Methods to learn listening skills for freshmen at english faculty, HOU

DECLARATION Title: Methods to learn Listening skills for freshmen at the English Faculty, HOU I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me from any ot

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

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GRADUATION THESIS

B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

METHODS TO LEARN LISTENING SKILLS FOR

FRESHMEN AT ENGLISH FACULTY, HOU

Supervisor: Ngo Thi Thanh Thao, MA Student: Le Phuong Anh

Date of birth: 26/11/1993 Courses: K19A2 (2012-2016)

Ha Noi – 2016

CODE: 17

DECLARATION

Title: Methods to learn Listening skills for freshmen at the English

Faculty, HOU

I certify that no part of the above 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 of my supervisor

CONTENT

1.5 Relations between listening skills and other skills 16

1.6 Summary 17

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 18

2.1 Research questions 18

2.2 The subject of the study 18

2.3 The method of the study 18

2.4 Freshmen’s current situation of learning listening skills 19

2.5 Summary 30

CHAPTER III 32

SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGISH, HOU 32

3.1 Solving problem about lacking vocabulary 32

3.1.1 Active and Passive listening 32

3.1.1.1 Gaining new words by listening podcasts and transcribing 34

3.1.1.2 Gaining new words by listening to music 35

3.2 Solving problem about grammar structure 37

3.2.1 Solving problem about grammar structure by listening for stresses 37

3.3 Solving problem about distraction 38

3.4 Solving problem about different accent of speakers 38

3.4.1 Improving listening speed by practicing with real Native English speakers 39

3.5 Solving problem about listening speed 39

3.5.1 Improving listening speed by watching movie or TV series 40

3.6 Solving problem about pronunciation 41

3.6.1 Improving pronunciation by listening to their own speaking 41

3.7 Solving problem about lacking social background knowledge 41

3.8 Summary 42

PART C: CONCLUSION 43

REFERENCE 44

APPENDIX 46

QUESTIONNAIRE 46

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have received great assistances from many people in the preparation of this paper Without their assistance and support, this paper might not have been finished

First of all, I would like hereby to extend my profound gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Ngo Thi Thanh Thao from who I have received enormous kindness and guidance

Also, I am deeply indebted to all the teachers at the English Faculty, Hanoi Open University for their interesting and useful lectures which have built in me a firm foundation with immense ideas for the fulfillment of this paper

In particular, my special thanks to my dear friends for their support, advice and providing me with comments and materials

Last, but not least, I owe my deepest gratitude and thanks family for all

my family for their love, great encouragement and support to me to fulfill this paper

Hanoi, April 2016

Le Phuong Anh

These facts have showed the importance and reason why more and more people learn this language as a second language There are four skills need to

be mastered These skills are closely related to each other However, just one

or two of the four skills tend to be focused on (often writing and reading), and sometimes the others are not received much attention including Listening skills Ralph Nichols says: “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood The best way to understand people is to listen

to them”, Students need to understand spoken English used in lectures, talk and presentation, etc , which they have to encounter regularly It is also necessary in the language classroom because the lesson’s input is provided to the learner through listening Listening also takes up as much as fifty percent

of our every communication time and is the most used language skill at work and at home (Goh, 2002)

Moreover, listening is a key to career success In any job recruitments or interviews, English always comes first as the foremost criterion of selecting candidates, and in most job performance reviews or appraisals, English

competence is considered one of the most important factors for promotion Although knowing the importance of Listening comprehension in study as well as using it for their later promotion, many students still do not pay much attention to Listening skill, and it is no doubt that still many of them have bad results and learn it without effectiveness For this reason, through what has been learnt so far, and the experience gained while studying in HOU, I would like to present my experience of learning English listening skills for freshmen and help them improve listening comprehension skills Therefore, I decided to choose the topic: “Methods to learn Listening skills for freshmen at the English Faculty, HOU” as the subject for my graduation paper

2 Aims and purposes of the study

This study aims at finding problems and understanding the current situation of teaching and learning skills of first year students at HOU as well

as recommending some suggestions to improve their listening

3 Scope of the study

Due to the limited time and knowledge, the study only focuses on issues involved in first year students at Faculty of English, HOU and publicizes some useful methods to improve listening skills

4 Research questions

What are the methods to listen English well?

5 Methods of the study

A survey is carried out to discover the current situation of teaching and learning listening skills of first year students at Faculty of English so as to introduce some helpful solutions to them overcome this subject Besides, the

author refers to many materials related to listening as well as many famous writers’ views on this subject in order to make this study more persuasive and more reasonable

6 Design of the report

Part A: Introduction includes its reasons for choosing, aims, scope,

methods and design of the study

Part B: Development is the most important part of the paper It contains

three chapters

Chapter I: Theoretical Background introduces theories related to

listening

Chapter II: Findings is the main part of the study, which discloses the

current situation of teaching and learning listening skills for the first year students at FOE and identifies their problems in listening

Chapter III: Some methods developing listening skills for the first year

students at Faculty of English, HOU: give out some suggestions and solutions

to deal with difficulties of students in listening English

Part C: Conclusion is the concluding part where the writer gives the

conclusions and sum up all the main ideas of the graduation paper

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

The first language mode that babies acquire is listening Listening is the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development and plays

an incredibly important role in the process of learning and communication in life It’s not easy to grasp listening skills in studying English Also, to get excellent listening skills is too difficult This chapter will bring general knowledge and common concept of listening for learners

1.1 Definitions of listening

Many academics have researched listening skills and presented a lot of definitions of listening Although how many definitions of listening there are, all of them still points out the same view about listening

Listening is the act of hearing intently It is also a process similar to reading which should possess knowledge of phonology, syntax, semantics and text understanding According to Wikipedia, “listening is the conscious processing of the auditory stimuli that have been perceived through hearing.”

International Listening Association defines listening as, Listening, the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/ or nonverbal messages

Thomlison (1984), “Active listening, which is very important for effective communication” Listening can be also defined as, “More than just hearing and to understand and interpret the meaning of a conversation”

Howatt and Dakin (1974), “listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying; this process involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously”

Furthermore, Gordon (1985) argues that “empathy is essential to listening and contends that it is more than a polite attempt to identify a speaker’s perspectives Rather more importantly, empathetic understanding expands to egocentric pro-social behavior” Thus, the listener altruistically

acknowledges concern for the speaker’s welfare and interests

Ronal and Roskelly (1985) define listening as “an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and reading demand”, and these authors present

specific exercises to make students active listeners who are aware of the

“inner voice” one hears when writing

Listening is usually defined as a receptive skill including both physical process and analytical, explanative process However, this definition is often expanded to comprise crucial listening skills (such as analysis and synthesis) and nonverbal listening (understanding the meaning of tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and other nonverbal cues) The expanded definition of listening also emphasizes the relationship between listening and speaking

1.2 Listening strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input

a Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into

background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next Top-down strategies include

• listening for the main idea

• predicting

• drawing inferences

• summarizing

b Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language

in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning Bottom-up strategies include

• listening for specific details

• recognizing cognates

• recognizing word-order patterns

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening

• They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation

• They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies

They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies

selected was an effective one

1.3 Definition of listening skills

Listening covers a variety of different skills such as predicting, getting the gist, extracting specific information, extracting detailed information and making inferences, etc… For non-native speakers, it’s a challenge to acquire listening skills in relation to the language they are learning, and to have good listening skills, it’s really difficult But if they have strategies, their listening skills will be improved

a Basic process

There are several basic processes at work in listening These do not necessarily occur sequentially; they may occur simultaneously, in rapid succession, or backward and forward as needed The listener is not usually conscious of performing these steps, nor of switching back and forth between them

- Determines a reason for listening;

- Takes the raw speech and deposits an image of it in short-term memory;

- Attempts to organize the information by identifying the type of speech event (conversation, lecture, radio ad) and the function of the message (persuade, inform, request);

- Predicts information expected to be included in the message;

- Recalls background information (schemata) to help interpret the message;

- Assigns a meaning to the message;

- Checks that the message has been understood;

- Determines the information to be held in long-term memory;

- Deletes the original form of the message that had been received into short-term memory (Brown 1994; Dunkel, 1986)

1.4 Classification of Listening skills

a Predicting content

Depending on the context – a news report, a university lecture, an exchange in a supermarket – you can often predict the kind of words and style of language the speaker will use Our knowledge of the world helps

us anticipate the kind of information we are likely to hear Moreover, when we predict the topic of a talk or a conversation, all the related vocabulary stored in our brains is 'activated' to help us better understand what we're listening to

Tip: If you are taking a listening test, skim through the questions first and

try to predict what kind of information you need to listen out for A question beginning 'How many ?', for example, will probably require you

to listen for a specific number or quantity of something

b Inferring meaning

It’s essential that we hardly know every word in a foreign language and it would be hassled to look up in a dictionary when you don’t recognize words Then, learning how to guess words you don’t know is an important skill Guessing is done by noticing the context or looking at the grammar

of the sentences

In fact, when you let your brain process meaning of words you don’t know basing on the information around it, or in other word, the context; you will remember that word deeply and learn the skill to guess words Context can provide cues to the meaning of unknown words and phrase Guessing from the context helps the listeners (or readers) understand in situations when it would be either impossible or extremely time consuming to refer to a dictionary

c Listening for stress

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic What does this mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length)

Many speakers of syllabic languages don’t understand why they quickly speak or swallow a number of words in a sentence In syllabic languages each syllable has equal importance, and therefore equal time is needed English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words

In some languages, for example Japanese, people say each syllable with equal force But in English, and some other languages, we put a big force (stress)

on some syllable and no force on other syllables or words This can make it difficult for the speakers of other languages to understand English that is spoken quickly Of course, for native speakers it is not difficult – in fact, stress actually helps native speakers understand each other So it is very important

d Listening for gist and detail

The way we listen to something depends on reasons If we listen to the news, we’re probably not listening very carefully, may simply just want to get a general idea If we ask for instructions like how to get to a destination or to use electric items, we have to listen more attentively Thus we listen for gist and detail

• When listening for details, you are interested in a specific kind of information – perhaps a number, name or object You can ignore anything that does not sound relevant In this way, you are able to narrow down your search and get the detail you need

Tip: If you are taking a test, as soon as you get the question paper, skim through the questions, underline the important words and decide what kind of detail you need to identify in the listening text

• Listening for gist: it to get the ‘whole picture’ without having to understand every phrases or sentences What we need to do is to pick up key words and other clues so as to make a guess at the

meaning

e Listening and note-taking

Information presented in the class often contains the central concept of the course and the material most likely to be included on exam Yet, students frequency don not realize the importance of note-taking and listening Note taking is an important study skill helps students do better Learners need it to call up important information, to review information, and to store that information so they can use it later

Taking notes is an important part of the life of every student There are two main reasons why note-taking is important:

1 When you are reading or listening, taking notes helps you concentrate In order to take notes-to write something sensible-you must understand the text As listening and reading are interactive tasks, taking notes help you make sense of the text Taking notes does not mean writing down every word you hear; you need to actively, decide what is important and how is related to what you have already written

2 Notes help you to maintain a permanent record of what you have read

or listen to This is useful when revising in the future for examinations or other reason

Good notes should be accurate, clear and concise They should show the organization of the text, and this should show the relationship between the ideas

f Detecting signposts

There are signposts in language that help us follow what we're listening to These words, which link ideas, help us to understand what the speaker is talking about and where they are taking us They're particularly important

in presentations and lectures For example: first of all, moving on to, in conclusion, in other words, to illustrate this…

Tip: Group signpost phrases according to their functions, and continue to

add new expressions as you come across them

g Critical listening

Critical listening is listening in order to evaluate and judge, forming opinion about what is being said Judgment includes assessing strengths and weaknesses, agreement and approval

This form of listening requires significant real-time cognitive effort as the listener analyzes what is being said, relating it to existing knowledge and rules, whilst simultaneously listening to the ongoing words from the speaker

h Summarizing

Summarizing skill is needed when we repeat the main ideas of the text When practice this skill, listener will try to repeat or reduce the main points into fewer words We might use this skill when reporting the main point of the news to a friend Summarizing the idea enthuses the speakers that you’re interested in what they are saying and also see if the message they’ve sent is received properly by you

Summary also shows that you really understand what you’re listened and help you choose the important parts of something It challenges you to organize what you listen to, reformulate it and put it your own words

1.5 Relations between listening skills and other skills

Research has found that improvement in listening skill has a positive effect

on other language skills - reading, writing and speaking To illustrate, Morris and Leavey (2006) conducted a study focusing on preschoolers‟ phonological development The study reveals that listening instruction skills improve preschooler’s phonological awareness Similarly, two other

studies found out that the listening skills instruction assists middle school students to improve their reading comprehension (Badian, 1999; Bergman, 1999) In addition, the outcome of Bergman‟s (1999) study revealed that listening and reading stories at the same time lead participants to improve their reading comprehension performance

It’s often said that if you listen well then you speak well, excellent reading comprehension leads to good writing pieces So we can see that basic bricks and mortar of a language acquisition and the relationship between listening and other language skills is closely intertwined

1.6 Summary

Chapter 1 focuses on the definition of listening, listening skills and classification of listening skills, give readers an overview about this language skill as well as the importance of it Otherwise, in this chapter, the author also provides readers the relation between listening with other language skills

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

2.1. Research questions

As mentioned in Part A, the study aims at recommending some suggestions for the freshmen at Hanoi Open University, Faculty of English and modern languages to improve their listening skills Especially it aims at answering the following questions:

1 What difficulties do the first year students face in listening skills?

2 What are some suggestions for students to improve their listening skills?

2.2 The subject of the study

This survey is done with freshmen who have begun to study at faculty of English, HOU They have started to approach listening lessons and lack of experience

2.3 The method of the study

In order to get information about the problems of the freshmen in listening skills, a questionnaire was worked out in English 100 questionnaires were given to 1st year students and they were asked to answer them honestly

to guarantee the accuracy and the reliability of the result

The questionnaire (Appendix) consists of 10 questions attributed to help finding essential information of the overview of studying listening as well as challenges facing students Question 1 aims to explore the difficulties that students often encounter in listening English Question 2 is to find out what types of listening exercises students are interested in Question 3 looks for the listening techniques that students often use to listen in class Question 4 finds out what way students prefer to do with the listening tasks in class Question 5

is to find out the teacher’s role in teaching English listening skill in class Question 6 finds out what kind of materials students usually use practice listening skills Question 7 and 8 aims to find how often students practice their listening skills at home Question 9 aims to find out students’ attitudes toward listening skills

2.4 Freshmen’s current situation of learning listening skills

As soon as being done by students and recollected, the questionnaires were analyzed carefully as bellow

CHART 1: STUDENTS’ LISTENING PROBLEMS

Problem 1: New words

The biggest problem that almost every 1st year students have to face is the lack vocabulary The above research shows that 70% the students lack of

vocabulary to deal with listening exercises New words are usually thought to

be obstacles in listening process and make students confused and nervous, because students can’t guess the meaning of words then the meaning of sentences Besides, students usually learn academic words (in school and university) and don’t have habit to widen the vocabulary about other aspects

of society and culture That’s the reason why they don’t understand normal life’s conversation (too much slangs) and specialized terms It’s an urge for the students to increase vocabulary and build their lexicon in order to help them listen actively and make them understand the speakers easily

Problem 2: Grammar structures

Grammar structures are the problem shared 7% of the first year students Even students are taught grammar structures very well, they still don’t catch all things they listen Because syntax of spoken English is different, it’s ungrammatically formed, simplified and can be understood by implication and presupposition negotiated between listeners and speakers

Nevertheless, many students become confused about relationship in a sentence and connections between sentences and they are often unsure of relationship within sentences Thus, lack of grammatical knowledge can reduce English listening skills

Problem 3: Distraction

As it is presented on the chart, there are 11% of first year students find hard to concentrate while practicing listening skill In fact, they don’t know the way to get important keys, and that leads to distraction They tend to pay attention to listen to everything, and are often easily distracted when hearing a strange word They sometimes feel that if they don’t listen to every word,

redundant and unnecessary for them to do so It is obvious that students who try to understand every single word cannot catch on the information completely and often get bad mark

Problem 4: Different accent of speakers

27% of the students reported that their listening comprehension was affected by the speakers’ accent The word “accent” here refers to the variety

of spoken English, that is, whether it was British, American or others The students also used the word include features of speech that they noticed as being different from the type of “standard” English they were familiar with

In fact, the first accent affected students most is the one of their teachers They have got used to listening to their teachers’ accents since they were at high school Consequently, they are all very surprised and confused when listening to other accents Students often listen to some popular accents such

as American British and Australia English so they seem to have difficulties in listening to Singaporean, Malaysian and Indian…

In brief, first year students should get used to as many different accents

as possible to improve listening skills better

Problem 5: Listening speed

According to the survey, 37% the first year students cannot control over speed It is a big obstacle for them during the listening process They claim that the native speakers speed is so fast that they cannot catch up All of the students tend to catch all the words from the speakers They were affected by teaching method at secondary school which targets at accuracy rather than fluency Teacher try to speak slowly and clearly so that students can comprehend everything in lesson As a sequence, their students have formed a habit of trying to identify words clearly and slowly Doing in this way, they

can know what the teacher say to them But in real life, if they strive to identify every word in utterance, they will miss the next part and easily fail to catch the meaning from the message

Problem 6: Pronunciation

Being reported above, 45% of the first year students have problems in pronunciation Many learners of English have got trouble in distinguishing between various sounds of the English language and it prevents them from listening clearly

The English language can be very difficult to pronounce and listen to British English speakers from different regions of the country can be quite confusing There are hundreds of variations on these regional accents and many towns have their own particular differences Pronunciation of British English changes a lot It is not static language This is because some words which are said correctly by careful speakers may be pronounced incorrectly

by many people The incorrect version becomes the norm and subsequently becomes correct and accepted

This is reason why English pronunciation is so difficult It can be very hard for any learner of English to develop good listening skills when there are many variations in accent and mispronunciations are so common among native British English speakers

Problem 7: Lack of social background knowledge

According to the survey data, 23% of the first year students do not pay much attention to equipping themselves with the background knowledge Cruse (2004) suggests: “Language is a kind of cultural expression It is necessary for students to know habits, even life styles” According to Oxford,

background knowledge (including knowledge of the target culture, knowledge

of the topic under discussion, and general world knowledge of current affairs, art, politics, and literature) helps language learners to make guesses about what they hear or read A recent study indicates that associating newly heard information with prior knowledge is a powerful and very frequently used way

to guess the meaning of a listening passage Just as Oxford has suggested, background knowledge is important to listening Students lack of knowledge about the culture of countries around the world, politics, economics, customs, geography and so on that prevents them from effective listening In addition, sometimes although the students have some knowledge of the topic, they do not often make use of the background knowledge to help their listening consciously Therefore, students should equip for themselves the basic knowledge about the culture of English speaking to understand and use of English accurately