take place without listening and therefore listening plays a central and possibly predominant part in the whole process of language learning In order to take part in oral communication, clearly, one person must, first and foremost, absorb and understand the information (in the listening process) before they can show their own view points (in the speaking process) When nobody listens to the speaker or when he or she fails to understand the spoken message, communication is broken down

Adrian Doff (1995) points out that listening is an important way of acquiring the language, a good way of picking up vocabulary and structures "Teaching the comprehension of spoken language is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be achieved." (Rivers Wilga, M.(1986) Teaching Foreign Language Skill., The University of Chicago Press, p 135) Learners living in a country where English is the first language do not need much time to be able to communicate in English fluently because they have chances to hear it all the time and have plenty of exposure to the language The greatest difficulty for a language learner in listening is not only primarily that he cannot make himself understood but that he fails to understand what

is being said to him and around him It is obvious that developing the ability to understand the spoken foreign language is a long continuous process and listening is a skill that does not happen automatically, but that must be taught If students are taught how to listen effectively, they are able to understand, to interpret, to evaluate and to response to what they hear The more frequent they are exposed to the language, the faster and easier they can acquire it

If pressure for early oral production is eliminated or reduced, students can feel comfortable or confident and concentrate on developing their listening comprehension skills (Vandergrift, 1999) This is because when learners are not provided enough information about what they are going to hear before the tape plays, they just hear what they are to listen, trying to elicit the meaning from the individual syntactic and semantic components of the utterance and the manner in which it is spoken, without paying sufficient attention to the discourse such as the background knowledge of the speakers as well as their intentions, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning etc As a result, they cope with a wide range of problems while they are listening and, as a matter of fact, they can not get any listening experience from the teacher

In short, listening is of great and primary importance and "Listening comprehension

is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all and then ignored while other skills are developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult material."(Rivers Wilga, M (1986) Teaching Foreign Language Skill, The University of Chicago Press, p 157)

I.3 Classification of listening comprehension

I.3.1 Real - life listening

Many learners of English find themselves in a variety of situations where they need

or want to listen to English being used in real - life for different purposes There is, however, a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and actual listening situations in real life This is because listening materials which learners usually listen to (dialogues or conversations for example) are very grammatical and controlled in so many ways as the speakers often speak at perfectly controlled speed, with perfect voice tone, accent and correct grammar Whereas, in real - life conversations, different people speak with different accents, speed and voice tones without or less paying attention to grammar According to Penny Ur (1984) “There is a distinct difference between the auditory effect of a piece of spoken prose and that of informal conversation The former is characterized by a fairly even pace, volume and pitch Spontaneous conversation, on the

other hand, is jerky, has frequent pauses and overlaps, goes intermittently faster and slower, louder and softer, higher and lower Hesitation, interruptions, exclamations, emotional reactions of surprise, irritation or amusement, which are all liable to occur in natural dialogues, are bound to cause an uneven and constantly changing rhythm of speech Even if only one person is speaking for a relatively long period, the fact that he has not thought out carefully what he has to say beforehand, and has not necessarily chosen the best words, means that he has to rely heavily on vocal emphasis to make his meaning clear And vocal emphasis does not just mean saying a particular word or phrase louder It means also gabbling quickly through what is less important and slowing down over the main point, or pausing for effectiveness before or after a vital phrase, or raising the pitch of voice to stress one thing and then lowering it to play something else The overall effect of all this is perhaps more dramatic and interesting than that of formal speech, but this does not mean that it is, all in all, more comprehensible or easier to listen to To summarize, we may say that most of our real-life listening activity is characterized by the following features:

- We listen for a purpose and with certain expectations

- We make an immediate response to what we hear

- We see the person we are listening to

- There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard

- Stretches of heard discourse come in short chunks

- Most heard discourse is spontaneous and therefore differs from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, noise and colloquialisms, and in its auditory

character

Sometimes particular situations may lack one or more of these characteristics, for example, when watching television we are not normally expected to respond, when listening to a lecture we may have to hear uninterrupted speech for a very long time

indeed- but it is very rare that none of them is present at all We seldom listen to stretches

of "disembodied" discourse of any length”

As suggested by Adrian Doff (1995), there are two ways which people often listen in real - life They are "casual" listening and " focused" listening In daily life we sometimes listen with no particular purpose in mind and often without much concentration This kind

of listening is called “casual” listening Lots of students, for instance, have the habit of

listening to music while studying We do not listen intentionally; therefore, we may not remember much of what we hear or there may be nothing in our mind On the contrary, when we listen for a particular purpose to get the information we need to know, this kind

of listening is called “focus” listening In this case we often listen with much attention, but

we do not listen to everything we hear with equal concentration – we listen for the most important points or for particular information This leads to our "listening out" for certain key phrases or words Usually we know before hand what we are listening for (the things

we want to know) and this helps us to listen effectively For example, when we are required to answer such a question as “When does the Paris flight leave please?”; we tend

to focus on listening to the time There is an association between listener expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener expects and needs are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understood than that which is unexpected, irrelevant or helpful

I.3.2 Classroom - listening

In the view of Rixon (1986) and Hubbard, R and others (1984), there are two kinds of listening in classroom: intensive listening and extensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for detailed

information or for full comprehension, for example listening to the announcement, the instructions or the weather forecast, etc There may be much concrete information for this kind of listening and learners often find it difficult to get full comprehension in the first listening This helps learners develop their listening skill or knowledge of the language in their effort to do exercises or other activities The passage should be short so that learners have chances to get to grip with the content, have several tries at difficult parts and to be

fitted within the time allowed of a lesson Learners also feel it easy, interesting and encouraging when they listen to a short passage Therefore, they often listen with a great concentration and effort

Extensive listening is free and general listening to natural language for general ideas,

not for particular information The listening passages for extensive listening can be long (stories) or short (jokes, poems) The language that is used in this type of listening is often within the students' current ability so that students find it interesting when listening Students feel satisfied as they can understand the passage well They are not asked to do any language work and they can do their listening freely without any pressure Moreover the topics are various and entertaining; therefore it motivates students to develop their listening skill as well as exposes them to valuable extra contact with spoken language

I.4 Listening stages

There are often three main stages in the teaching of a listening text They are listening stage, while-listening stage and post-listening stage Each stage has its own purposes as well as activities

pre-I.4.1 Pre-listening stage

Pre-listening stage involves activities that are provided to help listeners, step by step, get certain knowledge related to listening text It can’t be denied that learners will encounter certain difficulty to do a listening lesson without being provided with the idea of what they are going to hear Even if the sounds or the words they hear are familiar, they may still be unable to understand because they lack certain kinds of knowledge of the topic, discourse or the relationship between the speakers It is, therefore, of great importance to let students know what to expect for the tasks before listening This kind of work is generally called pre-listening stage Penny Ur (Teaching Listening Comprehension, Cambridge, 1984) states that “I t would seem a good idea when presenting a listening passage in class to give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening” Sharing this view, Mary Underwood (Teaching Listening, Longman, 1990) suggests that "Before listening, students

should be "turned 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" In general, pre-listening stage is to help listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language

The pre-listening stage is set up before the students hear the passage to help them get the most of what they are going to hear The main purposes of this stage, therefore, are: + To motivate students to pay more attention to the listening text When students are able to relate the listening experience to their own lives, they are more willing to listen actively to the speaker

+ To activate or build students' prior topical and linguistic knowledge It is important for students to be able to relate what they already know to the speaker's content

+ To help the students match what they hear with their stored knowledge When the students' prior knowledge about the speaker's topic is activated or built by the teacher, students can predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information

+ To set purposes for listening: When students set purposes for listening, they become active listeners who listen for something, not to it This enhances their comprehension and retention Teacher guidance may be required at first to help students set purposes for listening Students who have identified a purpose for listening are more willing participants, secure in knowing what is expected of them

+ To focus the students' attention on the topic by narrowing down the things they expect to hear and by activating relevant prior knowledge Thereby, students have certain things to expect and purpose to listen

+ To provide an opportunity to gain some knowledge, which helps the students follow the text

+ To increase students’ confidence so that they stand a better chance of being successful

These purposes can be achieved by one of the following activities: the teacher introduces the listening topic, gives background information, gives clear instructions for the while-listening activity; or the students are given guidance on the structure of what they are going to hear, discuss the topic situation, look at pictures, read through the questions if asked Each of the above activities will help the students focus on the main points of listening passage by narrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating their previous knowledge Selecting which activity to use depends on a lot of such factors as: the time available, the material available, the ability of the class, the students and the teacher's interests, the nature and content of the listening text Among these factors, the last one is considered very important when choosing activities

I.4.2 While - listening stage

The while-listening stage involves activities that students are asked to complete during the time they are listening to the text It guides students as they try to elicit the necessary information from spoken language

This stage is to help students learn to recognize how the language sounds in terms of pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, so that they can use what they hear as a model for them to imitate It also helps students appreciate the differences between the pronunciation of words in utterance and in isolation as well as the relationship between written and spoken form What’s more, it helps non-native listeners learn to apply the skills

of prediction, matching what they hear with what they expect to hear, interpret the overall meaning of each utterance as they do in their own language

To meet these purposes, as suggested by Penny Ur (1984), teachers can facilitate such while-listening activities as listening for perception (at word level and at sentence level) and listening for comprehension (including listening and making no response, listening and making short responses, listening and making longer responses, listening as a basis for study and discussion)

To be effective activities, these while-listening ones should possess the two following characteristics Firstly, they should be interesting enough to make the students want to listen and complete the activities The topic, the content and the length of the listening text

as well as the students’ interest decide the success of the while-listening activities If students have to do the same kind of work again and again, they may get bored and lose their interest Secondly, they should be things that are within the capacity of most students

It is because failure can easily and rapidly lead to de-motivation The level of difficulty can

be adjusted by giving support (which can be done at the pre-listening stage) It is advisable

to provide while-listening activities which are a challenge for the more advanced students,

but not discouraging those who only gain little success

Like choosing pre-listening activities, as suggested by Underwood (1990:49), the teachers must consider a number of factors when choosing while-listening activities as follow: the possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if needed, the convenience of carrying out activities which need individuals to give oral responses in the classroom, the possibility for the work to be done with the teacher present or as self-study and either in a listening center or at home, material or ideas which might be used for post-listening work, immediate feedback on the extend to which the students have succeeded in the task

To conclude, "Good while-listening activities help learners find their way through the listening text and build u p the expectation raised by the pre-listening activities" (Mary

Underwood, 1990:46)

I.4.3 Post - listening stage

Post-listening stage relates to the activities which are done after the listening is completed Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages and some relate only loosely to the listening text itself This stage is also very importance, with certain purposes as well as activities

The main purposes of post-listening activities are to check, after completing the

while-listening tasks, whether the students understand what they have listened to or not; to see why some students have missed parts of the message or fail to understand the message;

to give the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the speakers of the listening text; to expand on the topic or language of the message and to transfer learned things to another context and to make introduction for the planned work

To achieve these mentioned purposes, the following are possible activities:

 The teacher give the answers orally, or show the answer on the black board

 The teacher draw the students' attention to specific parts of the listening text and focus on the forms and function, lexis, stress and intonation which have caused problems for the students

 The students work in pairs to check each other's answer or in groups to discuss any problems related to the listening text

Mary Underwood points out that selecting post-listening activities should pay take these factors into consideration: the amount of time, the amount of language work the teacher wish to do in relation to the particular listening text; the use of related skills (the speaking, reading or writing skill); pair work and group work

I.5 Definition of task

First of all, we need to clarify the term “task” Several definitions of “task” have been offered by different authors Tasks are divided into two types: target task and pedagogical task

According to Nunan (1989), target tasks, as the name implies, refer to the use of language in the world outside the classroom while pedagogical tasks are those that occur in the classroom Target tasks have features of non-linguistics and even non-technical outcome but the real mental-oriented outcome that people intend to do everyday Those may describe the sorts of things that the person in the street would say if asked what they were doing When these tasks are transformed from the real world to the classroom, they become pedagogical in nature Nunan (1989) states that: "a communicative task is a piece

of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or

interacting in the target language while their attention principally focuses on meaning rather than on form The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right.”

Richards (1986) regards a pedagogical task as an activity or an action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language, for example, drawing a map while listening to a tape, listening to an instruction and performing a command When using a variety of different kinds of tasks in language teaching, language teaching gradually becomes more communicative because it provides a purpose for a classroom activity which goes beyond the practice of language for its own sake

As Willis (1996) points out: "tasks differ from grammatical exercises in that learners are free to use a range of language structures to achieve task outcomes - the forms are not specified in advance" (p.23)

In the view of Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001:288) “A task is an activity which requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective.”

From the mentioned above viewpoints related to the definition of the term “task”,

we can see: while these definitions vary somewhat, they all emphasize the fact that pedagogical tasks involve communicative language use in which the user's attention is focused on meaning rather than grammatical form This, however, does not mean that form

is not important A task is goal-oriented, meaning-focused first and form-focused then, contextualized, and implemented as the basis for teaching and learning Meaning and form are highly interrelated, and that grammar exists to enable the language user to express different communicative meanings

In second language teaching and learning, in stead of a language structure, students are presented with a task they have to perform or a problem they have to solve Therefore, the focus of the lesson is the task, not grammar Task, therefore, is now often viewed as a linguistically outcome-oriented instructional segment or as a behavioral framework for research or classroom learning

I.6 Kinds of listening tasks

Authentic tasks should be ones that resemble as much as possible the original purpose for which the text was intended If we listen to a train announcement we do so in order to make sure we know the time of the train we want to catch, if we listen to someone giving directions we do so in order to be able to find a destination

Students can easily be de-motivated when faced by tasks that are very challenging, particularly the first few times, but if you show them that you will gradually lead them to

an understanding of the text, they will gradually start to relax more about dealing with more difficult texts And once you have shown them a few times that they can gradually understand a challenging text, then, in the long run they will develop a much greater sense

of achievement and experience far less stress when dealing with challenging situations in the real world

Many students expect us as their teachers to make things easy for them and to help them This is also our instinct on seeing our students struggling, but we must try to resist this urge to do the work for them and help students to see that by doing the work for them

we undermine their potential to achieve for themselves

As teachers and designers of teaching material we should try to bear this in mind when we set tasks for our students The purpose of the text should define the task we assign our students and in so doing we develop our students' abilities to understand and process what they hear rather than just achieving a score

Adrian Doff (1988) points out that “if we just ask the class to listen and we ask questions afterwards, we are giving them a very difficult task We can make it easier by telling them beforehand what to expect and what to listen for - this will help them to focus their listening.” Adrian (1988) demonstrates two ways to help students focus their listening: giving simple task and giving guiding questions For example, upon asking students to listen to the trainer talking about themselves the teacher can choose either of these two demonstrations: first, ask students to listen and write brief notes in the table, including such information as hometown, brothers or sisters, children, interests and holidays; second, ask students to find answers to two questions (1 where did he stay? 2

What does he say about the river, his bicycle, and the fruit trees?) From these two different demonstrations, it can be seen that the table and the questions serve the same purpose: they focus the students’ attention by giving them something specific to listen for, they give a reason to listen and also help them to listen by leading them towards the main points

Adrian (1988) also suggests some types of task for teachers when designing listening tasks for listening texts

 Listen and label a diagram

 Listen and choose a picture that fits the meaning of the listening text

 Listen and reorder the sentences according to the content of the listening text

 Listen and draw or follow a map

 Listen and note down the main information, produce a summary

 Listen and express opinions on what you have heard

Comprehension check questions are by far the most common type of listening activities the students are given in class Look at almost any language course book listening activity and we will find these Sometimes they will be multiple-choice questions, sometimes true/false statements and sometimes open wh-questions In many ways there is nothing wrong with this, but how often do we really do these kinds of tasks in our everyday lives? Do you sit down to watch TV or listen to the radio with a set of questions

in front of you? As such these types of activities aren't developing our students' abilities to understand and process what they've heard in any meaningful kind of way Well the problems begin the moment the students step outside the classroom into the real world They are surrounded by a vast range of spontaneous and unpredictable language They have no control over the range of vocabulary they may encounter or the kind of things they will hear or need to respond to This is why even higher level students who do very well in the classroom find it so difficult to cope when faced with a 'real' situation We simply haven't taught them in a way that will help them cope with this

I.7 Language learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension

It can’t be denied that listening is considered to be the most difficult among the four skills Numerous learners have difficulties with different aspects of listening comprehension These difficulties are closely associated with the characteristics of spoken language

Underwood (1990) identifies seven potential problems learners often encounter in their learning listening

o Inability to control the speed of the speaker: Mary Underwood (Teaching Listening, Longman, 1989, p 16) sees that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension for a language learner is that: "They are so busy working out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part Or they simply ignore a whole chunk because they fail to sort it all out quickly enough." Many students of English cannot keep up with the speed at which a speaker speaks They feel that the utterances disappear before they can elicit the information, while in a written text, in reading comprehension for example, words remain on the page and they can look back or reexamine them thoroughly They often try to understand everything they hear When they fail in sorting out the meaning of one part, the following will be missed This can lead to the ignorance of the whole chunk of discourse Obviously they fail to listen

o Inability to get things repeated: Another difficulty connected with controlling the

"input" (what the speaker says) is that the leaner is not always in a position to get the speaker to repeat an utterance

o Vocabulary limitation: Listeners have to try their best to follow the speakers and sometimes to guess the meaning of a word or phrase from its content Native listeners can guess the meaning with the help of context clues, but for foreign language learners, a new word can be a barrier which makes them stop and think about the meaning of the word and thus makes them miss the next part of speech The problems often occurs when learners have been taught English with more

emphasis on accuracy than on fluency, more stress on the forms of language than its functions

o Failure to recognize the signals: To move from one point to another, or give an example, or repeat a point, speakers use many different signals For foreign listening, these signals can easily be missed In order to be able to connect the various utterances and ideas in the way the speakers intended them to be connected, students need to be taught to listen to these signals For example, in a formal situation, when giving a new point the speakers can use expression like "Secondly

or then ", or they may pause or increase loudness, make use of a different intonation

o Problems of interpretation: Problems of interpretation can also hinder communication Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have difficulty in interpreting the words they hear And the listeners from other cultures can easily misinterpret the meaning of non-verbal clues-facial expressions, nods, gestures, tone

of voice

o Inability to concentrate: Even the shortest break in listening can seriously affect comprehension Therefore, lack of concentration is a major problem Students will concentrate easily if they find the topic interesting or familiar But if they make enormous effort to follow what they hear word by word, the listening work will be tiring Such factors as equipment, poor recording, unacoustically suitable rooms for the use of recorded material can also make concentration difficult

o Establish learning habits: Teachers often teach students to understand everything in the English lesson by repeating and pronouncing words carefully Students can form the habit of listening word by word from this teaching method of teachers So when they fail to understand a particular word or phrase, they will be worried and become discouraged by their lack of success This habit will cause a lot of difficulties when the learners deal with real-life listening situations

Within this light, Brown (2001) points out eight following characteristics of spoken language which make listening difficult

o Clustering: in teaching listening comprehension, teachers must help students to pick out manageable clusters of words These clusters will play important roles in helping students to get the idea of the whole utterance

o Redundancy: in ordinary conversation or even in much extempore speech making

or lecturing, we actually say good deal more than would appear to be necessary in order to convey our message Redundant utterances may take the form of rephrasing, repetition, elaboration, self-correction, and apparently meaningless additions like "I mean" or "you know" This redundancy, however, is not as unnecessary as it would seem Just as it enables the speaker to work out and express what he really means as he goes along, so it helps the listener to follow him by providing an abundance of extra information and time to think This makes it easy

to understand the listening text It is teachers' task to help listening learners aware that not every new sentence or phrase will necessarily contain new information by looking for the signals of redundancy

o Reduced forms: beside redundancy, reduced forms like morphological contractions (He'll - He will); syntactic (elliptical forms like "when will you be back?" -

"tomorrow, maybe"); or pragmatics (a child says, "Mum Phone!) These reductions cause significant difficulties, especially for classroom learners who may have initially been exposed to the full forms of the English language

o Performance variables: Hesitations, false starts, pauses and correction are variables that prevent learners from getting the correct idea Learners have to train themselves to listen for meaning in the midst of those distractions

o Colloquial language: learners who have been exposed to standard written English and/or "textbook" language sometimes find it surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial language such as idioms or slang

o Rate of delivery: virtually every language learner initially thinks that native speakers speak too fast In facts, there are many factors help to slow down the speed such as pauses, hesitation

o Stress, rhythm and intonation: the prosodic features of the English language are very important for comprehension Because English is a stress-timed language, English speech can be a terror for some learners as mouthfuls of syllables come spilling out between stressed points Also, intonation patterns are very significant not just for interpreting straightforward elements such as questions, statements, and emphasis but for understanding more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise, etc

o Interaction: interaction plays a large role in listening comprehension Conversation

is especially subject to all the rules of interaction: negotiation, clarification, attending signals, turn taking, and topic nomination, maintenance, and termination

So, to learn to listen is also to learn to respond and to continue a chain of listening and responding

To conclude, what mentioned above are the problems that learners often come across when listening to an English text The theoretical explanations of listening comprehension presented above provide us with several clues about the problems which the learners face when they listen to the spoken text