Techniques for improving listening skills of 11th form students at me linh hing school

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N o 2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY - - -    - - - NGUYEN THI GIANG TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS OF 11 TH FORM STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL (GRADUATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH) Hanoi, 2014 i ACKNOWLEGEMENT It is my pleasure to thank those who make this thesis possible. First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Nguyễn Thị Phương Lan, M.A, Lecturer of Foreign Language Faculty, HPU2. This thesis could have probably not completed without her patient, enthusiastic and instructive supervision and encouragement. I also would like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers in the Foreign language Faculty for devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge. My special thanks go as well to the Foreign Language Faculty for giving me the opportunity and permission to implement this thesis. Besides, I am heartily thankful to my classmates, who have enthusiastically supported and provided me with valuable suggestions. I am also deeply indebted to my family for their constant encouragement which motivated me to perform best during the thesis. Lastly, I would like to offer my regards and blessings to all the readers of this paper. I appreciate all the constructive comments on it and hope that my study will be useful for those who also take interest in this subject. ii ABSTRACT Techniques for improving English listening skill is the topic that has got much concern of experts. Many books about this issue have been published. Different authors dealt with different aspects of the topic. However, the difficulties that learners often have in learning listening and solutions for the problems mentioned in some books have not been clearly dealt with in full and sometimes caused confusion to learners of English. As a result, students of English often find listening difficult because they do not have appropriate methods to get over the difficulties. Therefore, this research is aimed at studying factors relevant to listening comprehension, structure of a listening lesson and conducting a survey for collecting data about the students‟ difficulties in learning listening. Based on the results of the survey, the difficulties have been found. Solutions to the problems have been suggested. iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: Techniques for Improving Listening Skills of 11 th form students at Me Linh High School. (Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English) I certify that no part of this report has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person‟s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance from my supervisor. Date submitted: Student Nguyen Thi Giang Supervisor Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, M.A. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement I Abstract II Statement of authorship III Table of contents. IV Part I INTRODUCTION I.1: Rationale 1 I.2: Research objectives 1 I.3: Research scope 2 I.4: Research tasks 2 I.5: Research methods 2 I.6: Research significance 2 I.7: Research design 3 Part II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND II.1.1: Literature review 4 II.1.2: Introduction 5 II.1.3: Listening comprehension 5 II.1.4: Classification of listening 7 II.1.4.1: Informative listening 7 II.1.4.2: Appreciative listening 9 II.1.4.3: Critical listening 10 II.1.4.4: Discriminative listening 12 II.1.4.5: Empathic listening 13 II.1.5: Steps of a listening lesson 15 v II.1.5.1: Pre-listening 15 II.1.5.1.1: Definition and purposes of pre-listening stage 15 II.1.5.1.2: Types of pre-listening activities 15 II.1.5.1.3: Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities 16 II.1.5.2: While-listening 16 II.1.5.2.1: Definition and purposes of while-listening stage 16 II.1.5.2.2: Factors affecting the choice of while-listening activities 16 II.1.5.2.3: Types of activities for while-listening 17 II.1.5.3: Post-listening 18 II.1.5.3.1: Definition of post-listening stage 18 II.1.5.3.2: Factors affecting the choice of post-listening activities 18 II.1.5.3.3: Types of post-listening activities 18 II.1.6: Potential difficulties that students may have in learning listening 18 II.1.6.1: Inability to control over the speed at which the speaker speaks 19 II.1.6.2: Inability to concentrate 19 II.1.6.3: Problems in hearing sounds 19 II.1.6.4: Problems in understanding different accents 20 II.1.6.5: Problems in limited vocabulary 20 CHAPTER TWO AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF LEARNING LISTENING OF 11 TH FORM STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL II.2.1: Method of study 21 II.2.1.1: Purposes of the survey 21 II.2.1.2: Population of the survey 21 II.2.1.3: Type of the survey……… 21 II.2.1.4: Preparation of the survey 22 II.2.1.4.1: Test items 22 II.2.1.4.2: Arrangement of the test items 22 II.2.1.5: Administration of the try-out 23 II.2.1.5.1: Preparation of the try-out 23 II.2.1.5.2: Try-out 23 vi II.2.1.6: Method of data analysis 23 II.2.1.7: Results of the survey 23 CHAPTER THREE SUGGESTED TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS TO THE 11TTH FORM STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL II.3.1: What should students do to improve listening skills?. 32 II.3.1.1: The necessity of clearly identifying their purposes of listening 32 II.3.1.2: The necessity of learning listening actively .33 II.3.1.3: The necessity of frequent listening practicing 34 II.3.2: Requirements for teachers 34 III.3.2.1: Pre-listening 34 II.3.2.1.1: Introducing the topic 34 II.3.2.1.2: Pre-learning vocabulary 34 II.3.2.1.3: Asking students to look at picture(s) 35 II.3.2.1.4: Listening with visuals 35 II.3.2.2: While-listening 35 II.3.2.2.1: Listening for the gist 35 II.3.2.2.2: Listening and filling 36 II.3.2.2.3: Listening for specific information 36 II.3.2.3: Post-listening 37 II.3.2.3.1: Jigsaw listening 37 II.3.2.3.2: Role-play/stimulation 38 Part III CONCLUSION Conclusion 39 References 42 Appendix 43 1 PART ONE INTRODUCTION I.1. RATIONALE It can not be denied that English is not only the most popular language in the world, but it is also the international medium in the fields of science, technology, culture, education, economy and so on. It is considered the key language to promote the mutual understanding and cooperation among countries. In Vietnam, English has become more and more popular and important. Thus, the Vietnam Education Ministry has considered English as a compulsory subject at most secondary and high school. Among these schools is the Me Linh High school. However, teaching and learning process in Me Linh High school seems to focus too much on grammar, structures and vocabularies. Students are very good at doing exercises of written forms which mostly concern grammar, reading or writing. As a result, students have many difficulties in listening. This situation can be caused by a lot of things. Most students have had listening practice at school, but they have rarely been taught or given instructions about how to listen to English effectively. Moreover not all listening lessons interest students, sometimes because teacher does not have appropriate methods to motivate students, sometimes the listening topic is too difficult for them. Another thing leading to the students‟ difficulties in learning English listening is that students do not appreciate listening skill, they only pay attention to grammars, vocabularies, structures with the aim of coping with exams. For all those reasons, my study is conducted with the hope of improving listening skill for students form 11 th at Me Linh High school. I.2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The purposes of this study is to examine the areas of difficulties in learning English listening encountered by students form 11 th at Me Linh High school and what they desire to do in listening lesson. 2 Therefore the study will aims at finding the answers for the questions as follow: - What difficulties do students form 11 th at Me Linh High school have in learning English listening? - What do students want to do in each step of listening lesson? - What can teachers and students do to improve students‟ listening skill? I.3. RESEARCH SCOPE The difficulties which students may have in learning English listening is various, so it is impossible to discover all the aspects of this issue. Within the scope of this graduate paper, the researcher can only conduct a survey on the students of 11 th form to identify common listening problems experienced by the students, after that suggest some techniques to help them improve their listening ability. I.4. RESEARCH TASKS The study involves fulfilling the tasks of studying the definitions and process of listening comprehension; researching into the classification of listening; discussing steps of a listening lesson; studying potential difficulties students may have in learning listening and conducting a survey to find out the difficulties students form 11 th at Me Linh high school have in learning listening and which activities they desire to do in each steps of a listening lesson. On the basic of the findings, possible solutions to the problems are suggested to help students overcome the difficulties and improve their listening ability I.5. RESEARCH METHODS To achieve the objectives of the study, researcher have applied six methods which are collecting documents from books listed in the references; consulting the supervisor, experienced teachers and friends; doing a survey on the learning listening to English from 100 students of 11 th form at Me Linh High school; collecting data for the analysis; assessing the difficulties and evaluating the best techniques that are most suitable. I.6. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE 3 This study may provide insights into the process of learning comprehension skill for students in general and students form 11 th at Me Linh High school in particular. It is hoped to make a small contribution to the effectiveness as well as the improvement in teaching and learning listening skill for student form 11 th at Me Linh High school. I.7. RESEARCH DESIGN The study includes 3 parts: Part one, “Introduction” presents the rationale, the objectives, the scope, the tasks, the methods, the significance and the design of the study. Part two, “Development” has three chapters: Chapter one mentions different points of views about teaching English in general and how to improve listening skill in particular. The concepts relevant to the research topic such as the definitions of listening comprehension, classification of listening, three steps of a listening lesson, and potential difficulties students may have in learning English listening are also presented in this chapter. Chapter two is named “An investigation into current situation of learning listening of students form 11 th at Me Linh High school”. It has two sections. Section one is devoted to the survey. The second deals with the common difficulties that students have in learning listening. Chapter three is entitled “suggested techniques to improve listening skill for students form11th at Me Linh High school” which provides some techniques to help better the students‟ listening skill. Part three – Conclusion: Summarize discussed points, limitation of the study as well as suggestions for further researches [...]... knowledge of the language, familiarity with the topic or the purpose for 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 II.1.4 Classification of listening II.1.4.1 Informative listening Informative listening (listening for information)... on more than one thing at a time, lack of interest in subject or person, lack of motivation Therefore in order to have a successful conversation, people should be sure that they focus on what the speakers are saying Memory Memory is an especially crucial variable to informative listening; people cannot process information without memory More specifically, memory helps the informative listening in three... simple memory of the meaning of words, people could not communicate with anyone else Without memory of concepts and ideas, they could not understand the meaning of messages In summary, informative listening is an important skill in the range of different listening skills we need in our every day lives Using informative listening well allows 8 us to acquire information or instructions and understand messages... 7% of them listen to the text once more, the percentage of students who see the tape-script is 19% and 17% of the students listen sentence by sentence 25 It can be drawn from the data above that a lot of students of Me Linh High school are not aware of the self-study of listening at home, a lot of the students do not have the habit of self -listening practice Only a few of the spend time practicing listening. .. when listening 20 CHAPTER TWO AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF LEARNING LISTENING OF 11th FORM STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL II.2.1 Methodology As it was mentioned in chapter one and two of part II- development, the study not only provides a deep insight into issues related to listening comprehension teaching but also finds out the difficulties students often have in learning listening. .. information) is a process, by which an individual listens with attention and focus to what somebody is saying, so as to grasp some knowledge Informative listening is very important if one want to learn something new Proper informative listening will lead to increased wisdom and knowledge 7 Informative listening is a type of listening that we use all the time when our primary concern is to understand a message... the framework of a thesis, to map out all the difficulties is impossible Therefore, this thesis is only focused on common listening problems facing students form 11th at Me Linh High school To find out the difficulties, a survey questionnaire was conducted II.2.1.1 Purposes of the survey The overall objectives of the survey questionnaire are to discovering the attitude of students form 11th at Me Linh. .. someone This may be in the form of instructions, a presentation, speeches, a lecture … How much you learn from informative listening depends on how well you listen and concentrate on the central message There are however three variables that impact on informative listening skills They are vocabulary, concentration and memory Knowing these variables can help people begin to improve their informative listening. .. students spend listening at home, the result is that 36% of the students practice listening everyday, 30% of them rarely practice listening, 19% is the percentage of students who practice listening two to three time a day, and 15% learn listening once a week Being asked about the question at home, what do you often do if you do not clearly understand the text you are listening? ”, 57% of the students listen... practice 3 Students attitude towards home -listening practice 4 Students attitude towards their teachers creating listening interest and motivation 5 Factors that cause difficulties in learning listening 6 Students pre -listening activities 7 Students while -listening activities 8 Students post -listening activities 9 If students want to improve their listening skill and why II.2.1.4.2 Arrangement of the . Classification of listening II.1.4.1. Informative listening Informative listening (listening for information) is a process, by which an individual listens with attention and focus to what somebody. Title: Techniques for Improving Listening Skills of 11 th form students at Me Linh High School. (Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English). INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF LEARNING LISTENING OF 11 TH FORM STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL II.2.1: Method of study 21 II.2.1.1: Purposes of the survey 21 II.2.1.2: Population