Skkn tiếng anh some methods used to practice listening skills in english 11 for the low level students

GIA LAI DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING LÊ HỒNG PHONG HIGH SCHOOL LITERATURE- ENGLISH GROUP TOPIC SOME METHODS USED TO PRACTICE LISTENING SKILLS IN ENGLISH 11 FOR THE LOW LEVEL S

GIA LAI DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

LÊ HỒNG PHONG HIGH SCHOOL LITERATURE- ENGLISH GROUP

TOPIC

SOME METHODS USED TO PRACTICE LISTENING SKILLS

IN ENGLISH 11 FOR THE LOW LEVEL STUDENTS

AUTHOR: TRẦN THỊ HỒNG THẮM POSITION: TEACHER OF ENGLISH

A INTRODUCTION

I Background to the study and statement of the problem

Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process It is key to all effective communication, without the ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood The teaching of listening in Vietnam is experiencing a change from simply providing practice opportunities to how to teach skills Yet in most listening classes, the traditional pattern of listening to the text, doing the exercises, and checking the answers are still quite common Taking this kind of lesson is like taking a test that focuses on the learners’ memory rather than on the process of listening In such a test-like situation, not only the students’ level of anxiety is high but also the input is limited Instead of being motivated, most of the time the learners suffer frustration How to help students overcome the above problems has been a major concern and a challenge to teachers I have learnt to think of it from my students’ viewpoint as well as from a teacher’s perspective, and as a result I have tried to explore the importance of listening activities, reckon some methods to practice listening skills and suggest some while-listening activities as a solution to such problems

II Aim and limitations

- Find out some types of listening tasks used to teach Listening skills, especially tasks used in While you listen activities

- Apply some additional and adapting listening tasks which can help low level students improve their Listening skills within English 11

III Research method

During the research time, summarizing teaching experience, I made full use of the following methods:

- Observation: The teaching periods of listening skills are observed carefully

- Reference analysis: Some reference documents about teaching listening are read carefully to design effective listening tasks

- Experimental teaching: The author teaches Listening in class 11B5 and uses some new listening tasks

B CONTENT

I Principles of teaching and learning Listening skills

1.1 Focus more on the Listening Process rather than the result

Listening is often considered a passive skill but in fact it has active features as students have to do a lot of things to process and understand the information First, students must listen what is spoken, then they have to understand the content by relating what is spoken to what they have already known In fact, if students don’t know anything about the matter spoken, their listening will be very difficult Otherwise, the evaluating the ability of students’ listening is very difficult because teachers only base on the results of doing textbook exercises Therefore, besides listening exercises in textbook, teachers have to design additional listening tasks to evaluate the students’ listening levels

1.2 Integrating Metacognitive Strategies

Before listening: Plan for the listening task

 Set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen for

 Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed

 Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after listening: Monitor comprehension

 Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses

 Decide what is and is not important to understand

 Listen/view again to check comprehension

 Ask for help

After listening: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

 Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area

 Evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular types of listening tasks

 Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task

 Modify strategies if necessary

1.3 Use pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are going to hear or view

The activities chosen during pre-listening may serve as preparation for listening in several ways During pre-listening the teacher may

 assess students' background knowledge of the topic and linguistic content of the text

 provide students with the background knowledge necessary for their comprehension of the listening passage or activate the existing knowledge that the students possess

 clarify any cultural information which may be necessary to comprehend the passage

 make students aware of the type of text they will be listening to, the role they will play, and the purpose(s) for which they will be listening

 provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for background reading or class discussion activities

1 4 Match while-listening activities to the instructional goal, the listening purpose, and students' proficiency level

While-listening activities relate directly to the text, and students do them during or immediately after the time they are listening Keep these points in mind when planning while-listening activities:

If students are to complete a written task during or immediately after listening, allow them to read through it before listening

Keep writing to a minimum during listening Having to write while listening may distract students from this primary goal If a written response is to be given after listening, the task can be more demanding

Organize activities so that they guide listeners through the text Combine global activities such as getting the main idea, topic, and setting with selective listening activities that focus on details of content and form

Use predicting to encourage students to monitor their comprehension as they listen Do a predicting activity before listening, and remind students to review what

they are hearing to see if it makes sense in the context of their prior knowledge and what they already know of the topic or events of the passage

Give immediate feedback whenever possible Encourage students to examine how

or why their responses were incorrect

II Practical basis:

2.1 Types of listening tasks from textbook:

* Listen to the monologue or dialogue to decide on True or False statements, take notes, fill in the gaps, answer comprehension questions, choose the best answers and summarize main ideas

*Textbook’s drawbacks: some of the exercises given are difficult for many low level students

2.2 Students’ problems in learning Listening skills:

a They are trying to understand every word

b They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant

c They just don't know the most important words

d They don't recognise the words that they know

III Stages and activities of teaching and learning Listening skills

3 1.Pre- listening activities

3.1.1 Using pictures, real objects and make questions related to knowledge and experience from the students about the coming content

 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs

 doing guided practice

3.1.2 Introducing important language input( new words, structures) related to the content of the listening lesson

 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures

3.1.3 Introducing the situation / context of the listening lesson: who, what, where, when, why, how

 reading something relevant

 going over the directions or instructions for the activity

3.1.4 Listening for main idea

 predicting the content of the listening text

3.2 While- listening activities

 checking prediction

 filling in graphs and charts

 checking off items in a list

 listening for the gist

 searching for specific clues to meaning

 completing cloze (fill-in) exercises

3.3 Post-listening activities

 Representing the main content of the listening text

 Role play

 Writing a short passage about the listening text

 Doing grammar exercises about the text

 Practicing pronunciation and intonation about the language in the text

IV Suggested listening tasks adapted from Tieng Anh 11 text book, Listening section:

Before learning Listening parts, students are somewhat familiar with the topics because they have learnt Reading and Speaking, some interesting activities in Pre- listening, While- Listening and Post- Listening have been used to make the students pay more attention on the lessons

4.1 Some activities can be used to teach Unit 1- Friendship

Matching (applied in Pre- Listening activities)

- T divides the class into small groups of 3-4 Sts Then T distributes the following handouts for students to match the English words in A with the V equivalents in

B Which group finishes first and has all the correct answers will be the winner

Adapted True/ False statements:

Some listening tasks may be adapted so that the students may not use the reference books to prepare for the answers without listening carefully

Unit 1( While you listen)

Task 1 Listen and decide whether statements are true (T) or False (F)

1 Lan’s family moved to Haiphong in 1985

2 It took Ha twenty minutes to ride on her motorbike to Do Son

3 Minh and Long have a lot of things in common

4 Minh and Long have been friends since college

Task 2: Listen and answer the following questions:

1 How long have they been friends?

2 When was she going on a two-day trip to Do Son?

3 How was Ha?

4 Where did she use to live?

5 Where did they meet?

6 Why did they work together a lot?

7 What did Long like about Minh best?

8 What do they like to do together?

Answer: Task 1: 1F, 2T, 3T, 4T

Task 2: 1, for a long time; 2, last year,; 3, friendly, 4, in Nguyen Cong Tru Residential in Hanoi, 5 in college; 6 because Long was there singing and Minh

was a guitarist; 7 his great sense of humour, 8 They like to go to plays and movies together

4.2 Some activities can be used to teach Unit 2: Personal Experiences

For Pre- Listening, to exploit the pictures page 27 Tieng Anh11, I used the following questions:

1 How many people can you see in the picture?(3 people)

2 Who are they? ( some firemen, a woman(a mother) and her daughter)

3 What is happening to their house? ( A fire)

4 What are the firemen doing? ( They are trying to put out the fire.)

5 What causes the fire? (The gas stove, electricity )

For While- listening tasks, some adapted tasks can be used as follows:

Task 1 Listen and answer the following questions

1 What is Christina’s job?

2 When did the fire happen ?

3 Where did the fire start ?

4 What was Christina doing when the fire started ?

5 Who rescued her ?

=> Answers

1 She is a businesswoman

2 The fire happened 13 years ago

3 The fire started in the kitchen

4 She was sleeping

5 Her mother did

Task 2: Listen and fill in the gaps

Interviewer: This is Radio 3 In our “(1) Experiences” programme tonight we talk to Christina, a successful businesswoman Hello Christina, welcome to our programme

Christina: Hello and thank you! It’s nice being with you tonight

Interviewer: Christina, could you tell our audience about the most memorable experience in your life?

Christina: Well, my most unforgettable (2) _happened thirteen years ago, when my house burned down

Interviewer: Really? How did it happen?

Christina The fire started in the kitchen where I forgot to turn off (3) _

Interviewer: What were you doing at that time?

Christina: I was sleeping when I was suddenly(4) _ by terrible heat I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by walls of fire

Answers: 1 Unforgettable , 2 experience, 3 the gas stove, 4 woken up

For Post- Listening activity, this task is very useful

T gives some suggestions by asking some questions:

+ Why does Christina think family is more important than things?

+ Where do you get love/care from, your family or things?

+ Can we buy new clothes?

+ Can you get new parents or brothers or sisters?

4.3 Some activities can be used to teach Unit 3: A party in While- listening

Task : Listen and choose the best answer( This task is used to replace task 2, page 37)

1 How old was Mai?

A.6 B.16 C.60 D.26

2 Why didn’t she like having her party at a restaurant?

A noisy and expensive B quiet and cheap

C noisy and inexpensive D quiet and comfortable

3 What did Mai’s mother serve the guests at the beginning of the party?

A ice-cream and biscuits B fruits and milk

C coffee and cake D soft drinks and biscuits

4 What did all the guests do while Mai was cutting the cake?

A they danced and sang B they played the Bingo game

C they clapped their hands and sang D they took photos

4.4 Adapted listening task for Test yourself A

Task 1 Listen and decide whether statements are true (T) or False (F)

1 They’re known each other for 25 years old

2 They became friends because they lived in the same country

3 They lost contact with each other when one of them moved to Scotland

4 They’ve been living in Brighton since 1995

Task 2 Listen and fill in the missing words to complete the passage

Well, I’ve been living here in Brighton since 99 and these days I see James about

………… (1), usually in the park where I walk my dog, or in the pub ………… (2) with another friends that we’ve known for ……… (3) the same length of time

We haven’t been doing that for very long but it’s ……… (4) to get all of us together

Answers: Task I 1F, 2F, 3T, 4F; task II 1 once a week, 2 for lunch, 3 about, 4 good

4.5 Some activities can be used to teach Unit 4: Volunteer work, while- listening activities

Task 1: Listen and complete the passage with the given words:

volunteers, , June, largest, activities, found, informal, 30 street children, 250 children, 1998, Arts

Sping School is an 1 school It provides classes to disadvantaged children in HCM City Around .2 live and study at the school and about 3 with special difficulties from District 1 regularly attend classes The Organisation for Education Development co-operated with Sping School to set

up English classes in 4 Dance, theatre, singing and folk music classes were

set up a year later Children from these classes participate in fundraising perfomances They raise money to continue their English and Performance 5 classes

Spring School requires 6 to help organize their fundraising dinner held annually in .7 This is an exciting night in which children perform circus, theatre, dance, and singing at one of the 8 hotels in HCM City They also need foreign volunteers to contact sponsors and help to expand the school 9 Volunteers are required from February until July to help orgnise these events

It is hoped that more schools like Sping School will soon be .10 in other cities in VN

Answer: 1- informal, 2 - 30 street children, 3- 250 children, 4 – 1998, 5- Arts 6-volunteers, 7- June, 8- largest, 9-activities, 10- found

Task 2: listen carefully and choose the best answer A,B or C :

1: Spring school provides classes to………… in Ho Chi Minh City

A the poor B the sick C disadvantaged children

2: ……… classes were set up in 1999

A dance, theatre, singing and folk music B theater and singing C dance and singing

3: Children participate in fund-raising performances because……….…

A they like music and dancing

B they need money to continue their classes

C they have nothing to do

4: They dance, sing and play music ………

A at one of the largest hotels in Ho Chi Minh City

B in the theater in Ho Chi Minh City

C at their school

Answer: 1C, 2A, 3B, 4A

Task 3: Listen and answer the following questions

1 What kind of Spring School is it?………

2 How many children with special difficulties from District 1 regularly attend classes?……

3 When did English classes set up?………

4 When did dance, theatre, singing and folk music classes set up?…………

1 What is Paul reading?

A The history of Boston Marathon B The history of Boston

2 How often and where is it held?

A Every year, in the USA B Every two years, in the USA

C Each four years, in America D Every year, in the UK

3 When did it begin?

A In 1987 B In 1978 C In 1789 D In 1897

4 How long did it take him to reach the finish?

A He clocked 3 hours 50 minutes and 10 seconds

B He clocked 2 hours 50 minutes and 10 seconds

C He clocked 2 hours 10 minutes and 10 seconds

D He clocked 2 hours 50 minutes and 15 seconds

Task 2 Listen and fill in the missing words to complete the passage

It was not until 1967 women were formally accepted to take part in the Boston races A few years later, Kuscsik became the first official female champion She won the race in (1) _ There were 8 women starting the race and all 8 finished The race isn’t held for only American people Every year more runners