METHODS OF TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE 10th GRADE STUDENTS IN NHU XUAN HIGH SCHOOL

CONTENTS Page Introduction 1.1 The reason to choose the theme 1.2 Purpose to research 1.3 The subjects to research 1.4 The researching methods Contents and researching procedure 2.1 Theoretical background 2.2 Status of the study problem 2.3 Measures for implementation 2.4 Study effects 11 3.Conclusion and propossals 12 Conclusion 12 Propossals 13 REFERENCES 14 ASSESSED INITIATVE EXPERIENCES 15 (DANH MỤC CÁC SKKN ĐÃ ĐƯỢC ĐÁNH GIÁ) 1 Introduction 1.1 The reason to choose the theme English plays an important role in our life Nowadays In the information technology times and global integration, English is getting more and more important and is gradually becoming the means of the international communication It is used in all the fields such as science, technique, economy, culture, education, tourism It was estimated that over 4000 people speak English as their mother-tongue and the same number use English as their second language Moreover, English is compulsory in the GCSE exammination, so every student at high school must have a certain level of English to prepare for the exam and after graduation they can communicate, read and write some normal texts Therefore, English is an essential means to everybody with their practical aims To this, we constantly innovate teaching methods as well as curricula to achieve substantive results of English in general and we can provide students with some basic skills domestically and internationally This change facilitates the teaching and learning of English in high school to become a teaching language instead of teaching grammar-translation many years ago However, to forge English skills for students, teachers have to face many difficulties, especially for listening skills In fact, at school, when I started to study foreign languages, most students liked to study, but gradually the students got tired of studying Most of them are very weak in listening skills It is difficult for them to hear the content of a text or a conversation After each lesson, it is very difficult for the teacher to check the information they have listened to, and checking old lessons is often not easy It is said that “ Teaching is an art and teacher is an artist that creates that art”, so a teacher can only create that one when he is aware of their roles and the teaching environment In the class the teacher is not only an instructor but also a leader, an enalyst who guides the students the different situations to make the communicative activities more effective Facing that situation, I am a teacher who directly teach the subject English10 for the students exposed to English in the upper secondary school, I myself worry so much how students can master, Listen to information and use information proficiently In the process of teaching and learning to observe students, I discovered that teaching students' listening skills has many problems Most students not know how to learn to listen, they usually think the listening practice is the hardest In the classroom, students often say that , there are many words that are known in the listening tapescript but they can't hear How can students be able to use their vocabulary and grammatical structures to understand effectively? So in the process of teaching, I searched for some positive, simple, easy-to-understand, practical, scientific methods to develop thinking, speculative and creative ability for students For those reasons I carry out the researching problem: “ METHODS OF TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE 10th GRADE STUDENTS IN NHU XUAN HIGH SCHOOL” 1.2 Purpose to research: Although learning English is very important, students have not been aware of its importance Especially learning English in mountainous and remote areas is much more difficult Because English is a compulsory subject, students have to study for their marks or for the examinations, they don’t study for their job or their daily communication Most students find learning English very boring To be honest, our teaching method is not very good, teaching materials is not enough In English, vocabulary is a very important problem How to teach vocabulary effectively? That requires teachers to find out new methods, choose appropriate words and teaching materials This subject has been researched and applied for the purpose of contributing to the common voice of English teaching at the school From the practical work, we want to help students develop English listening skills to improve the quality of teaching English to the grade-10 students gradually in Nhu Xuan high school 1.3 The subjects to research: The grade-10 students in Nhu Xuan high school 1.4 The researching methods: Study the teaching materials on Internet, textbook, the demands and likes and mentality of students Contents and researching procedure 2.1 Theoretical background: Using teaching methods and techniques in accordance with the content of lessons and students in a class is very important factors to promote self-awareness, activity in learning English so that the lessons are more effective If teachers use teaching methods and techniques that are inappropriate for the content of the lesson and for the learners, so the lesson becomes boring and students have difficulty in finding knowledge, students not want to learn, are not active in learning Therefore, the results are not high, and we not achieve our goals In order to effectively use teaching methods and techniques, especially active teaching methods and techniques in a lesson that requires the teacher to be flexible, The content of the lesson, consistent with the teaching equipment of that section has to be suitable for students of each class As we know, in the curriculum, in response to the demands of the education and the demands of the society, many new teaching methods and techniques have been required, so the teachers have to be up-to-date in effective use in specific lectures, which are: - Cooperative Teaching: Cooperative Teaching is the method that the teacher leads students to work in small groups so that students work on a certain assignment in a certain period of time In the group, under the guidance of the group leader, students combine personal work and pair work, share experience and collaborative work to solve assigned tasks [1] - Project-Based Learning: Project-based learning is a learning activity that is designed to provide students with the opportunities to synthesize knowledge from a variety of areas of study and apply creativeness to life The project is a situation that learners have to solve with knowledge according to the content of the lesson Project-based learning puts learners in a problematic situation, but solving problems requires high self-reliance [1] - Technique for Questioning: In teaching, the teacher's question system plays an important role, is one of the factors determining in the quality of the student's knowledge This technique is often used in conversation questions with students, instead of presentations, reading, writing and the teacher preparares questionaires for students to think about, developing the lesson content as well as encouraging the students' brainstorming, is centered around the ideas and content of the lesson in logical order [1] - For foreign language teaching in general and teaching English in particular, the innovation of teaching methods is very important It is hard for students to master the language, be good at all the skills, specially for students at Nhu Xuan which is one of 11 mountainous districts of Thanh Hoa province Listening is one of the basic content, a subtle combination of teaching skills and a difficult skill to achieve From the above point, the use of appropriate songs really helps the students interested in the subject, better at listening skill In my opinion, every teacher needs to find an optimal method, in accordance with the actual situation and the individual pupils As a teacher of English, I hope to bring my knowledge to impart easily to the students, and find out teaching methods for myself So I boldly launched research projects: “ METHODS OF TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE 10 th GRADE STUDENTS IN NHU XUAN HIGH SCHOOL” I hope the use of appropriate songs for listening skill will help the students extremely interested in the subject, better at listening skill 2.2 Status of the study problem: The definition of listening is understood by scientists in different ways - According to Field (1998: 38), “Listening is an invisible intellectual process, so it is difficult to describe Listeners must distinguish sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, grasp the tone and intent of the speakers to be able to recall and understand it in the socio-cultural context of the speech.” [2] -Nderson & Lynch (1988: 21) provide the definition of listening comprehension as follows: “Listening comprehension means to understand what the speaker has said The listener plays a particularly important role in the listening process by using his diverse knowledge to analyze what he hears in order to understand the speech of the speaker.” [2] - The definition of listening comprehension, according to Van Tan and Nguyen Van Dam (1997) in 'Vietnamese Dictionary', is as follows: “Listening is a process in which auditory receives external sounds and transitions It reaches the central nervous system Here, these sounds are analyzed, transformed into signals, and transmitted to the senses that help shape human reflections for those sounds " [3] In teaching English, for teachers, combining the four skills: Listening Speaking - Reading - Writing is indispensable in order to comply with the reform programs by the Ministry of Education and Training Teachers need to teach tricks for students to be distinctive, easily recognizable and well in actual use, as well as the associated test concerned so that they can listen properly However, over the years, we have become familiar with such ideas as: "We not have listening competition for students at all levels."; "We need to help students understand and use the phrases, grammar proficiency points as much as possible, so that they can achieve high scores in these tests " In fact, according to the reforms enacted by the Ministry of Education, students learn Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing Skills equally, but they almost only use Writting skill in their final exam That may be the reason that we not pay attention to teaching Listening skills perfectly for students This leads to the fact that pupils have good grammar and are weak at listening and speaking ability Like students in other countries in Asia, they have been trained through a system focusing on English grammar, very little on the listening and speaking ability to communicate Therefore, many students understand the rules of grammar well but cannot express their opinions and have difficulties in listening and pronunciation Listening English seems to be the most difficult task of the Vietnamese in general and students in particular They frequently have some errors in English as: + Do not recognize the English tones: When asked about the cause of difficulty with the sounds in English, 31% of students said that this difficulty was because they could not distinguish homophones, Similar pronunciations 28% of students said that the confusion between assertion and negative form is the main reason In particular, 40% of the students surveyed said that they did not recognize the key information they needed to hear because of some of the features of connected speech in English such as elision Weak form of sound, assimilation, contraction, linking, etc Thus, learners not recognize the sounds in English mainly because they not distinguish between homophones and words with similar pronunciations, confusion between assertions and forms Negative, especially due to some of the effects of phonetic speech in English [4] + Lack of concentration when listening: The data from the survey shows that 30% of students think that the reason for lack of concentration is due to poor health while the number of students is higher (37%) Listening is the reason that makes them more and more difficult to focus on listening While 32% of the students surveyed think that their ability to concentrate on listening is due to both From these data it can be concluded that listeners often lose the ability to listen while their health is poor and lack of experience in listening comprehension.[4] + Can not capture the main idea of the listening: According to data obtained, this is the most common cause of difficulty in listening to learners (71%) When asked about the cause of this difficulty, 36% of participants said they could hardly grasp the main idea of the article because they did not know what the important information was 37% of students said that they could not deduce the main content of the list from key words that left them unaware of the main idea The number of people choosing both causes is 25% These data indicate that the cause of the difficulty in capturing the main content of the listening post is (1) not distinguishing the information to be heard with the remaining information and (2) Of hearing from important words.[4] + Have to understand every word Students tend to hear every word from the tapescript and think they are all equally important Actually, it is not true If students not have the ability to select important words from the speech of others, they fail to understand others, which will lead to utter frustration + Cannot understand fast, natural native speech This is because students have few opportunities to hear native speakers say Students only hear the words of the teachers who speak English slowly + Find it difficult to keep up Because students are familiar with the sayings of the teachers, when the hear the words quickly in tapes, or direct native dialogue , they can’t understand + Need to hear things more than once Few Vietnamese students can understand English words when hearing for the first time They have to listen to it so many times to be able to understand Because of these difficulties, a teaching method which is effective and makes the students excited is needed 2.3 Measures for implementation: In fact, with the reforms enacted by the Ministry of Education, students learn Listening and Speaking Skills in paralell to Reading and Writing Skills, but in their final exams Listening skill isn’t refered to That may be the reason why we not pay attention to teach the listening skill for students perfectly However, this skill is very important on the way to reach the target language of ours And we will not develop speaking skill if we not develop listening skill To have a successful conversation, students need to understand what partners are talking to them Listening also helps students permeable vocabulary, sentence structures So, when teaching listening, teachers should teach students to listen in different ways Capturing small following skills will help students' listening skill improve rapidly: Step 1: Before - Listening: At this stage, teachers need to apply some teaching tips to help students think, discuss, explore the topic they are about to listen, how to attract the interest of students, create their demands Set up the context: Ask students to look at pictures, hints by asking questions related to the content of the listening lesson so that students can guess the topic they are about to listen Teach or explain the vocabulary (Pre-teach): Just teach the active words ( about – 5) from each lesson or from the part “ Listen and repeat section” Aks the children guess the new words left on their own in the process of listening or ignored Teachers should also solve pronunciation difficulties, necessary cultural knowledge for students to grasp Lastly, the teacher needs to tell the students how many times they will listen (often or times) Next, one of the following three tricks may be applied before listening Ordering Statements / Pictures: Normally, the teacher give the listening items that have the same content as a story or a process Use the sub-table or projector to present some (5 - 7) sentences or pictures of the listening content, ask them to rearrange them in the order so that they can predict the content of the story or That process True / False Statements Predictions: Use the listening items such as a paragraph or a conversation Also use the sub-table or the projector to make some statements, ask students to make correct guesses based on their knowledge Open Predictions: It is often used for short, descriptive quotes Students can fill the gap with the data or characteristics, It can be the table with the columns that data is missing Ask the students to anticipate the data and information The teacher can use Networks / Brainstorm instead Besides, the teacher can use the Pre-Questions technique by giving some hinted questions about the topic that you are about to ask students to think about and discuss the content or ask the students to make some questions themselves I hope the listening tapescript will answer Step 2: While - Listening: This is an important step that requires students to understand the main content by conducting some basic exercises Once the student has completed the Before-listening exercise, the teacher asks the student to open the task to read and to check whether his / her predictions are true or false, redundant or missing, to correct them Therefore, learners also can understand some of the main content of the listening (Checking) Next, students need to one more exercise to deepen their knowledge, for example: Gap-Filling (Listening to words in fill in the blank); Comprehension questions (Listening and answering system questions) Multiple Choice (Listen and select the correct answer); Identifying specific information; True / False questions Listening and numbering pictures (Listening and numbering pictures); Completing a dialogue.Completing the exercises, the students can understand the listening tapescript specifically, , the next step is to help them have a basis for developing thinking and reproducing the content of listening item Step 3: After - Listening: This is the final stage of the lesson, students are required to more some types of exercises to reinforce their knowledge and broaden their thinking abilities:Gap - Filling: Use words to fill in the blanks.Survey: Ask questions and repond about the problem in the listening item in the classroom or outside of life.Trasformation Writing: Based on the information in the article on a similar issue.Recall / Retell: Speak again, retell the story.With which type of exercise, in which step, when giving the exercises the teacher to proceed the following rules: Set the scene: Set the sceneof the listening item Give time for students (1 10 minutes) to homework.Collect information from Ss./ Get feed back from Ss: Get feedback from students Check and correct: Check information and correct During the implementation of the exercises can be inserted into the game such as Lucky Number, Simon Say, Guessing Game, Introductions, Right-Left, Information to increase the excitement of activities and excitement for students When learning to listen Introduce the topic, content related to the listening item, explain new or difficult concepts to students when necessary Introduce through pictures, by giving a content-related question to students to anticipate the content of the listening While listening the teacher should give some guiding questions; Simultaneously divide the listening process into steps: Listen for the first time (listen to the main idea); Second listening (more detail ) If the listening item is long, divide into short sections, there are specific requirements for each section so that students are more likely to listen and they not damp One of the essential things to listen to is the ability to anticipate situations When they listen, the teacher tells students what is going to happen in a certain context This activity can be performed on the lessons that are a conversation or a story To test the effectiveness of these methods, I would like to teach the test in 10B3, Unit 5, with the topic "Technology and you" [5] UNIT – TECHNOLOGY AND YOU LESSON – LISTENING I Objectives: 1- Educational aim: By the end of the lesson, the Ss will be able to pay much attention to information technology as well as learn how to use the technological devices to modernize their lives 2-Knowledge: - General knowledge: students will be able to listen to a monologue of 120-150 words about a company director’s story to the tasks - Language: Words/ phrases related to the uses of modern inventionscomputer 3- Skills: Listening for gist, listening for details, speaking II Teaching aids: Text book, lesson plan, cassette, CD III Method: Communicative approach and leaner- centered approach IV Procedures: Organizations: (1m) Greeting, checking the attendances Class 10B3 Absentees New lesson: (41ms) Times ms Teacher's activities I.Warm-up *Name some modern devices you know Students' activities -Ss work individually -Ss answer the questions modern devices from T * Answer the questions: - Do you know how to use a computer - Do you think it is dificult for old people to learn a computer ? - Listen - T listen to the answers, corrects and leads into the new lesson  Today we are going to listen a passage talking about experiences of an old man of learning how to use a computer ms 10 ms II Pre-listening Activity 1: * Vocabulary: - worried (a): lo lắng -> Gives example - secretary (n): thư ký -> Translates - memory (n): trí nhớ -> Translates - refuse (v) : từ chối ->Gives synonym - excuse (n,v) -> Gives explanation * Checking the vocabulary: Matching Activity 2: Give some pictures of parts of a computer, and ask students to discuss and give their names in English III While-listening Task 1: -T asks Ss to read the statements in the book carefully - Ask Ss guess the answer -T plays the tape -T walks around and gives help if necessary - Predict the words through the explain of example of the teacher - Listen how to read - Read chorally - Read invidually -Ss read the statements in silence - Ss guess the answer -Ss listen and discuss in pairs to decide whether the statements are T or F *Expected answer: 1.F was 10 -T plays the tape again to checks the result ms Task 2: ( in book ) -T asks Ss to read the story - T asks Ss to guess the words to fill in the gap -T plays the tape -T plays the tape again to checks the results 10 ms IV Post-listening: Activity 1: Fill in the blanks to complete the summary: teacher secretary office lessons excuse The story is about an old man who doesn't know how to use the computer He became worried when his (1)… ……asked him for a computer in the (2) …… He decided to take some computing lessons His son understood about computer and he became his (3) ……… His son was helpful but he didn't understand at all After a few (4) ……… he began to feel tired and he made an (5)……… , saying that he had a headache Finally, he didn't learn computer Activity 2: T asks the Ss to stand up and retell the story ->wasn’t 2.T 3.T 4.T F understood -> didn’t understand F happy -> tired - Ss present their results - Ss read the story with the gaps in silence, the task in pairs *Expected answer: 1.invited 2.still 3.refused 4.excuse 5.anything -Ss work in groups to fill the story *Expected answer: secretary office teacher lessons excuse Consolidations: (1m) 11 - Listen for gist and specific information about using a computer Homework: (2ms) - Learn by heart all the vocabulary - Do tasks again in book - Prepare the next part 2.4 Study effects: After a year to implement innovative methods in teaching English, especially English listening skill, I feel happy because of the better results I have found that students are interested in the subject , and especially when they practise speaking and listening Most students learn self-discipline, self-awareness and discuss the positive implementation of activities that teachers require After a period of teaching, students understand the lessons better and better The proportion of weak and lazy students has decreased remarkably Above all of students have made progress in English listening skill, resulting in being better at the other skills They are no longer timid and afraid of making mistakes as the first time at school They are much more confident in communicating in English At the beginning of the first semester I had a listening test for the students of 10B3 The result was very low The result before implementing new method Total students tested: 35 Class Total students 10B3 35 pretty good rather good average total % bad very bad total % total % total % total % 14,2 18 51,6 10 28,5 5,7 The result after implementing new method Total students tested: 35 Class Total students 10B3 35 pretty good rather good average total % 03 8,6 bad very bad total % total % total % total % 17 48,6 14 40 2,8 0 It can be seen from the above tables that the application of the method of teaching listening skills as I have mentioned above in actual teaching has been effective And it is more important that students become interested in listening skills, which can help students develop their ability to communicate in English I 12 believe I have made the right choice when using the new method to impart knowledge to students 3.Conclusion and propossals 3.1 Conclusion As mentioned above, teaching vocabulary is very important and necessary because it helps the learners understand and grasp the information easily and quickly Moreover, it also helps the learners feel more confident and pleasant in communication However, teaching vocabulary is a difficult task It requires the teachers many things such as cleverness, intelligence, understanding of learners Also, the teachers spend much time choosing carefully the words they should teach, the techniques and teaching aids Pracically, many teachers feel confused and difficult when designing the way to teach vocabulary So as a teacher of English in the near future, I have to a research about The Way to Teach Vocabulary Applied at High School From the difficulties, I would like to give some suggestions for a better way of teaching vocabulary: +Combine different techniques at the same time to teach one new word.This will help the students understand and master the word more deeply and quickly +Apply the techniques as much as possible in a unit so that the students will not feel bored and dull when studying vocabulary: +Translate the new words that are too difficult and abstract to the pupils +Let the pupils practise by making sentences, filling in the gaps, answering the questions, so that they can remember the new words longer +Make a context clearly and easily understood by all the pupils in the class so that the pupils can guess the meaning of the words +Picture must be colorful and vivid, and languguage must be familiar and close to the pupils 3.2 Propossals As we all know, to organize a foreign language class is not simple Because each method only offers high efficiency when teachers know to choose and use the activities in a reasonable way Therefore it requires each teacher to choose the practical and appropriate English songs when using music to teach English listening skills so that students can have more fun The Department of Education and Training needs to organise the training programs and workshops for the teaching methods, especially listening skills so that the teachers in Thanh Hoa province can learn, practise and share the experience to each other 13 CONFIRMATION OF THE HEAD MASTER Thanh Hoa, May 19th, 2018 I swear this is my initiative experience, not make the copy of the others Author Đỗ Thị Phương Nguyễn Văn Chuyên 14 REFERENCES (TÀI LIỆU THAM KHẢO) [1] Dạy học tích cực - Một số phương pháp kỹ thuật dạy học - Nguyễn Lăng Bình (Chủ biên), Đỗ Hương Trà, Nguyễn Phương Hồng, Cao Thị Thặng - Nhà xuất Đại học Sư phạm, 2010 [2] Anderson, A & Lynch, T (1988) Listening Oxford Oxford University Press [3] ‘Từ điển tiếng Việt’ Văn Tân Nguyễn Văn Đạm (1997) [4] “ Kỹ nghe hiểu tiếng Anh, khó khăn biện pháp khắc phục” – Ha Noi university of culture [5] TIẾNG ANH 10, http://www.violet.vn 15 ASSESSED INITIATVE EXPERIENCES (DANH MỤC CÁC ĐỀ TÀI SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM ĐÃ ĐƯỢC HỘI ĐỒNG ĐÁNH GIÁ XẾP LOẠI CẤP PHÒNG GD&ĐT, CẤP SỞ GD&ĐT VÀ CÁC CẤP CAO HƠN XẾP LOẠI TỪ C TRỞ LÊN) Author (Họ tên tác giả): Nguyễn Văn Chuyên Position (Chức vụ đơn vị công tác): Giáo viên, trường THPT Như Xuân TT Tên đề tài SKKN Cấp đánh giá xếp loại (Phòng, Sở, Tỉnh ) Kết đánh giá Năm học xếp loại đánh giá xếp (A, B, loại C) METHODS OF TEACHING VOCABULARY FOR THE 10th CLASS STUDENTS IN NHU Sở GD& ĐT Thanh Hóa C 2015 - 2016 XUAN HIGH SCHOOL 16 ... SKILLS FOR THE 10 th GRADE STUDENTS IN NHU XUAN HIGH SCHOOL I hope the use of appropriate songs for listening skill will help the students extremely interested in the subject, better at listening. .. help students develop English listening skills to improve the quality of teaching English to the grade- 10 students gradually in Nhu Xuan high school 1.3 The subjects to research: The grade- 10 students. .. scientific methods to develop thinking, speculative and creative ability for students For those reasons I carry out the researching problem: “ METHODS OF TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE 10th GRADE STUDENTS