DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS EXPERIENCED BY TEACHERS AND 10th GRADE STUDENTS AT DƯƠNG TỰ MINH HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN, AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Những khó khăn trong việc dạy và học kỹ năng nghe Tiếng Anh của giáo v

What are the difficulties experienced by the teachers and the 10th form students when teaching and learning listening skill in the new textbook “ Tieng Anh 10 ”?. It aimed to elicit the

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

DƯƠNG THỊ LAN

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH

GRADE STUDENTS AT DƯƠNG TỰ MINH HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI

NGUYEN, AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG

NGHE TIẾNG ANH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT DƯƠNG TỰ MINH THÁI NGUYÊN, VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP GỢI Ý

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English teaching methodology

Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Phạm Thị Thanh Thủy, MA

Ha Noi - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF FINGURES AND TABLES vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 2

1.5 Methods of the study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 The definition of listening and the nature of listening comprehension 4

2.1.1 Definition of listening and listening comprehension 4

2.1.2 The nature of listening comprehension 5

2.2 Process of teaching listening 7

2.2.1 Process of listening 7

2.2.2.Stages of teaching listening skills 2.3 The importance of listening in teaching and learning a foreign language 9

2.4 Listening difficulties for foreign language learners 10

2.4.1 Listening problems 10

2.4.2 Language Problems 11

Summary 12

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 13

3.1 Research setting 13

3.2 Participants of the research 13

3.2.1 Teachers 13

3.2.2 Students 13

3.3 Data collection instruments 14

3.4 Data collection procedures 15

3.5 Data analysis procedures 15

Summary 15

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 16

4.1 Questionnaires 16

4.1.1 Teachers and students’ attitudes to teaching and learning listening 16

4.1.2 Listening difficulties experienced by students 18

4.1.3 Listening difficulties experienced by teachers 23

4.2 Class observation 32

4.3 Discussions of the findings 33

4.4 Implications 37

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary of the findings 39

5.2 Limitations of the study 40

5.3 Suggestions for further research 40

REFERENCES 42

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT : Communicative Language Teaching

DTM HS : Dương Tự Minh High School

ESL : English as Second Language

L2 : Second Language

ULIS : University Languages and International Studies

Ts : Teachers

Ss : Students

LIST OF FIGURES ANDTABLES

Figure 1 The listening process 7

Table 1: Teachers’ opinion about the importance of listening 16

Table 2: Teachers’ opinions about students’ interest (and motivation) in learning listening skill and lesson 16

Table 3: Students motivation of learning listening 17

Table 4: Students’ difficulties in general 18

Table 5 Factors affecting students’ participation and interests in listening lessons 19

Table 6 Classroom conditions 19

Table 7: The use of teaching aids 20

Table 8: Teacher’s roles 20

Table 9: Listening activities in the classroom 21

Table 10: Students’ opinion about the textbook 22

Table 11: Expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill 23

Table 12: The number of the teachers who participated in the listening course 24

Table 13: Factors have influence in students’ participation and interests in the listening lesson 24

Table 14: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids 25

Table 15: Activities in listening lessons 26

Table 16: Activities in Pre-listening stage 27

Table 17: Techniques used in While-listening stage 28

Table 18 Activities in Post-listening stage 29

Table 19: Adaptation of the new textbook 30

Table 20: Teachers’ effort to have effective listening lessons 30

Table 21: Teachers’ need in having effective listening lesson 31

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background

English has been remarked with many changes, notably changes in the movement towards the teaching of English since it has become an international medium of communication in such fields as commerce, industry, science, and technology Thus teaching and learning English in Vietnam is not excluded from the international trend due to the fact that Vietnam has recently adopted an open- door policy, which encourages broadening and improving relationship and cooperation with other countries in many aspects of life such as diplomatic, economic, cultural, scientific and technological areas Consequently, English is taught not only as a major at many big universities in Vietnam such as Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh University, Vinh University, but also as a compulsory subject at various schools

It is widely assumed that listening plays a very important role in everyday conversation as well as learning a foreign language First, in real life, people wish to join in communication to exchange their information, experience, feelings and so forth However, communication is not considered to be successful unless what is said or referred to is comprehended by another person And there will be “communication breakdown” if the listener cannot understand the information given by the speaker It means that communication not only requires our abilities to produce the language but also a thorough understanding of what is directed to us Second, in learning a foreign language, listening is in close relationship with other skills Therefore, having a good command of listening skill helps to achieve good performance of the others

At my high school, teaching and learning listening is a really new challenging job In addition to the lack of well- equipped facilities, teaching listening methods are quite new and unfamiliar to teachers Since the new English textbook was in use, they have been inexperienced in teaching listening methods and approaches Another problem is students’ low levels of proficiency in term of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so forth It

is the reason why students find it difficult and tough to listen to and they are not confident enough to do listening tasks successfully

In literature so far, there have been not many studies on the difficulties in teaching and learning a foreign language in general, listening in particular, at a high school in Vietnam Moreover, not many researchers study listening difficulties experienced by high school teachers and students in using the new “ Tieng Anh 10 ” textbook Therefore, the author of this research found an urgent need of taking a serious look at such issue

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

The main purpose of the study was to probe difficulties in teaching and learning listening among the teaching staff and the 10th form students at Duong Tu Minh upper- secondary school, in Thai Nguyen Province With this purpose the three following central questions were investigated:

1 What are the difficulties experienced by the teachers and the 10th form students when teaching and learning listening skill in the new textbook “ Tieng Anh 10 ” ?

2 What are some factors affecting the success of the listening process as perceived

by DTM HS teachers and students DTM HS?

3 What are some effective ways to improve DTM HS students’ learning and teachers’ teaching methods of listening skills?

1.3 Scope of the study

This study points out difficulties in listening that teachers and 10th form students at Duong Tu Minh High School face The study focuses on describing the problems the teachers and students meet, and the factors causing such challenges, for instance, facilities, students’ English listening proficiency, and teachers’ methods Due to the limited time, the investigator could not implement the research for a longer time and study on a larger population The sample population is only 6 teachers out of 15 and 120 freshmen from three classes of the same English proficiency level

1.4 Design of the study

The study is divided into five chapters which are summarized as follows:

The first chapter is the introduction of the rationale for the study, the aims, and the methods, scope of the study as well as the design of the study The second chapter is the literature review discussing the theoretical background, which is relevant to the purposes of the study The third chapter shows the procedure of carrying out the research such as the participants, data collection instruments and methods of data analysis The fourth chapter reports and discusses the finding obtained from the data Some suggested solutions are also provided to help students overcome their difficulties in learning listening skill The fifth chapter summaries the whole study, followed by references and appendices

1.5 Methods of the study

The research is done by both quantitative and qualitative methods; it is carried out on the basis of situation analysis, material collection, survey questionnaires, class observations

In the first place, situation analysis has a look at the background to the study including the description of the current context at Duong Tu Minh High School and listening skill in the new textbook “Tieng Anh 10” Secondly, for the theoretical basis, a lot of reference materials

on listening teaching methods and problems have been gathered, analyzed and synthesized thoroughly with the due consideration for teacher’s teaching and students’ learning situations

Eventually, for the practical basis, questionnaires, class observations were carried out with the teachers and students to gather the most reliable data for analysis to find answers to the research questions mentioned above

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the researcher would like to provide a theoretical background to the study to know more and deeply about Listening Comprehension Teaching It consists of four sections The first section examines different views on the definition of listening The second section presents the stages of teaching listening The third section is about the importance of listening comprehension The finally section is designed to look at the listening difficulties for foreign language learners

2.1 The definition of listening and the nature of listening comprehension

2.1.1 Definition of listening and listening comprehension

a Definition of listening

It is believed that listening is a significant and an essential area of development in a native language and in a second language; therefore, there are different points of view on the definition of listening, which present different views of scholars towards the concept

Listening, as Underwood (1989:1) defines: “is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear.” The author also emphasizes: “To listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, not simple to understand the words themselves” (Underwood, 1989:1)

As Celce-Murcia (1991:88) puts it, “Listening can be defined broadly as everything that impinges on the human processing which meditates between sound and the construction

of meaning”

b Definition of listening comprehension

There have been a large number of definitions for listening comprehension made by methodologists

Gary Buck (2001:31) points out that “ Listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” in which “number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non - linguistic knowledge” To put it in another way, Gary Buck (2001:31) concludes “comprehension is affected by a wide range of variables, and that

potentially any characteristic of the speaker, the situation or the listener can affect the comprehension of the message”

While Brown and Yule (1983) list the four degrees of comprehension on which listening exercises can be constructed: (1) The listener can repeat the text; (2) The students should have heard and understood the meaning of particular vocabulary items as that are used

in that text; (3) The student should be able to resolve anaphoric reference and to determine which was referred to; and (4) The student should be able to work out not only what is directly asserted in the text, but also what is implied

On the other hand, Wolvin and Coakley (1985) state listening “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli” This definition suggests that 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 second-language theory which considers listening to spoken language as an active and complex process in which listeners focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley & Chamot, 1989; Byrnes, 1984; Richards, 1985; Howard, 1983)

Therefore, the concept of listening and listening comprehension can be broadly defined as everything that improves on the human processing which mediates between sounds and the construction of meaning When listeners are expected to attend to what they hear to process it, to comprehend, to interpret, to evaluate and to respond to the incoming data In order to do all these things, they have to get involved in the process and become active listeners

2.1.2 The nature of listening comprehension

Traditionally, listening used to be considered as a passive language skill alongside with reading skill Students, were expected to listen word by word, trying to draw the meaning from the individual syntactic and semantic components of the utterances or discourse Therefore, other important factors such as the context, the speaker’s intention, intonation, stress, etc were totally ignored This point of view also resulted in the teacher’s methods The teacher often conducted the lesson as a listening comprehension “test” rather than teaching it Students were asked to remember the total utterance they had just heard Recently, listening process has been thought of as an “active process” The modern view points out that to become a successful listener, the listener must employ a combination a several complicated processes at the same time

Gillian Brown (1997:150) describes the two kinds of processes involving in listening comprehension as “bottom up” and “top down” processing

2.1.2.1 Bottom-up processing

“Bottom-up” processing refers to the use of incoming data a source of information about the meaning of the message This process focuses learners on the individual elements and building blocks of the language At this level, students try to discriminate between individual sounds, particularly minimal contrasts, and identify different stress rhythm and intonation During this process, students simply move from sound to word to sentence to text This process provides learners with a good chance of being able to recognize what most of the words intended by the speaker are, how they are grouped into phrases, how they are structured into large clauses (or sentences) and how these relate to each other, together with any marked attitude which the speaker reveals while speaking

2.1.2.2 Top-down processing

“Top-down” processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message More simply, at this process, even if the listener can not hear whatever the other person says, he still has a good ideal of the sort of thing that will be said, which is constructed partly from the phonetic cues that he has heard, and partly from his own experience First, he knows that different types of people are likely to say different things and speak in different ways Second, he expects different kinds of language to occur in different situations (formal or informal language; specialised or everyday language) Third, he also knows that the choice of words is also much influenced by the relationship between two partners (close or distant relationship, equal or superior one) From lifelong experience, advanced learners can put what they hear in context to guess what is likely to be said by the speaker This ability allows them to reduce the input in their mind, thus leaving time for decoding difficult chunks or information and remembering main ideals

of the listening text

In fact, fluent listening depends on the combination of both “bottom-up” and down”, processing The lack of either process will certainly lead to failure in comprehending the text Both processes have important role in decoding the meaning of the discourse Therefore, the listener should know how to combine the two processes effectively by actively contributing knowledge from both linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors to understand the course comprehensively

“top-In conclusion, listening requires active participation from the listener “top-In order to become a good listener, he must use knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources That is active nature of listening comprehension

2.2 Process of teaching listening

2.2.1 Process of listening

Listening is a complex process- an integral part of the total communication process (John A Kline, 1996) This neglect results largely from two factors The sending parts of the communication process: speaking and writing which are highly visible, and then receiving parts: listening and speaking The process of listening is the process of receiving, attending and understanding auditory message The steps of listening are diagrammed as shown in figure 1

Figure 1 The listening Process

(Adapted from John A Kline, 1996)

As can be seen from the figure, the process moves through such as steps - receiving, attending, and understanding - in sequence Responding and remembering may or may not follow These steps will be described thoroughly in the following analysis which compares the Listening process with the electronic mail system in which the listener is the person receiving the message

Step1: Receiving

In this step, the sender wants to send an e-mail to somebody She/he has used effective ways to organize and support his message which must be well composed and clear In short, the sender has done a good job However, this message will not get to the receiver if he/she

does not turn on the computer Similarly, in Listening process when the listener misses the chance to listen to the message, he will fail to catch it In both cases, receivers simply are not connected or “turned in” to the senders

Step 2: Attending

Let’s continue with the email analogy Suppose the receiver turns on the computer, which shows the message that the sender sent, but he is too busy to read the email As the result, then receiver can not receive the message Similarly, human listening is often ineffective - or does not occur - for the same reasons, receiving occurs, but attending does not (John A.Kline, 1996)

Step 3: Understanding

Communication is believed to begin with understanding (Wolvin and Coakly, 1985)

In communication, a message may have been sent and received and the receiver may have attended to the message, yet the communication is not effective because there is no understanding between the sender and the receiver of the message Actually, effective communication depends on understanding

Let’s return to the email analogy Suppose the receiver got the email message, opened

it and read it The receiver may not have understood what the sender meant even though the receiver read every word of the message There are several possible reasons for the misunderstanding Perhaps the information from the massage was not explicit Or maybe, the real point of the message was obscured by other tidbits information and the receiver missed the point In listening, the key point is sometimes missed

Step 4: Responding

The listening process may ends with understanding but a response may be needed or at least helpful There are different types of response:

 Direct verbal response

 Response that seeks clarification

 Response that paraphrases

 Nonverbal response (John A Kline, 1996, p23)

Responding lets the sender know that the message was received, attended to and understood

Step 5: Remembering

Memory is often a necessary and integral part of the listening process If you can not remember, you were not listening To help students learn to listen effectively, teachers need understand both the process of teaching and three stages of teaching will be presented in the next section

2.2.2 Stages of teaching listening skills

Underwood (1989) describes listening activities in terms of three phrases: pre, while and post listening activities This three-stage listening lesson model is usually used by many teachers as it is very useful in teaching listening Procedure of a listening lesson consists of

three stages: Pre-listening, While- listening and Post- listening Each part is really a

constituent part on a continuum Pre-listening is a preparatory stage While- listening stage is to complete the main listening task Post-listening stage serves as the further development part

Pre- listening stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or

situation before they listen to the texts In other words, it gives students a purpose to listen It also gets students to relate to what they already know about the topic and arouse their interests

in listening as well

The importance of pre - listening is shown in Penny’s idea (Penny Ur, 1992, p4): “It would seem a good idea when presetting a listening passage in class to give the students some information about the content, situation, and speakers before they actually start listening”

While- listening stage gives students a guide or framework to practice listening In

other words, it helps students to listen better, more accurately, thoroughly through carefully designed comprehension tasks When we listen to something in our everyday life, we do so for a reason Students, too, need a reason to listen that will focus their attention Ideally, the listening tasks that are designed should guide them through the text It is a must that teachers provide useful techniques to facilitate students’ comprehension

Post- listening stage is like the follow- up stage After students have practiced the target

skill in the while-listening stage, they do an extension This helps them take the information or whatever they have produced in the previous stage, and do other meaningful activities

2.3 The importance of listening in teaching and learning a foreign language

One of the most difficult aspects of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is the teaching and learning listening The importance of listening comprehension must be taken into consideration for anyone who wants to learn English with great success A lack of listening comprehension skill causes a lot of trouble in discussion and communication

The importance role of listening comprehension in second and foreign language learning

is summarized in a recent publication by Rost, (1994:141) as follows: “Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.” So listening comprehension is very necessary when you study any language If students do not learn to listen effectively, they will not be able

to take part in oral communication because according to Mary Underwood (1989:4), “Merely to hear what a speaker says is insufficient for communication to occur” In fact, when nobody listens to a speaker or when a listener fails to understand the message, it means that communication has broken down By listening, we do not mean that students only learn to hear

it, but as Mary Underwood (1989:4) says, “We mean our students to attend to what they hear, to process it, to interpret it, to evaluate it and to respond to it.” Therefore, to succeed in communication, participants need to be active in listening Listening is an important way of acquiring the language, a good way of picking up vocabulary and structures Teaching listening

to spoken language is therefore of primary importance

2.4 Listening difficulties for foreign language learners

Listening knowledge of a foreign language is often important to academics studies, professional success, and personal development Listening in a language that is not the learner’s first language, nevertheless, is a source of considerable difficulties for L2 learners Some authors (Underwood, 1989; Thompson and Rubin, 1996; Goh, 2000) indicate that problems or language problems, depending on the listeners’ learning abilities and skills

2.4.1 Listening problems

It can be seen that L2 learners at the elementary level have to deal with a great deal of difficulties in listening comprehension as listening in somehow is a receptive skill However, the listening process is often described from an information processing perspective as “ an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what the speakers are trying to express” (Thomson& Rubin ,1996,p.331) Considering various aspects of listening comprehension, Underwood (1989)

organizes the major listening problems as follows: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (2) not being able to get things repeat; (3) the listener’s limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the “signals”; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate; (7) and established learning habits

Underwood (1989) sees these problems as being related to learners’ different backgrounds, such as their culture and education She points out that students whose culture

and education includes a strong storytelling and oral communication tradition are generally

“better” at listening comprehension than those from a reading and book-based cultural and educational background Moreover, learners whose native language possesses the stress and intonation features similar to those of English are likely to have less trouble than the learners whose L1 is based on different rhythms and tones Under these assumptions, the learners in the present study, of Vietnamese background that is characterized by the language of different tones, appear to operate under the least-optimal English language learning circumstances, and therefore face a great deal of difficulty in listening comprehension

Goh (2000) investigated listening comprehension problems in students in college EFL studies First, in the perception stage, learners reported most difficulties as: “do not recognize words they know,” “neglect the next part when thinking about meaning,” “cannot chunk streams of speech,” “miss the beginning of texts,” and “concentrate too hard or unable to concentrate.” (Goh, 2000) Second, in the parsing stage, Goh (2000) finds that listeners complained of problems such as “quickly forget what is heard,” “unable to form a mental representation from words heard,” and “do not understand subsequent parts of input because

of earlier problems.” Third, in the utilization stage, “understand the words but not the intended message” and “confused about the key ideas in the message” are often mentioned These reported difficulties partially reflect Underwood’s (1989) views on L2/FL listening problems However, as learners attempt to incorporate certain strategies into the listening process, they are likely to face different challenges or problems Investigation of Hasan (1993), Yagang (1994) attribute the difficulties of listening comprehension to four sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Higgin (1995) studied Omani students’ problems in listening comprehension and found that the factors which facilitate or hinder listening are speech rate, vocabulary, and pronunciation Flowerdew and Miller (1996) investigated learners’ strategies and difficulties in listening to academic lectures

2.4.2 Language Problems

Mastering a foreign language is not an easy task, and L2 listening acquisition is much more challenging to L2 learners compared with other language skills, especially freshmen Anne Anderson and Tony Lynch (1988,p.37) argue that the L2 learners will still face problems in listening comprehension created by primarily linguistic knowledge though language system may not always be the principal cause of comprehension difficulty They explain that one seemingly obvious way in which input can be more or less complex is in terms of its syntactic structure for ESL learners It is understandable as learners adopt a target

language that possesses certain characteristics far different from their native one in terms of grammatical structures, lexicon, vocabulary and its mechanism meanwhile listening is most closely related to mechanics which refer to basic sounds of letters and syllables, pronunciation

of words, intonation and stress Thus, if a beginner student cannot understand how words are segmented into various sounds, and how sentences are stressed in particular ways to convey meaning, then he will find it hard to understand the meaning of the message According to Scarcella and Oxford (1992) listeners comprehend spoken messages either through isolated word recognition within the sound stream, phrase or formula recognition, clause or sentence, and extended speech comprehension That means ESL students operate simultaneously in one

or two of these areas depending on many factors, one of which is proficiency levels of comprehension They catch, if hardly at all, particularly the low beginners, isolated words and can hardly put together the meaning of words put together On the second level of comprehension, the student can recognize whole phrases and simple routine expressions They can hardly operate on the third level, understanding clause or sentences, much more so

on the fourth, understanding discourse

Summary

Chapter two has, in general, provided an overview of the relevant literature in the field

of the study This chapter has discussed different views of listening and listening comprehension, on which the author based to work out the definition of listening The chapter has again made it clear that listening is vital, and more importantly, it has listed different linguistic and non- linguistic factors that make listening a challenge

3.2 Participants of the research

3.2.1 Teachers

Six teachers who are teaching at the school were invited to join the study Their ages range from 28 to 39 years old They also are highly appreciated by other teachers of the high school and undertake important positions at this school: one is the vice-principle and the other is the head of English Group All the teachers at Duong Tu Minh High School are experienced and enthusiastic in teaching They are willing to help their students overcome the difficulties in learning English The six teachers agreed to let the researcher observe their classes They also took part in the survey for teachers to find out their problems and solutions in teaching listening

3.2.2 Students

Having taught English at DTM HS for 9 years, the writer of this study recognizes that the majority of 10th form students are aged fifteen to sixteen from Thai Nguyen Most of them have learned English at junior high schools for four years But this is usually the general knowledge of grammar and an active vocabulary which the students can use mostly in written form But they have to deal with a lot of difficulties in learning how to listen to English Because of these difficulties the majority of the students feel bored with listening lessons Moreover they are not aware of the importance of learning how to listen in a foreign language

in general and English in particular as they simply know that they do not have to do the listening tests

There were 120 male and female students in different classes: 10A3, 10A4, 10A7They were randomly selected to participate in both observations and questionnaires

3.3 Data collection instrument

This study employed both the quantitative and qualitative methods which helped to provide qualified background data for discovering non-English majors’ motivation to learn English In order to obtain in-depth and rich data, the study used a variety of research instruments and sources of data: questionnaires observation

To again data for the study, two survey questionnaires were administered to the

subjects One was designed for students and the other for the teachers Some open-ended questions were provided so that the respondents had opportunities to share their opinions about items raised in the questionnaires

The first questionnaire, consisting of 12 questions (see Appendix 2), was delivered to

120 selected students It aimed to elicit the students’ opinion about difficulties in learning listening skills with the focus of their background knowledge, experience, attitudes, interests, and expectations in learning English and teachers’ teaching methods Questions 1, 2, and 3 aim at exploring the students’ attitudes to listening learning The next 8 questions (from question 4 to question 11) were designed to find out the students’ listening difficulties experienced by students The final question (question 12) is designed for the students’ need in learning listening

The second questionnaire of 17 questions (see Appendix 1) was delivered to the teachers It aimed to draw their perspectives on unsolved problems in teaching listening skills

in the new textbook Question 3, 4, 5 are about the main problems in listening lesson By answering the question 6, 7, 11, 12, and 13, teachers can express their methods and strategies

of listening teaching in the classroom Question 14 is about the adaptation of the new textbook Question 15, 16, 17 were designed for the suggestions in teaching listening

In addition to survey questionnaires and class observation was also applied to clarify and test the validity of information about actual teaching and learning listening context; the challenges in presenting and acquiring English knowledge and skills and communicative activities in listening lessons The observations were carried out in four listening lessons in different classes: 10A3, 10A4, 10A7 at Duong Tu Minh High School

3.4 Data collection procedures

I conducted my study within 8 weeks at the end of the second term in the class 10A3, 10A4, and 10A7 at Duong Tu Minh High School, Thai Nguyen province where I have been teaching for more than nine years Firstly, I designed the survey questionnaires and collected

all ideas from 128 selected students and 6 teachers in my teaching staff In fact, only 120 students and 6 teachers supported their feedback when I collected the data Finally, class observations were employed to reflex the current context at Duong Tu Minh High School The data were tape- recorded and transcribed

3.5 Data analysis procedures

The data of questionnaires which were used to assess students’ behaviors or reactions towards each method and the notes from the observation sheet

The result of the questionnaire was transcribed into charts and tables, and then there were a detailed explanation of the data

The data from observation, then, together with the results from the questionnaire and the interview helped to detect the effectiveness CTL in teaching and learning listening skills

at “Tieng Anh 10” at Duong Tu Minh High School

Summary

In short, this chapter has identified the characteristics of the research settings, the participants as well as the research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter discusses the difficulties in listening learning, the attitudes of DTM HS teachers and students in teaching and learning listening skill It also analyses the causes of difficulties in learning this skill and shows the results of the researcher’s class observation At last, the chapter gives implication in order to enhance the quality and effectiveness in learning listening skill for students

4.1 Questionnaires

4.1.1 Teachers and students’ attitudes to teaching and learning listening

The very beginning part of the questionnaire focused on finding all the information about DTM HS teachers and students’ viewpoints in listening skill and its importance compared to other skills

Question 1: How important is listening skill in the new Tieng Anh 10 textbook in comparison with other skills?

More important Equally important Less important Not necessary Don’t know

Table 1: Teachers’ opinion about the importance of listening

76% of the respondents thought that listening and other communicative language skills were equally important, whereas the other 24% agreed that listening is less important in school curriculum They explained in their interview that there is no official evaluation or examination on listening, so most of them did not take so much effort to facilitate their listening lessons as reading, writing or grammar ones

Question 2: How do your students like listening lessons and learning listening skills?

1 Strongly agree 2 Agree 3.Disagree 4 Strongly disagree 5 I don’t know

They like listening and doing the tasks in textbook 78% 11% 11%

They like listening to songs, play games or free

activities without doing tasks 33% 56% 11%

They are afraid of listening because they don’t know

how and what to do with listening tasks 22% 67% 11%

They hate listening because it is too difficult 22% 22% 56%

They are interested in listening lessons/ skills because

they want to listen to news, songs, etc on their own 67% 22% 11%

Table 2: Teachers’ opinions about students’ interest (and motivation) in learning listening

skill and lesson

As seen from the table, the teachers had good understanding about their students Throughout all the listed items, from 67% to 78% teachers agreed that the students were interested in doing tasks in the textbook and listening for entertainment 89 % of the teachers also claimed that students were afraid of listening because they didn’t know how and what to

do with listening tasks However, fewer teachers (44 %) agreed that their students hated listening because it is too difficult compared to 56% of them who had the opposite idea that the students like listening due to its easy tasks

Some researches were conducted from educational system to show that the students were found to possess the kinds of motivation which are instrumental and integrative Motivation strengthens the ambition, increases initiative and gives direction, courage, energy and the persistence to follow one's goals A motivated person takes action and does whatever

it needs to achieve his/her goals In theory, integrative motivation is considered a key component in assisting language students to develop proficiency in a second language when they become residents in a community where the target language is used in social interactions

In contrast, with instrumental motivation, the reasons motivated study a language because it opens up educational and economic opportunities for them

Getting good marks 49

A compulsory subject 30 Job opportunities 100

Table 3: Students’ motivation of learning listening

Obviously, the table above shows that the highest percentage refers to the most important reason which is to get good job in the future (100%) However, the number of the students who possess instrumental motivation was smaller than the number of those who have integrative one in total In details, the number of students who had purpose of getting good marks in examination accounts for 49%, a compulsory subject 30% and job opportunities in the future 100% From the Table 2 improving listening ability to understand and communicate

in real situations and listening for entertainment account for 62%, 76%, and 65% respectively

This part gives us some information about the attitudes of both teachers and students with the listening task In the next part, readers can get much more insight into the difficulties

of listening perceived by teachers and students at DTM HS

4.1.2 Listening difficulties experienced by students

a Difficulties in general and affecting factors

Question 4: What are the difficult items that you often get when studying listening skill in your class?

Cannot understand the listening text and tasks

due to the lack of English background

knowledge and ability

Get the main ideas but cannot do the tasks or

cannot get the required information 42% 19% 39% Only find listening tasks boring 60% 0% 40% Cannot listen to the text because the sound is

Have no habits and/or techniques to practice

and improve listening skills 78% 18% 4%

Lack of listening materials(tapes or CDs) 58% 29% 13%

Table 4: Students’ difficulties in general

As seeing from Table 4, most of the subjects coped up with such above difficulties The most important problem involving 92% of the respondents was the difficulty in listening

to the text due to the low sound or noisy sound in the tapes This fact resulted from too big class size of 45 to 50 students and poor-equipped condition According to the interviewed students, their teachers’ voice was not loud and attractive enough to listen to from a distance They did not hear anything clearly; Therefore they understood nothing

The next is 89% of the subjects who could not understand the listening text and tasks due to the lack of English background knowledge and ability Another 78% are aware of importance of listening habits and techniques which help to learn more effectively This figure is optimistic to improve Students’ motivation Moreover, 58% of the students found challenging to work with listening tasks and available materials In addition, only 42% could get the main ideas after listening but have no idea about listening focuses and requirements

Apart from that, it is surprising that 40% of the students did not know if the listening tasks are boring or interesting to them

Question 6: What are your opinions about several factors that influence the students’ participation and interests in the listening lessons?

Classroom condition and facilities 100% 0% 0%

Teacher’s teaching methods: interesting,

attractive, easy to understand 97% 0% 3%

Listening topic and level of difficulties of

Students’ awareness, interests 18% 44% 38% Basic background knowledge of English 90% 10% 0%

The design of the listening lessons, tasks and

the clarity of tasks instructions 14% 30% 56% Activities for entertainment 27% 23% 50% Requirements of examinations 77% 15% 8%

Table 5: Factors affecting students’ participation and interests in listening lessons

Table 5 reveals a fact that there are many factors that can affect students’ participation and interests In their opinion, listening was very difficult, therefore making progress in this skill demands many aspects of teaching and learning process The most important factor was classroom condition and facilities (100%) The second was teachers’ methods which provide them instructions or guidance to listen It is the fact that students mostly relied on teachers’ performance in classroom Moreover, students were not good enough in knowledge of English which directly affected their confidence and activeness in listening lesson Another high percentage of students gave the reason of requirement of examinations It is universal and true to any subjects They find less interested in the design of the textbook because they have no experience in evaluating it

b Facilities and classroom conditions

Question 7: Do you have enough facilibilities for listening lessons?

The class is well-equipped with modern technology

The class size is too large, the students cannot

The class is large enough, the students can listen

Table 6: Classroom conditions

Question 9: How often do your teachers use these teaching aids?

1 Always 2 Often 3 Sometimes 4 Rarely 5 Never

Items 1 2 3 4 5

Visual aids: pictures, chalk, chart, board 0% 0% 56% 44%

Textbook and supplementary books 100%

Table 7: The use of teaching aids

According to table 7, in addition to poor-equipped conditions, using technology into language teaching and learning was a time-saving and helpful ways to make progress However, the results from table 8 show a dull situation at Duong Tu Minh High School

Textbooks and supplementary materials constitute 100% It means that teachers completely relied on this source of materials To some extent, lack of financial support from the school and the government in terms of facility could be the excuse Sometimes, visual aids (pictures, board, diagram) (56%), handouts (55%), computers and speakers (56%), tapes, recorders (58%), CD/VCD (55%) and projectors (60%) were employed

c Teacher’s role and activities in listening lessons

Question 8: What is result of student’s opinions about teacher’s roles in listening lessons?

Guiding and giving instructions of the purposes and how and what to

Designing tasks and organizing activities in classroom 100%

Observing the class activities 96%

Listening and translating the texts 58%

Correcting listening tasks and discussing with the students 100%

Managing and controlling all students tasks and activities in classroom 100%

Table 8: Teacher’s roles

The data shown in the table reveal an amazing fact of current teaching methods in which teachers play an essential roles 100% respondents agreed that teachers had to be in charge of guiding, giving instruction, designing tasks, and correcting mistakes (or giving

feedback) Moreover, they dealt with organizing and managing activities (100%) and observing (96%) all together According to students, everything should be under the teachers’ control In other words, they seemed not to be aware of the new communicative teaching approaches in which, teacher and student roles were redefined: The teacher becomes a facilitator of learning instead of a dispenser of knowledge, and the students take more responsibility for their own learning Instead of the teacher being the sole, infallible source of information, then, the teacher, shares control of the classroom and students are allowed to explore, experiment, and discover on their own

In addition, 71% of students agreed reading the text was one of very important roles of the teachers in listening lesson This seems inappropriate but it might result from the lack of equipment at Duong Tu Minh High School Thus, instead of using authentic material and playing the tapes or CD, teachers’ voice is the best solution About 58% students claimed that their teachers sometimes translated the text to help student understand the text better when correcting the answers

Question 10: What are the listening activities in your classroom? Put a tick in the

column of your choice

1 Always 2.Often 3 Sometimes 4.Rarely 5.Never

Teacher reads, students listen and do the tasks 0% 0% 71% 29% 0% Students listen to a classmate’s voice and do the tasks

Students listen to the tapes recorder 76% 24%

Teacher delivers tasks related to the listening text to

complete without listening 50% 24% 26% Teacher pre-teaches new words before listening 97% 3%

Students do different tasks apart form the textbooks 28% 18% 54%

Students do extra tasks 13% 87%

Students discuss the questions given in the textbook

Students freely talking or discuss about any topic, not

necessary related to the text 54% 46%

Table 9: Listening activities in the classroom

The data in table 9 reveal the variety of activities in listening classroom Apparently, the frequency and convenience of using such activities were different among classes and

teachers The table show that students did a variety of activities in their listening lessons except for doing extra listening tasks which are not given in the textbook

The most popular activity was teaching new words before listening with the choice of 97% of students 91% of them also often discussed questions related to the texts; listen to the tapes recorder (76%) In some classes, only 24% students sometimes had chance to listen to the speaker’ voice in tapes that ranked at the last position of interest was doing extra tasks 87% never enjoy these activities, only 13% sometimes do it

Question 11: What are your opinions about the textbook?

Opinion about the new textbook Agree Disagree Don’t know

Plenty of colorful picture, illustrations 69% 31%

The sound quality of the tapes is clear and authentic 58% 42% The speakers’ voice is not original (Students listen

to many non- native speakers) 18% 82% Various tasks which are suitable to students levels 39% 11% 50% Boring tasks, few entertainment activities… 41% 47% 12% The listening contents are long with a lesson 41% 24% 25%

Table 10: Students’ opinion about the textbook

The issue of awareness and interests in listening skill in the textbook were also mentioned to draw more incentive contribution and attention of students The table showed that the majority of students enjoy the textbook appearance and contents (69%), and it also got another 98% of the students engaged Unexpectedly, assessment of diversified, effective, and attractive characteristics of tasks, 50% had no idea, 39% showed their interests and 11% did not agree

A very interesting finding was concerned with quality of the sounds of tape recorder and materials Only 18% gave out their own evaluation that the accents and sounds were original 82% did not show their distinction or might be indifferent to this issue

d The students’ expectations towards teachers of listening skill

The students in this present study are assumed to have certain difficulties in listening,

so they were asked, “What do you expect from teachers teaching listening skills to help you overcome difficulties in learning listening” which is the 6th

question in the survey questionnaires for students They response as follows:

Provide essential listening strategies 58%

Supply listening tasks more suitable to students’ interests and levels 42%

Introduce supplementary listening material besides class activities 43%

Explain new words needed for each listening tasks 34%

Be flexible in organizing listening tasks 27%

Explain more about the nature of spoken English 24%

Other ideas: (please specify) 6%

Table 11: Expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill

As can be seen from the table, the students wished to get a great deal of suppo rt from their teachers of listening skill to overcome difficulties in learning listening More than half of all respondents (58%) expected to get essential listening strategies, which revealed that the students of the grade 10 lacks of sufficient listening strategies, thus they needed to be provided with more listening strategies to become effective listeners 42% wished to do listening tasks more suitable to students’ interests and levels and 43% like to

be introduced supplementary listening materials for their self-study, 34% desire to acquire new words needed for listening tasks so that they feel easier to get the spoken input It is hoped that teachers are supposed to be instructors that need to be flexible in teaching techniques so that they could help students overcome difficulties in language learning, specifically in learning listening

After discussing about the difficulties of listening task through students experience,

we continue to represent this case by teachers

4.1.3 Difficulties in teaching listening experienced by teachers

a Main problems in listening lesson

In the survey questionnaires for teachers, there are several questions of question 1, question 2, and question three

Question 1: In your opinion, how important is listening skill in the new Tieng Anh 10 textbook in comparison with other skills?

Question 2: Do your students like listening lessons and learning listening skills? Tick

the most appropriate column to your choice

Question 3: Have you got any training programs or professional workshops on both language skills (including listening) and methodology for the new textbook?

The new textbook was put into operation since the beginning of the school year Also

it was the first time teachers at Duong Tu Minh High School work with it It was reasonable for them to enjoy state or provincial training programs or professional workshops on both language skills and methodology However, the information found was rather surprisingly Only 33% of teachers joined such courses The other 67% had to do class observation at school to exchange knowledge and methods themselves Therefore, there existed a big gap

between the textbook approaches and teachers’ experiences and ability in terms of language skills and teaching methods

Teachers participated in listening course 30% 60%

Teachers did not participate listening course 33% 67%

Table 12: The number of teacher participated in listening course

Question 4: What are the current problems facing the teachers when teaching listening skill?

As can be seen from Table, the most burning challenge was lack of experience in teaching the new text books (100%) This figure was higher than teacher’s qualities and abilities in teaching listening (83.3%)

The respondents supported that they are well-educated in terms of methods and language skills; and that application such theory into practice is the matter of time Thus it just accounts for 50% of responses Only 33% had trouble with time management To be honest, this success results from teachers’ experience in managing and organizing class activities in general

The next challenge was blamed for students’ low background knowledge and language skills (67%) This problem exceeds students’ inexperience in listening which constituted a lower rate of respondents (33%)

In terms of the impact of classroom conditions, the teachers ranked the least level of difficulty (17%) However, the importance of modern technology constituted a very high rate

of consideration (67%) It was undeniable that the teachers have tried best to conduct their listening lessons without technology supports

Question 5: What are some factors that influence the students’ participation and interests in the listening lessons?

1 Strongly agree 2 Agree 3.Disagree 4 Strongly disagree 5 I don’t know

Uninteresting listening topics 33% 67%

Difficult listening texts and tasks 17% 83%

Boring listening activities/ learning environment 33% 67%

Lack of well- equipped facilities: sound quality, cassette

player-tapes, television, video, projector… 33% 67%

Teacher’s ability in teaching listening is not good enough 67% 33%

Students’ background and motivation are not good 17% 83%

Table 14: Factors have influence in students’ participation

and interests in the listening lesson

Lack of necessary facilities, sound quality, cassette player, tapes, television for example, and students’ factors are blamed for such difficulties in teaching listening by 100%

of teachers Whereas, 67% did not deny their limitation of using appropriate methods and experience in teaching listening

Finally, the number of subjects supported the perfect of the new text book and its appearance and activities make up a big gap in comparison with those who employ the view

of dislike the task

b Teachers’ methods and strategies of listening teaching in the classroom

In order to collect and analyze the data about such matter, questions 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 were designed and categorized

Question 6: How often do teachers use the teaching aids in listening lessons to motivate your students?

1 Always 2.Often 3.Sometimes 4.Rarely 5.Never

Authentic listening items

(daily conversations/ native Speakers’ voice) 33% 50% 17%

Teacher’s voice (teachers read or record) 33% 67%

VCD/ CD/ Projector 17% 17% 33% 33% Tasks in the textbook 83% 17%

Table 15: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids

This is true the current teaching situation with limited support, then teachers themselves employ things that are available and economical For example, 100% (including 83% always and 17% often) used tasks and textbook as the key instruments and sometimes, handout (50%), pictures (33%), authentic listening (50%) All the subjects sometimes or rarely recorded teachers’ voice as a kind of listening resources

Concerning with projectors, 33% never experience in using it before As a matter of fact, they might have inadequate knowledge or skills in using technology as well

Question 7: How often are the activities which the teachers use to motivate students in their listening lessons?

1 Always 2.Often 3.Sometimes 4.Rarely 5.Never