TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS OF GRADE 9

TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims of the study 1.3 Research subjects 1.4 Method 1.5 Innovation DEVELOPMENT 2.1 Literature review 2.2 Basic of theory 2.3 Research data and data analysis 2.4 Experimental Results CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1.Conclude 3.2 Request REFERENCE 3 9 15 15 16 17 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE Nowadays English has played an important part in our life and nobody can deny that English is the international medium in the fields of science, technology, culture, education, economy and so on It has been considered as an international language all over the world, it has become a compulsory subject in all secondary schools as well It is the key for anyone who wants to get success in life It is also considered a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Viet Nam and other countries It is widely seen as the key language toll in the integrating process in the world With rapid development and expansion of the informational technologies, there needs to be a common language for people of all countries to exchange information with each other and it is English that is used as a means of international communication Listening is ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process Listening is a key to all effective communication Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood As a result, communication breacks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irriated But techniques for improving English listening skill is the topic that has got mucilage concern of expects Many books about this issue have been published Different authors dealt with different aspects of the topic However, the difficulties that leaeners often have in learning listening and solutions for the problems mentioned in some books have not been clearly dealt with in full and somtimes caused confusion to learner of English As a result, students of English often find listening difficult because they not have appropriate methods to get over the difficulties Therefore ; This research is armed at studying factors relevants to listening comprehension Structure of a listening lesson and conducting a survey for collecting data about the students ‘ difficulties in learning listening Base on the result of the survey, the difficulties have been found Solution to the problems have been suggested One of the urgent requirements for all English teachers is to be able to help students improve four skills well Among Secondary schools in Thanh Hoa Province, Cam Phong Secondary School has invested for teaching and learning English for many recent years However, the teaching and learning process seems to still focus too much on grammar, structures and vocabularies Our students are very good at doing exercises of written forms; These forms of exercises mostly concern grammar, reading or writing comprehension Meanwhile listening is considered the one of the fundamental language skills, the status of listening in language teaching and learning has undergone substantial changes in recent years From my teaching context, I find that my students seem to fail in doing listening tasks in textbook because of many reasons The two important reasons are that the content of the tasks is really complicated while students' listening ability is not good and especially students have few strategies to deal with their listening problems So what difficulties students in Cam Phong Secondary School face with learning listening, whether the innovation effect on student' listening improvement and their attitude towards the new way of teaching listening if the author changes are the burning questions in the researcher's mind that inspire the author to change the way to teach listening skill in order to help students With the hope of improving listening skill for our students and as a result, the experience initiative goes as:“Techniques for improving listening skills of grade students at Cam Phong Secondary School.” 1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in listening which the students Cam Phong Secondary School encounter so that some effective techniques can be given to help them improve this skill These are the specific aims: - finding out the difficulties encountered by the students - investigating the students’ attitudes at FLSS towards listening - suggesting techniques with the hope of helping the students improve the ability of listening 1.3 RESEARCH SUBJECTS This study addressed the following research questions: What difficulties nineth grade students face with learning listening to English materials? Does the new way of teaching listening effect on students' listening improvement or not? What are students' attitudes to the new way of teaching listening? 1.4 METHODS The methods used in the study consisted of classroom observation, small group interviews and teaching dairy The first method was classroom observation Students were observed while they were doing the listening tasks to examine whether students listened to the CD attentively and how they did the tasks The second one was informal small group interviews to define the difficulties and the students' attitude towards listening after carrying out listening innovation Finally, in order to investigate whether this listening innovation was useful for students and whether it could encourage students to listen, what the teacher observed and interviewed were noted down on weekly teaching dairy Listening challenges for English language learners There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language) The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties Contributing factors include the speaker talking quickly, background noise, a lack of visual clues (such as on the telephone), the listener’s limited vocabulary, a lack of knowledge of the topic, and an inability to distinguish individual sounds While the challenges posed by the speaker or the situation may be out of the listener’s hands, there are a few skills or 'strategies' that English learners can use to help them along 1.4.1 Predicting content Imagine you've just turned on your TV You see a man in a suit standing in front of a large map with the symbols of a sun, clouds and thunder What you imagine he is about to tell you? Most likely, this is going to be a weather forecast You can expect to hear words like 'sunny', 'windy' and 'overcast' You'll probably hear the use of the future tense: 'It'll be a cold start to the day'; 'there'll be showers in the afternoon', etc Depending on the context – a news report, a 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 Practise predicting content: Watch or listen to a recorded TV programme or clip from YouTube Pause after every few sentences Try to predict what is going to happen or what the speaker might say next 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 1.4.2 Listening for gist Imagine you are a superhero flying in the sky From that height, it is possible to see what the entire area is like, how densely populated it is, the kind of houses in each area When listening, it is also possible to get the ‘whole picture’ but with one crucial difference: information comes in a sequence And in that sequence of information, there are content words (the nouns, adjectives and verbs) that can help you form that picture We often call this listening for gist For example, the words 'food', 'friends', 'fun', 'park' and 'sunny day' have their own meanings, but when you hear the words in sequence, they help form the context of a picnic Practise listening for gist: Find a short video with subtitles on a topic that interests you Use the title to help you predict the content and then listen out for the content words Go back, and listen again with the subtitles How much did you understand the first time? Return to the video a week later and try again Tip: When you learn new words, try to group them with other words used in a similar context Mind maps are good for this 1.4.3 Detecting signposts Just like the traffic lights on roads, 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, if a university lecturer says: 'I am going to talk about three factors affecting global warming…' then later on you might hear the phrases 'first of all', 'moving on to' and 'in summary' to indicate the next part of the talk Other words and phrases can function in a similar way For instance, to clarify ('in other words', 'to put it another way'); to give examples ('to illustrate this', 'for example'), and so on Take a look at this list of phrases for more examples Practise detecting signpost language: Most course books for learners of English come with a CD and audio script Find an example of a business presentation or lecture and see how many signpost phrases you can identify (listen more than once, if necessary) Then check your notes with the audio script Tip: In your notebook, group signpost phrases according to their functions, and continue to add new expressions as you come across them 1.4.4 Listening for details Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier on as a superhero This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's on your list Similarly, 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 In a listening test, if you are asked to write down the age of a person, listen for the words related to age ('old', 'young', 'years', 'date of birth', etc.) or a number that could represent that person's age If it is a conversation, you might wait to hear someone beginning a question with 'How old…?' Practise listening for details: Decide on a type of detailed information you want to practise listening for and watch programmes where you would expect to get that information.For example, you could listen to a weather report to get details about the weather, or you could follow the sports news to find out the latest results 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 1.4.5 Inferring meaning Imagine you are a tourist in a country whose language you not speak In a restaurant, you hand over a credit card to pay for the bill, but the server seems to say something apologetic in response Even though you don't understand his words, you can probably conclude that the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, and you need to pay with cash instead This is the technique of inferring meaning: using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to work out the meaning of what we hear Similarly, we can infer the relationship between people from the words they use, without having to find out directly Take the following conversation: A: Tom, did you your homework? B: I did, sir, but the dog ate it A: That's a terrible excuse You'll never pass your exams if you don't work harder We can infer from the use of the words 'homework' and 'exams' that this is a conversation between a student and his teacher By using contextual clues and our knowledge of the world, we can work out what's being said, who is speaking and what's taking place Practise inferring meaning: Find a YouTube clip from a popular television show, for example Friends Now, rather than watch it, just listen to the dialogue How much can you infer about what is taking place, who is talking and what their relationship is? Now listen to the clip a second time but watch it too Were your conclusions correct? Tip: The next time you hear a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning using the context or situation to help you But don't worry if you don't get it the first time As with everything in life, the more you practise, the better you will get Summing up These strategies are not stand-alone While prediction is mostly a pre-listening skill, others need to be used simultaneously to get the best result when listening Learners of English, improve your listening skills with our free podcasts for grade at Cam Phong secondary school 1.5 INNOVATION In this section, I would like to introduce my innovation in my listening periods carried out from October 10 to November 30 at Cam Phong Secondary School There are thirty nine students who are in grade in my class with mixed abilities Each week we had one listening period which lasted during 45 minutes The main material was English book which designed with different topics as well as different tasks for students to practice listening However, most of students in my class are low competence and they seem to have no strategies to listen, therefore the tasks are too difficult for them This is the reason why I decided to innovate and this innovation divided into steps: adapting the listening materials and the tasks, providing students with appropriate listening strategies a What is innovation? The word "innovation" has been much mentioned in many language researchers in recent years Miles (1964, p13) found that innovation as organizational behaviors while Nicholls (1983, p4) illustrated innovation as “an idea, object or practice perceived as new by an individual or individuals, which is intended to bring about improvement in relation to desired objectives, which is fundamental in nature and which is planned and deliberate White (1998) realized innovation in differences with change; innovation is defined as involving deliberate alteration-intention is a crucial element b Context of the previous listening teaching Before I carried out my innovation, I usually warmed up my students by some activities such as, guessing games, picture description, in order to lead to the topic of the new lesson After that I dealt with each listening task in the textbook by playing the tape three times for each task, then asked them to give their answers Most of them gave the correct answers because they had the teachers' books which contained the answers to the tasks in our textbook that was the reason why they could answer quickly and correctly In spite of the fact that all tasks were completed that meant my duty also completed, my students did not really pay attention the lesson, they did not understand the content of the lesson because the tasks in the textbook were difficult for them to and they chose the simply way to complete this compulsory part of English subject instead of learning how to listen effectively c Adapting the listening materials and the tasks With the clear purpose to encourage our students in listening, my school headmaster completely supported my innovation providing that the materials had to refer to the topic of the curriculum designed I redesigned the tasks in the textbook for the familiar topics and find other materials for difficult topic in order to make the listening materials easier and more interesting There were many sources to find the listening materials, however I really found it difficult to choose because the materials had to meet require that it related to the topic in the textbook and the content of it was easier and more interesting than the materials in the textbook After ten days, I believed that I chose appropriate materials, I started designing the exercises I divided the listening tapes into small parts and designed different kind of tasks for each listening part such as, number the pictures, listen and tick the words you hear, filling in the gaps, multiple choice questions, true or false statements, arrange the words they hear to make a complete sentences and so on All materials were printed and given to students in the listening classes d Providing listening strategies to guide them to listen At first, I also warmed up them by some interesting activities such as, crossword, action games, and describing pictures, ect to lead to the topic they were going to listen to Before listening for the first time, I supplied my students with new words and new structures, and then I gave each student a handout which contained the listening exercises for the listening lesson For each exercise, my students were asked to read the instruction and the content of the exercise carefully to make sure that they understood what they had to If they did not understand what the task meant, I would explain If the topics were familiar with daily life, my students were asked to predict the answers before listening After that I provided them some suitable listening strategies for each task and guide them how to I played the CD player for the first listening, stopped at the key sentences, and then only played the key sentences contained the answers for the second and third time My students were allowed to discuss the answers in one minute before I called some students to give the answers e Problems happened when introducing innovation When I introduced my innovation in my class, my students were really surprised by what I was doing because they had to use the tasks given by the teacher instead of using the tasks in textbook as usual Some of them may be confused because they could not see the answer keys in teacher's book to answer the questions When innovation was carried out, many colleagues in my school believed that my innovation would help my students improve their listening skill and made them be more interested in listening Some of them thought that it was not practical and I was wasting my time and my effort because it did not help students to pass the General Certificate of Secondary Education DEVELOPMENT 2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Today the use of English in communication is essential and important English not only helps us to develop economic, society, but also helps us integrate with our friends throughout the world English is useful for many different reasons: We may use English when traveling or working abroad If we know English, we can find a good job easily, we can trade with other countries in English around the world to business, economic development Knowing English helps us understand the songs, read books, watch movies, watch TV programs in English But in fact, secondary students in particular and people learning English in general have not learned English boldly and confidently to communicate in practice In order to help the students use English to communicate in everyday life, the teachers need to innovate teaching methods, pay attention to promoting language environment at school However this is not an easy matter for both the teachers and the students It is important for the teachers to know how to select the specific language games in the appropriate classes of objects, the ability of the students to meet the efficiency The teachers should always encourage the students to participate in learning activities and practice communicating to make the lessons exciting, lively, and attractive They can form the habit of communicating in English 2.2 BASIS OF THEORY When introducing my own innovation, the author found some similarities with the study of God (2000) In the study of God, he also wanted to find the learner's listening problems and provide them some strategies with the hope to help them deal with their listening problems The result in God proved that listening strategies provided were really useful to students Sharing the same idea with God (2000), Teng (2003) also helped students to listen more effectively by instructing them some listening strategies The results of the study showed that students' perception toward the task of learning listening was changed Most strategies taught were positive effect to students Although some strategies had little effectiveness, the study brought students some useful strategies to improve their listening comprehension In Wang's study (2007), the researcher also used observation, interview and dairy to collect data; especially the author's changes helped students who were the participants of the study take part in the listening activities more actively and more conscientiously And more importantly both the researcher and students were contented with the author's changes Sharing the similarities with Cross (2009) about the methods to collect data, the author also collected data by using interview, observation Both the researcher and Cross have attempted to help students to improve their listening skill 2.3 RESEARCH DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS In this section, I would like to introduce the research data when I carried out my innovation and the results of the study from observations, small group interview and teacher's dairy The first part of this section was the data analysis of the first observation and interview which were carried out before adapting materials and providing strategies The second part was the results from the observations and interview which were conducted after applying the innovation in the listening lesson Part 1: Before innovation * Observation result The first observation was done during the first listening lesson with no change The researcher invited two other English teachers in the English department at Cam Phong Secondary School to observe Then, the researcher collected their observation schemes to synthesize and analyze Following were some main points of observation results * The materials that teacher used were only textbook (English 9) and the cassette The teacher only explained the aim of tasks and then asked students to by listening two or three times without providing them strategies to the tasks * Students seemed to be quiet; they looked at the teacher's books while listening instead of looking the tasks and listening to the tape attentively and did the tasks in silence Students participated in the lesson without volunteer; the teacher had to call them to give their answers and their opinions about the other answers The class atmosphere was boring * Interview results Two questions in Vietnamese were asked two small groups students as soon as the lesson had finished and the information was noted down on the teacher's diary From the data collected, the researcher synthesized, analyzed and found that students had many difficulties when learning listening and they thought that listening was the most difficult skill of four skills Here are two comments transcript from interviewing two small groups: We find that listening is very difficult, learning listening is a long constant process But we only focused on grammar for a long time ago, therefore when we realize that listening is really necessary for us, we want to learn it well, we had many difficulties We see that the tasks in the textbook are not interesting and too complicated to us Especially we not have techniques to the tasks It is listening that take much time to learn, but we not study it well because we lack of many things The content of some tasks in our textbook is boring and difficult for us, in addition to the difficulty that we are not guided how to learn listening well Therefore there are many difficulties that we cope with when we have to find our own ways to learn listening Part 2: After innovation * Observation results The second observation was carried out during the following weeks The researcher observed together with five teachers who were in English Department After that, the researcher collected the observation schemes, noted down the information and analyzed the data The following were some findings from observation: * The listening class started with some interesting activates that led to the topic of the lesson The teacher provided some new words that appeared in the listening passage before listening and taught students how to pronounce Students are not nervous, they seemed to be motivated * The tasks in the handouts which the teacher gave students were adapted When received the handout, some of students were confused because it was quite different from their textbook, but when the teacher explained why she had to that they nod their head * Students were asked to read the instruction of each task carefully, the teacher explained the instruction to some students who did not understand what the task meant and then the teacher provided them some strategies to each task Most students participated in the lesson; sometimes few students seemly ignored their duty However, the class atmosphere was warmed up Students listened attentively and did the task actively They gave the answers voluntarily and gave their comments when there was mistake * Students' interview results The second interview was conducted after each listening lesson in the break time The students were asked to answer three main questions The findings from each question were synthesized and analyzed below: For question of students' feeling about listening after applying the new way to teach, most students realized that listening was necessary for their future life Although it was difficult, it was really interesting If they had good listening materials and appropriate listening strategies, they would study it better This proved that innovation had a good influence on students However, some students admitted that learning listening was not easy and it was difficult for them to overcome their problems in learning listening 10 For question "What you think about the teacher's innovation in listening lesson?" Most students believed that the teacher made the listening materials easier and more interesting The materials were appropriate with their ability Especially, they felt confident when they had listening strategies given by teacher Most of them thought that the changes were helpful and necessary The class atmosphere became more exciting This illustrated that the teacher's change was effective; students really were aroused after leaving listening behind for a long time ago They were not stressful; they released themselves from the teacher's book when they listened and did the tasks confidently and actively Seeing these findings, the author herself felt quite happy because her efforts were not in vain However, few students still found it difficult in catching up with the lesson because of the speech rate in the tape Here is some information transcript: We think that the teacher's change is necessary It helps us to interest in the listening lesson We find it easier to listen and not stressful We believe that our listening skill is improved better We not have to depend on the teacher's book when listening and with the help of our teacher we understand our problems faced with and we know how to control them to finish the tasks For question 3, which asked students about their satisfaction after the change in their listening lesson, the author learned that majority of students were satisfied with the innovative listening lessons Four groups interviewed expressed their great satisfaction of listening materials adapted This meant one of the difficulties of students was deal with Two groups showed their interest in listening strategies They really were confident when they knew how to the tasks with the strategies provided The second difficulty was also tackled However, one group admitted that although the lesson was more interesting that it was, they wanted the teacher to slow down the process of doing some tasks Some comments from group interviews transcript below: We like the new ways of teaching listening We feel that the materials adapted are suitable for our ability We think that it is a good way to help us to improve our listening skill We want to thank you because you provide us many useful strategies to be able to learn listening better After your effort to help us improve listening skill, we can see our problems and learn how to overcome in order to develop our listening skill We think it is an effective way; you should apply to all listening lessons * Teacher's interview results After six weeks of the innovation, five English teachers who were invited to observe class 9C were interview about their opinions about teaching listening and their attitudes to the innovation The following were some main finding from this interview: * Two teachers complained that listening was one of the most difficult skills to teach Teaching listening really was not easy for them because of many reasons such as the low level of students, the limited time for listening period 11 (only 45 minutes), the inappropriate materials, and act Especially, they were disappointed when students did not take part in the lesson enthusiastically; they depended on the answer keys on the teacher's book Therefore the aim of teaching was not successful * Most teachers expressed their agreement about the idea of the effects of innovation on students' listening They found that this innovation helped the listening lesson easier and more interesting and students became more actively and students' listening skill was really improved However, teachers said that it was not easy to choose appropriate materials that related to the topic in the textbook and it was difficult to cut the tape into key sentences which contained the answers * One of two teachers thought that it was not necessary to make change because it took much time to prepare meanwhile listening was not used for GCSE * Practice listening through the lessons: Appendix 1: Observation diary before change The first listening lesson Period 23 Unit Skills 2- (Listening) Events: The teacher warm-up and checked up old lesson The teacher started to introduce new lesson Unit 3: Skills 2- part 4: Listening Students had to listen and choose the best answer then answer the questions The teacher asked the students to open their textbooks and asked them read the task carefully Then, the teacher played the tape for students to listen at the first time Teacher asked Ss to give their answer if they can Most students did not have the answer They kept silent Teacher played the tape for the second and third time and asked Ss to give the final answer in their notebook Then, two students were called on to write the answers on the board They looked at the answers on their paper notes to write on board Teacher played the tape for the last time to check the answers * Notes - The atmosphere was not comfortable - Students participated in the lesson without enthusiast Most students did the task in silence - They copied the answers from the teacher's book without listening Interview questions before innovation The first listening lesson How are you today? What you think about listening skill? What difficulties you usually face with listening lesson? 12 Appendix 2: Classroom observation diary after innovation Period 17: Unit TEEN STRESS AND PRESURE - GETTING STRARTED (Listening) Events Students were warmed up by some interesting pictures and then led to the new lesson The teacher provided some new words that appears in listening passage, taught them how to pronounce them The teacher gave students the listening handout and asked Sts to read the instructions of task carefully to make sure that all of them understood what they had to The teacher gave them some strategies to task (Multiple choice questions): first read all questions and their options carefully, tried to choose the best answer before listening The teacher played the tape for the first time The second and the third time she only played the key sentences for each question Students listened to the tape attentively Most students raised their hands to answer the questions when the tape stopped The teacher played the taped again to check their answers * Notes - The class atmosphere was interesting - Students took part in the lesson actively and enthusiastically, answered the questions confidently They could explained why they chose - The tape was cut into small key sentences Appendix 3: Classroom observation diary after innovation Period 43 Unit SKILLS 2- (Listening) Events Students were warmed up by "crosswords" and then led to the new lesson The teacher provided some new words that appears in listening passage, taught them how to pronounce it The teacher gave students the listening handout and asked Sts to read the instructions of task carefully to make sure that all of them understood what they had to The teacher gave them some strategies to task (True or False statements?): first read all the statements, then underlined the key words of each statement, tried to predict whether they were true or false before listening The teacher played the tape for the first time The second and the third time she only played the key sentences for each statement Students listened to the tape attentively Most students were eager to answer the questions when the tape stopped The teacher played the taped again to check their answers * Notes 13 - Some students were confused when got the handout because it was quite different with the tasks in their textbook, but when the teacher explained why they understood - The class atmosphere was interesting - Surprisingly, students took part in the lesson actively and enthusiastically - The tape was cut into small key sentences - Listening seemed to be easier than it was Appendix 4: Classroom observation diary after innovation Period 63 Unit RECIPES AND EATING HABITS - SKILLS Events The teacher motivated students by showing some funny activities The teacher provided some new words that appears in listening passage, taught them how to pronounce them, and explained the meaning of these words through pictures The teacher gave students the listening handout and asked Sts to read the instructions of task 1carefully to make sure that all of them understood what they had to The teacher gave them some strategies to task (Gap filling): first read the paragraph from the beginning to the end, tried to define the part of speech of each gap and guessed the words basing on the content of the paragraph before listening The teacher played the tape for the first time The second and the third time she only played the key words for each gap Students listened to the tape attentively Most students were eager to answer the questions when the tape stopped The teacher played the taped again to check their answers * Notes - Students seemed to listen easier - Sts guessed some right words before listening Therefore they felt happy - Some student shouted aloud "yes" when they listened correctly Appendix 5: Interview questions after innovation Interview questions for students How are you today? What you think about listening skill? What you think about the teacher's innovation in this listening lesson? Do you feel satisfied or not? Why? Interview questions for teachers How are you? How long have you been teaching English? How much time you spend teaching English at school? Which skill you think is the most difficult to teach? What are the difficulties for you when teaching four skills of English? What you think about your listening comprehension lessons? 14 Do you think teaching listening in our school need to be changed? Why? How you feel about my innovation in listening lessons? Does it help our students improve their listening skill? Why? 2.4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS After I conducted the teaching experiments about this topic in class 9C, I find out their positive feedback which improves their listening more Result before and after applying the suggested adaptation of listening activities in textbook ‘English 9’ Listening skill Class/ After applying Before applying Number Grade of Số lượng Phần trăm Số lượng Phần trăm students 9C/ 36 xcellent Good Average Weak Bad HS HS 15 HS HS HS 2.8% 13,9% 41,6% 25% 16,7% HS HS 17 HS HS HS 13,9% 22,2% 47,2% 11,1 % 5,6% CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1 CONCLUDE This study was conducted with the cooperation of the researcher and five English teachers in English Department as well as grade students at Cam Phong Secondary School The aim of the innovation was to investigate what difficulties grade students faced with, the effect of innovation on student's listening skill and the students' attitude toward listening after change From the results of the classroom observation, students' and teacher's interview and teacher's dairy, the researcher could see the significant change in listening lessons with the teacher's intervention Both teachers and students realized the necessity of the innovation in learning and teaching listening and felt satisfied with this innovation Students participated in the lesson eagerly and actively This led to the class atmosphere became more interesting From this result, it could be sure that the intervention had good impacts on students' participation, the active learning environment and students could listened better than they used to Although there were obvious significant changes in students' listening improvement, with limited time the limitation of this study was unavoidable The author realized that there are still few areas that should be improved in the future First, the findings cannot be generalized to all students in Cam Phong Secondary School Therefore further studies should explore the effectiveness of the innovation with higher number of students and allocate a longer period of time than only six weeks 15 Second, the author needs to improve the collection methods In this study, the teacher observed her students in listening class and noted down the information on the teaching dairy by remembering what happened in the class when the lesson finished This could not be enough information so that the author should record what was happening in the class and watched again to have exact information The researcher also did not record the interviews with students and teachers, but based on the teacher's memory and the notes on the dairy This might miss some useful information And the interview questions in the research were still few Thus, in order to have more and deep information, the author should ask more questions and record the interviews in the further studies On the whole, although there were some limitations for the first time in doing an innovation, the researcher felt that it was worth efforts and this research was a good experience for the author and her staffs This study also played an important role when it blew a new wind in teaching listening in Cam Phong Secondary Some teachers in the author's school began to implement other studies with the hope to improve learning English situation in this school In the future, the author will continue to try her best to understand her students and to make her teaching more interesting and effective to her students 3.2 REQUEST: To help my teaching and listening skills reach higher level, I strongly recommend: - School: To invest in additional facilities for study in fuctional rooms, tapes, computers, headsets for students and microphone for the teacher Beside, establish English club at school so that students can practice more and improving their English - Education Department: Regularly organize seminars and seminars for teachers to meet, exchange experienes and methods, and also have opportunity to communicate with each other in English Confirmation of the Head Master of Cam Phong Secondary School Cam Phong March 3rd, 2018 I declare that the work contained in this initiative is result of my own research Nguyen Thi Thuy Hang 16 REFERENCE Christine C M God, 2000 A cognitive perspectives on language learners’ listening comprehension problems Cheung Yun Kul, 2010 The importance of Teaching listening in the EFL Classroom Jeremy Cross, 2009 Effects of Listening Strategy Instruction on news Videotext Comprehension, Language Teaching Research 13,2; pp 151-176 Nicholls, J 1983 Exchange structure in the ESL classroom: Q-A-C and Q-CQA-C sequences in small group interaction University of lllinois at UrbanaChampaign, pragmatics and language learning monograph series, 4:183-193 O'Malley,J.M and Chamot, A.U 1990 Learning strategies in second language acquisition Scarcella, R.C & Oxford, RL 1992 The tapestry of language learning: the individual in the communicative classroom Boston, MA: Heine & Heine The National Capital Language Resource Center, Washington, DC (2003-2004) Teng, Huei-Chun, 2003 Teaching EFL listening strategies to College students in Taiwan White, R.V 1998 “Language Curriculum Design: Process and management” In the ELT Curriculum: Design, Innovation and Management Oxford: Blackwell Xiaoying Wang, 2007 Three Ways to Motivate Chinese Students in EFL listening Classes, Volume 17, Article 17 ... help students With the hope of improving listening skill for our students and as a result, the experience initiative goes as: Techniques for improving listening skills of grade students at Cam Phong... that listening was one of the most difficult skills to teach Teaching listening really was not easy for them because of many reasons such as the low level of students, the limited time for listening. .. their listening more Result before and after applying the suggested adaptation of listening activities in textbook ‘English 9 Listening skill Class/ After applying Before applying Number Grade of