supplementary material in teaching listening skill to second-year English major at Hanoi National University of Education Sử dụng video làm tài liệu bổ trợ dạy

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ THU THỦY USING VIDEO AS A SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILL TO SECOND-YEAR

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ THU THỦY

USING VIDEO AS A SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILL TO SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

Sử dụng Video làm tài liệu bổ trợ dạy nghe hiểu cho sinh viên chuyên ngành

tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học sư phạm Hà Nội

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Hanoi, 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ THU THỦY

USING VIDEO AS A SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILL TO SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

OF EDUCATION

Sử dụng Video làm tài liệu bổ trợ dạy nghe hiểu cho sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng

Anh tại trường Đại học sư phạm Hà Nội

M.A Minor Thesis

Field : English Teaching Methodology

Code : 60.14.10 Supervisor: Nguyễn Minh Tuấn

1.1.Introduction and definition of listening comprehension 4

1.3 Listening in language teaching and learning 6

2 Definition and benefits of using video in language classroom 8

1.1 Students‘ assessment on the improvement in their listening competence 21 1.2 Students‘ attitude toward learning with video material 23 1.3 Students‘ assessment on the role of video in learning listening skill and the

effectiveness of using video in listening lessons

24

1.4 Some difficulties encountered when using video in teaching listening skill 25

LIST OF CHARTS

Page

Chart 1: Change in percentage of students‘ comprehension after using video 22

Chart 2: Change in percentage of students‘ retention after using video 22

Chart 3: Students‘ attitude toward learning with video material 23

Chart 4: Students‘ assessment on the role of video 24

Chart 5: Students‘ assessment on effectiveness of video material 24

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Videos are not only for entertainment, but for decades they have been used as useful materials and important tool for teaching listening and speaking in the world In recent years, combining video with IT, information technology, is being developed It allows teacher to transport virtually the target language environment into classroom so that live or prerecorded news, music, sports from all over the world can be viewed by students in real time The advantages

of using video in the language classroom have been recognized by many researchers in applied linguistics The main advantage of using video as a technology for language teaching is considered to be its ability to present and immerse learners into complete communicative situations (Lonergan, 1984) Another greatest advantage is the ability of video to cover non-verbal aspects of communication and its cross-cultural comparison potential (Stempleski & Tomalin, 1990) In addition, using video in the classroom allows differentiation of teaching and learning according to students‘ abilities, learning styles and personalities

I myself enjoy watching videos and English movies and find that my students are interested in them, too I have tried using some clips as well as extracts from several films for my teaching listening and found them rather promising There have been some questions arisen Does video material motivate my students to learn better? Does it affect a student‘s academic listening comprehension in classroom? How should video material be designed and used in

my listening lessons?

These questions motivated me to carry out the study on ―using video as a supplementary material in teaching listening to second-year English majors at the Faculty of English,

HNUE.” With this study, the researcher mainly focused on carrying out a quasi-experimental

research to investigate the effectiveness of using video material on improving students‘ listening competence

2 Hypothesis

This study was carried out to test the following hypothesis: video material can be used to enhance students‟ motivation in listening to English; improve their listening competence as well as enhance their retention

3 The aims of the study

The study aims to reach the following target: to investigate the effectiveness of using video in teaching listening skill to second-year English major students

4 The scope of the study

The research limits its scope to listening skill and to its participants of second-year English majors of intermediate level at Hanoi National University of Education

Of four skills of language teaching, I choose listening skill to deal with as I have tried out some listening lessons using videos and I have found that listening in the classroom derived from the use of videos is very interesting and hopeful In addition, I also realize the changes in

my students‘ attitudes toward learning listening skill

The choice of participants is simply a matter of convenience as I am teaching listening for second-year English majors at HNUE Personally, I suppose that students at this level are more suitable for the application of this teaching method Hence, audio-visual lessons are very demanding to most students, and require them relevant background knowledge to comprehend

The materials for my listening lessons are collected from different sources and mostly involve authentic videos such as movies, documentaries, news or clips downloaded from the internet Although the availability of video materials for teaching listening is high, the choice of videos

is the key which can make videos useful or useless in a lesson plan Teachers picking a video without consideration of their lessons can turn a lesson into a disaster Stempleski and Arcario (1992) claimed that different purposes have to be served with different methods of materials

However, as Underwood (1989) pointed out that what determines the difficulty of a teaching material is not just the material itself but also what the students are asked to do with it

5 The methods of the study

The major method which was used in study is qualitative All comments, remarks, assumptions and conclusions of the study were based on the data and analysis Data collections for analysis in the study were gained through the following resources: survey questionnaire, observations, tests for students, as well as reference books

A survey was carried out at the end of the semester The participants of this survey were students from experimental group which had been taught listening with video as a supplementary material The aim of this survey was to investigate the students‘ attitude toward the use of video materials as well as their self-assessment on the effectiveness of video material

Two tests, one pre-test and one post-test were delivered, marked, then the results of these tests were analyzed, compared so that the researcher could use them to support for her conclusion

6 The design of the study

The study consists of three parts as follows:

Part 1 presents the rationale the topic, the aim of the study, the scope of the study and the methods applied

Part 2 develops the theme into three main parts:

 Chapter 1 sets up some theoretical backgrounds that are relevant to the purpose of the research

 Chapter 2 presents the methodology

 Chapter 3 analyzes the results collected from survey questionnaire and two tests

 Chapter 3 deals with the discussion of findings, some personal recommendations Part 3, Conclusion, briefly revisits the objectives, the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Theories of listening comprehension

1.1 Introduction and definitions of listening comprehension

Research has demonstrated that adults spend 40-50% of communication time listening (Gilman & Moody, 1984), but the importance of listening in language learning has only been recognized relatively recently (Oxford, 1993) Since the role of listening comprehension in language learning was taken for granted, it merited little research and pedagogical attention Although listening played an important in audio-lingual methods, students only listened to repeat and develop a better pronunciation (for speaking) The role of listening has been considered as a tool for understanding and a key factor n facilitating language learning Listening has emerged as an important component in the process of second language acquisition (Feyten, 1991)

Listening is an invisible metal process, making it difficult to describe Listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammar structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of utterance (Wif, 1984) Rost (2002) defines listening, in its broadest sense, as a process of receiving what the speakers actually says (receptive orientation); constructing and representing meaning (constructive orientation); negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding (collaborative orientation) and, creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy (transformative orientation)

Listening is a complex, active process of interpretation, in which listeners match what they with what they already know

Specifically, listening theory is about an active process in which individuals focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning form passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O‘Malley, Chamot, Kupper, 1989: 418.) During the process of interpreting aural input, listeners extensively deploy both linguistic knowledge (phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics and discourse) and non-linguistic knowledge (knowledge about the topic and about the context, and general knowledge about the world and real life.)

River and Temperly (1978: 63) defined listening as a complex operation integrating the distict components of perception and linguistic knowledge It is not a passive but an active process of constructing a message from a stream of sound with what one knows of the phonological, semantic, syntactic potentialities of the language

All in all, listening has been conceptualized in different ways and from different points of view However, the role of context-based listening is also found and highlighted in many definitions

1.2 Listening processes

There are two distinct processes involved in listening comprehension Listeners use down‘ processes when they use prior knowledge to understand the meaning of a message Prior knowledge can be knowledge of the topic, the listening context, the text-type, the culture

‗top-or other inf‗top-ormation st‗top-ored in long-term mem‗top-ory as schemata (typical sequences ‗top-or common situations around which world knowledge is organized) Listeners use content words and contextual clues to form hypotheses in an exploratory fashion On the other hand, listeners also use ‗bottom-up‘ processes when they use linguistic knowledge to understand the meaning

of a message They build meaning from lower level sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message

Listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up processing, but an interactive, interpretive process in which listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages The degree to which listeners use the one process or the other will depend on their knowledge of the language, familiarity with the topic or the purpose of

listening For example, listening for gist involves primarily top-down processing, whereas listening for specific information, as in a weather broadcast, involves primarily bottom-up processing to comprehend all the desired details

On one hand, research from cognitive psychology has shown that listening comprehension is more than extracting meaning from incoming speech It is a process of matching speech with what listeners already know about the topic Therefore, when listeners know the context of a text or an utterance, the process is facilitated considerably because listeners can activate prior knowledge and make the appropriate inferences essential to comprehend the message (Byrnes, 1984) Therefore, teachers need to help students organize their thought, to activate appropriate background knowledge for understanding and to make predictions, to prepare for listening This significantly reduces the burden of comprehension for the listeners

On the other hand, listeners do not pay attention to everything; they listen selectively, according to the purpose of the task This, in turn, determines the type of listening required and the way in which listeners will approach a task Richards (1990) differentiates between an interactional and a transactional purpose for communication Interactional use of language is socially oriented, existing largely to satisfy the social needs of the participants; eg., small talk and casual conversations Therefore, interactional listening is highly contextualized and two-way, involving interaction with a speaker A transactional use of language, on the other hand,

is more massage-oriented and is used primarily to communicate information; e.g., news broadcasts and lectures In contrast with interactional listening, transactional listening requires accurate comprehension of a message with no opportunity for clarification with a speaker (one-way listening) Knowing the communicative purpose of a text or utterance will help the listeners determine what to listen and, therefore, which process to activate As with the advantages of knowing the context, knowing the purpose for listening also greatly reduces the burden of comprehension since listeners know what they need to listen for something very specific, instead of trying to understand every word

In short, second language (L2) listening comprehension is a complex process, crucial in the development of second language competence Listeners may use all of the above processes to comprehend Guiding students through the process of listening not only provides them with

the knowledge by which they can successfully complete a listening task; it also motivates them and puts them in control of their learning Therefore, teachers can help students develop their listening comprehension skill through these processes by designing appropriate listening tasks and activities

1.3 Listening in language learning and teaching

Listening comprehension as a separate component of language learning and instruction came into its own only after long and significant debate regarding its validity A large volume of research has demonstrated the critical role of input, and particular ‗comprehensible input‘ in language acquisition, underlining the primacy of the role played by listening comprehension in second language teaching

Until recently, listening comprehension activity in foreign or second language classroom was limited to testing listening comprehension The underlying rationale was that if students are successfully learning the target language, they should automatically be able to decode the aural version of structures and vocabulary they learn in their textbooks Success at this decoding was typically measured by correct response to WH (information) questions Responses to such questions tagged successful retrivial of information from an aural text Knowledge of target language syntax and lexis was deemed sufficient to enable this retrieval and was ultimately the way how students were tested Listening is now treated as a much more complex activity and one that is the cornerstone of language acquisition (Krashen, 1994) Recognition of listening‘s critical role in the language acquisition process has greatly influenced contemporary language teaching practice The view that listening is an active and interactive process has, for example, cast the learners in a role rather than the passive receiver

of aural input (Rost, 1993) Classroom emphasis is now on aural intake through active negotiation of meaning In face to face interaction, the listener, not just the speaker, engages in the active making of meaning It is believed that this mutual negotiation of meaning between speakers activates the cognitive and socio-cognitive processes necessary for language acquisition to occur (Breen and candling, 1980; Pica and Doughty, 1985)

Listeners use meta-cognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies to facilitate comprehension and to make their learning more effective Meta-cognitive strategies are

important because they oversee, regulate or direct the language learning process Cognitive strategies manipulate the material to be learned or apply a specific technique to a listening task Socio-affective strategies describe the techniques listeners use to collaborate with others,

to verify understanding or to lower anxiety Research shows that skilled listeners used more meta-cognitive strategies than their less-skilled counterparts (O‘Malley & Chamot, 1990, Vandergrift, 1997a) When listeners know how to

 analyze the requirements of a listening task;

 activate the appropriate listening process required;

 make appropriate predictions;

 monitor their comprehension;

 evaluate the success of their approach

they are using meta-cognitive knowledge for successful listening comprehension, which is critical to the development of self-regulated learning

2 Definition and benefits of using video in language classroom

According to Lonergan (1994), the term ‗video‘ has two meanings For some, it means no more than replaying television program on a video recorder, for viewing in class or private study For others, it implies the use of video camera in class to record and play back to learners their activities and achievements in a foreign language Lonergan defines the term

‗video film‘ as a photographic process, involving the effects of light and chemicals on sensitive paper He also categorized the sources of video materials used in language teaching

as follow:

 video recording of language -teaching broadcasts and films;

 video recordings of domestic television broadcasts, such as comedy programs and news programs;

 video recordings of specialist films and television programs, such as documentaries produced by industry, or educational programs;

 video language-teaching materials made for the classroom rather than for public transmission as broadcasts;

 self-made video films, involving the teachers and learners

An important attribute of video is the ability to use both auditory and visual symbol systems (Baggett, 1984.) It appears that when audio and visual systems are presented together, each source provides additional and complementary information that retains some of the characteristics of the symbol system of origin Baggett (1984) observed that information obtained visually was more memorable, on the basis of her finding that summaries written a week after viewing a movie were judged to be more complete than those written a week after listening to the audio-only version Kozma (1991) also supported the fact that the visual component is memorable He argued that simultaneous processing of auditory and visual information may aid learning In addition, video might be efficient for learning complex skills because it can expose learners to problems, equipment, and events that cannot be easily demonstrated

According to Dusenbury, Hansen, & Giles (2003), video-assisted instruction has the benefits

of standardizing messages, so it might be able to increase the fidelity of implementing instruction The M.A thesis conducted by Nguyen M., T (2005) also summarized general benefits of using video in language classroom as follow:

 It is quite easy to notice the compelling power of video in the classroom, a power that is even enhanced by concentration on short sequences Video, in other words, stimulates students‘ motivation, and maintains their interest and concentration better than sound-only learning environment

 Using video in language teaching can enhance students‘ understanding and retention

of information It also brings students kinds of situation, with full contextual

back-up

 Video is used to help enhance the meaning of message trying to be conveyed by the speakers through the use of paralinguistic cues In addition, it allows students to see body language and speech rhythm in second language discourse through the use of authentic language and speech in various situations

 Video is a window on English-language culture

 Video can be used as stimulus or input for discussion, for writing assignment, projects or the study of other subjects

 Video, as a moving picture book, gives access to things, places, people, events and behaviors, regardless of the language used

 Using video in language teaching allows differentiations of teaching and learning according to the students‘ abilities, learning styles and personalities Teaching with video can widen the range of activities in the classroom

 The students dealing with video in their learning improve a range of social skills, including communication, negotiation, decision-making and problem-solving

He also found out that video course not only teaches English through video but gets students

to use the English they have learned in talking about the video In addition, using video creates

a great number of tasks and activities that stimulate communication and particular spoken language among students

In the book titled Video in Action, Stempleski & Tomalin (1990) stated that the introduction of

a moving picture component as a language teaching aid is a crucial addition to the teacher‘s resources

First of all, children and adults feel their interests quicken when language is experienced in a lively way through television and video Using a video sequence in class is the best thing to experience the sequence in real life

Second, through communication, teachers have observed how a video sequence used in class makes students more ready to communicate in the target language

Thirdly, through non-verbal aspects of communication, video allows us to see gestures, expression, posture, dress, and surroundings – the setting of communication and to freeze any moments to study the non-verbal communication in detail

Finally, through cross-cultural comparison, observing differences in cultural behaviour is not only suitable training for operating successfully in a different community It is also a rich resource for communication in the language classroom

To sum up, the use of video can make language more accessible to learners by:

 making it easier to integrate and contextualize listening, speaking and pronunciation, reading and writing activities

 motivating learners and helping them in their efforts to use the language naturally

in their own lives by seeing how the characters succeed in communicating with native speakers and getting things done in their everyday activities

 bringing native speakers into classroom (on video), providing additional models for pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm besides that of the teacher

 raising learners‘ awareness of non-verbal aspects of communication

 increasing listening comprehension: paralinguistic features (facial expression, body language, context, setting…) help learners comprehend more than from listening to audio tape only

 stimulating learners‘ interaction and communication with co-learners as they discuss the video itself or ways it relates to their lives and experiences

 raising cross-cultural awareness: learners enjoy observing similarities and differences between the behaviour of the characters in a video clip and that of their own families and friends

3 The application of video in language teaching

The application of video in the classroom has offered exciting possibilities for language teaching and learning so far There have been a lot of books studying and presenting techniques for using video in the classroom Teaching with video equipment does not imply that an entirely new methodology should be taken over but relate to the teacher‘s own professional experience and local conditions

In the book titled ―Video in Language Teaching”, Lonergan (1984) introduced teachers and

teacher trainers to some general principles concerning the use of simple video equipment in the language classroom With these insights into teaching with video, teachers can develop their own techniques and language-learning materials However, the book only limits to simple video equipment: basically, a camera and video recorder Also, there is a limit to what new technology can offer the language learners of the future Therefore, as he pointed out:

―the teacher should analyse what the technology can offer; apply sound pedagogical principles

to that, and adapt and use the technology for his or her own specific language-teaching situation.‖ (1984: 12)

Another book discussing about video techniques is Video in Action by Stempleski and

Tomalin (1990) It provides a full-scale collection of recipes for using video in class Once the teacher has chosen a sequence of video, he or she can browse these recipes until finding a suitable one This book not only deals with equipment and the ways how to run a video library but also answers a number of questions about video and its use

As it is stated by Stempleski & Tomalin (2001) in the book titled Film, the video, and in

particular films, offers some advantages for enhancing listening skills Although films are scripted, they are made to sound natural to the native speaker and thus they do represent authentic language Since students do not live in an ESL context, films can to some extent substitute for the input students cannot get from outside the classroom

Real spoken language is full of false starts, incomplete sentences, and hesitations Sometimes people mumble, some others may have an unusual voice quality There are regional, ethnic, and even gender variations and differences in level of formality These are hard to indicate in textbooks, yet we find good examples in films in plausible contexts In these contexts, teachers can explore with students issues of appropriateness and pragmatics while observing linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonverbal behavior

When we teach or practice listening skills in the classroom, we usually focus on intensive listening and most often this is listening for specific information Films provide the opportunity to observe how native speakers use interactional language combined with appropriate body language and other pragmatic behavior Students can also practice extensive listening, focusing on following what is going on in the story without worrying too much about every single word If a film has a motivating story line, students are propelled along by their own curiosity about the content, similar to the way they watch a film in L1—for entertainment The listening task becomes more realistic When we do this, we can also point out some strategies to use and encourage students to find strategies that work for them, for example, viewing a scene a second time and changing the caption option or paying attention to body language

The application of ITC in general and video in particular in Vietnam has considerably enriched the variety of methods, resources and a range of activities for learning languages On

one hand, it gives more opportunities for communication between peer learners On the other hand, it breaks the routine of learning words or grammar patterns and adds to the positive attitude of both learners and teachers Video has gained popularity in language-teaching classroom in recent years in Vietnam Several language-teaching centers, schools and universities use teaching materials aided with audio-video However, using video-assisted teaching materials is very time-consuming and expensive due to the need of facilities for study Only well-equipped schools or language centers can meet the requirements of the course using video

Another thesis conducted by Bach, T., H., Y., (2009) studied on the effectiveness of assisted instruction on teaching listening for non-English majors at Phuong Dong university This is quasi-experimental research in which the participants wee divided into two groups: the control (A) and the treatment (B) Both of the classes were second-year non-major students The results from pre-test showed that the listening competence in class A was better than class

video-B However, after one semester applying video-assisted instruction to class B, the students‘

listening competence was better than those in class B who were not taught with video materials

The common point of these two theses is that they are both applied to non-major students only The researcher feels an urge to conduct an investigation on the effects of video as a supplementary material on English majors‘ listening competence at Faculty of English at HNUE

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

Chapter 2 presents the methodology applied in the study including the descriptions of the participants, the type of method, materials, instrumentation and procedures of data collection and data analysis

1 Participants

The research was carried out at the Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education with the participation of 50 second-year English major students, from two different classes A and B, with 25 students each Two classes met once a week for two-hour listening lesson during 13 weeks Most of them had been learning English for at least eight years (i.e from lower secondary) However, their age and their learning conditions in high schools were quite different Some of them did not pass the entrance exam for the first time, so they were older than their classmates Those from Hanoi had more opportunities to listen to English tasks in the textbook than the others due to the sufficient equipment and experienced teachers There are some reasons for the choice of these second-year participants Firstly, considering the syllabus which stated the listening skills should be mastered by second-year English majors after finishing semester 4, the researcher realized that many of these skills such as identifying roles, relationship; understanding purpose and attitude; note taking, etc could be improved and achieved by using appropriate listening tasks from video material Secondly, second-year students were chosen because they had spent one year learning listening skill in traditional method with audio-only material This point made it feasible for the researcher to make some comparisons between two methods: the one with audio-only material and the one

with the aid of video material Therefore, she could partly evaluate the effectiveness video material to her students‘ listening competence

2 Type of method employed

Actually, this research is a quasi-experiment which has pre-test; post-test; experimental and control groups but no random assignment of subjects

3 Materials

It is very important for the researcher to select appropriate video material which could be used

as supplementary material in enhancing her students‘ listening skill Consequently, before the researcher decided to employ any video material she had considered the following criteria carefully

3.1 Types of video material

In general, there is a variety of video sources from which teachers can exploit to design listening tasks They can be popular feature films, drama programs, documentaries on subjects which interest students and the daily news Teachers who enjoy watching video themselves will know how to make use of the available source of video as a rich source of materials for their teaching

There is a wide range of types of video recording which can be exploited, such as: drama video (films, soaps, etc), documentaries, TV news and weather, interviews, TV commercials, sports programs, talk shows, game shows, educational films

3.2 Authentic or Instructional videos

Authentic videos are produced as entertainment for native English speakers They generally present real language that is simplified and is spoken at a normal speed with genuine accents Instructional videos are such productions that have been created for use in classrooms or in other educational settings This kind of videos has considerable advantages: they are likely to already have been evaluated for language, content, and length, and many instructional videos are packaged as multimedia resources that include student workbooks, teacher guides and video transcripts

3.3 The level of difficulty of video material

As it is stated in the research conducted by Nguyen, M.T (2005) when selecting video to teach, a teacher has to consider its level of difficulty compared to the participants‘ level of English proficiency

The features that hinder comprehension are:

 high verbal density, i.e a lot of speech with very little action

 words unmatched to the action; or words conflict with the action

 a high degree of naturalism in the speech, e.g everyone talking at once, mumbled asides, actors with their backs to the camera, inconsequential dialogue

 too many dialects and regional accents

 period language, e.g some classics contain some words and phrases which are not common in modern language

The features which help comprehension are:

 clear conventional story lines: straightforward love stories aimed at adolescents, children‘s film drama, and science-fiction drama, which have simple plot lines and special effects which lighten the verbal comprehension burden

 clearly enunciated speech in standard accent - this criterion rules out a lot of excellent regional films

 stylized acting: old movies are acted like plays – only one character speaks at a time; always clearly and always to camera

3.4 The objectives of the course

As it is stated in the syllabus, after finishing semester 4, English major students at FOE should

be master in the following listening skill:

 identifying roles, relationship and location

 understanding purpose and attitude

 deducing meaning

 note-taking and blank-filling

 listening for specific information

 anticipating and predicting

After considering carefully the criteria above, the researcher decided to select the following video materials:

 Two documentaries titled Planet Earth, Caves (2006) and An Inconvenient Truth (2007) were employed For the sake of language teaching and learning, these

documentaries were selected because they are not difficult to understand, the commentary usually has a sober style with standard phraseology and a standard English accent; the pace is slower than the news, the information less dense and the visual element more supportive More importantly, by using the extracts from these documentaries, the researcher could design appropriate listening tasks which helped students enhance their note-taking and blank-filling skills

 Two clips and one piece of news were selected: one is about famous single Susan Boyle; one is about nature (the clip titled The birth of Solar system); and one is about technology (What is the future of the Internet?) They were exploited because of the

following reasons Firstly, their content matched the topics of three units in the syllabus Secondly, their paces are appropriate for students to comprehend Thirdly, by using them, the teacher was able to design listening tasks to help her students practice the skills required in the sessions; in particular the skills of understanding attitude, listening for specific information and deducing the meaning of the words In addition, watching these clips, the students could also update the information and enlarge their background knowledge as well

 Two extracts from the films Up (2009) and You’ve got mail (1997) were exploited

since they have clear story lines, the language used is easier to understand and the speed of conversations is more suitable for the participants‘ level of proficiency More importantly, the listening tasks to improve participants‘ skills of listening for context and deducing meaning could be designed by using these extracts

It can be seen clearly that all the video materials above are authentic not structural videos The researcher made this choice for the following reasons: Firstly, authentic videos with the nature

of their own provide with ‗real‘ English, which is central to language learning Secondly, they

are lively windows on the culture of the native people Thirdly, using authentic videos in the classroom can provide opportunities for students to evaluate a medium that they use in their daily life Finally, most students find it interesting to watch authentic videos, which are originally produced as entertainment

5 Procedure

The research was conducted through the following steps:

 Step 1: the researcher taught 2 classes of 60 students for a week and then gave them a listening test as the pre-test

 Step 2: Then she taught them listening skill for the whole term During that time, class A (experimental group) was taught with the use of video as a supplementary material whereas class B (control group) has lessons from course book only

 Step 3: An attitude survey was done in the former class to investigate their opinions about the use of videos in listening lessons Then a test at the same level with pre-test was given to both classes as a means to measure the effects of using videos in teaching listening skill

 Step 4: The results from the questionnaire and two tests as well as from the observation checklist were analyzed to find out the answers for the research questions

The procedure can be followed in the table below:

 Practice listing for gist through an exam-type exercise

 Provide students with some key exam skills

 Develop and practice listening for clues to location

 Develop the skill of listening for context

 Supplementary material: an extract from the film Up

4

 Develop the skill of listening for specific information

 Develop the skill for taking notes

 Supplementary material: clip The birth of Solar system

5

Environment

 Develop listening for taking notes or details

 Supplementary material: extract 1 of „An Inconvenient Truth‟

6

 Practice listening for taking notes and blank filling skill

 Supplementary material: extract 2 of ‘An Inconvenient Truth‟

7 Midterm test

8 Technology

 Develop and practice the skill of anticipating and predicting

 Practice listening for specific information

 Supplementary material: a piece of news: What is the future

of the Internet?

 Develop and practice the skill of deducing meaning

 Supplementary material: an extract from the film You’ve got mail

12  To develop and practice the skill of recognizing stress

Nature

 Practice listening to taking notes

 Supplementary material: an extract from Planet Earth, caves

13  The survey on the use of video material

 Post-test

To obtain the objectives above, the questionnaire was designed with 8 questions which focused on the following main aspects that the researcher would like to investigate:

 Question 1 aimed at finding out the students‘ attitude toward video material

 Questions 2 and 3 worked out students‘ self –assessment on the importance and the role of video material

 Questions 4, 5, 6 and & clarified students‘ awareness of improvement in some aspects

of their learning listening competence

 Question 8, in the end, brought about some difficulties encountered by students when having listening lesson with video material

Along with the questionnaire, two tests of listening (pre-test and post-test) were included as the achievement test which is being used to access students‘ listening competence

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

1 The findings from questionnaire

The aims of the questionnaire were to explore students‘ self-assessment to their listening proficiency, in particular, to what extent the video material helped to improve their listening skill; and to explore their attitude toward the use of video material in learning progress in class This point would partly prove the use of video material in teaching listening skill effective or not All the survey questions were handed out to students in experimental group who had accessed to video material in class All below are what they revealed

1.1 Students’ assessment on their listening skill improvement

Result from the survey questionnaire among participants of experimental group revealed some changes in their listening competence

Concerning the matter of comprehension and retention, more than half of the class confessed that before using video material, they were able to understand only 20-30% of a listening text Meanwhile about 40% declared their comprehension could reach 30-50% Only two students (8%) affirmed that they could understand 50 % to 70% of a listening text Amazingly, two-thirds of the students asked only remembered 20% to 30% of the text even when many of them were able to understand 30% to 50% The rest reached the highest capacity of retention

at the range from 30% to 50% The result brought about a fact that there was not a close relation between students‘ comprehension and retention It can be inferred that even if students can understand the listening text quite well, it does not mean that they will remember it well The importance of context-based learning using real world context for enhancing learning outcomes has been emphasized by sociocultural learning theorists (Merriam and Caffarella 1999) It is believed that real world contexts, where there are social relationships, tools, and

engaged experiences, can make the best learning environments (Lave 1996) Context-based learning would be very effective and appropriate in teaching adult learners because they already exposed to diverse contexts and are ready to learn in the context through a variety of experiences Among the various technologies currently available, video technology is suitable for context-based learning because it can convey the information or knowledge in a more interesting way and allows the portrayal of complicated contexts Therefore, the abovementioned fact calls for explicit introduction and effective exploitation of video materials, which by all means help enhance students‘ comprehension and retention in listening class

Students’ perceived learning (understanding and retention)

According to the result of survey questionnaire, the majority of students stated that based material helped them remember and comprehend much better while the rest said only a little The figures below showed the changed in percentage of students‘ retention and comprehension after using video

Chart 2: Change in percentage of students’ retention after using video

Two major trends emerged from the percentage of students‘ comprehension and retention before and after using video As it can be seen from Figure 2, the largest percentage of respondents (64%) said that they remember only 20-30% of a listening text Only one student accounted for 4% was able to remember 50-70% of a listening text The rest (32%) ranged between 30-50% Outstandingly, these numbers changed after using video in class A large number of students (60%) stated that their range of retention increased from 30-50% 2 out of

25 students can remember 50-70% of a listening text Figure …showed the same increase in the number of students who said that video-based learning material is much more comprehensible Also, over half of the students said it is easier for them to get the information based on the context The majority responded that they were able to partly guess the meaning from other clues such as body language and gesture In brief, most of the participants perceived that the video-assisted learning material was more comprehensible and memorable than audio-only one in regarding to remembering and understanding the content

1.2 Students’ attitude toward learning with video material

Chart 3: Students’ attitude toward learning with video material

When being asked whether they like learning in listening class using video, all of the students responded ‗yes‘ which a positive sign A large percentage (88%) said that they like learning in video-assisted class a lot; only one student who takes up 4% said that he neither likes of dislikes

Compared with the audio-only class, all of them declared their favor for the use of video in listening class As reasoned by some students, video not only encouraged them to listen better but also made them more enjoyable and interested The major responses of the participants were as follow:

 ―The combination of watching the videos and discussing with my classmates made the materials easier to remember than listening from the tapes.”

 “Because I find learning with video kept me more focused and actively involved.”

 “I prefer video-based materials because I can recall parts of videos due to the visual interaction, where I am forced to think out the meaning The videos allow me to witness, not calculate the meaning.”

 “Because the video clips stick in my mind, learning with video helped me retain information.”

As it can be seen from the information above, video has greatly contributed to increasing students‘ interest in learning listening skill which was considered to be boring and difficult by many students