Some suggested types of exercises to motivate students into listening

Part I: INTRODUCTION Reasons for Choosing the Topic Alongside the current trend of reforming English teaching method, there is a great need for focusing on communicating skills and listening is one of them Then a troublesome problem arises Of all these four skills, listening skill is considered to be one of the most difficult skills to teach and to learn During teaching and selfstudying, As teacher of English, I myself and other colleagues have met a lot of difficulties in appoaching this skill I has chosen the topic about “Some Suggested types of Exercises to Motivate Students into Listening ” for two reasons Firstly, listening skill plays an important role in teaching and learning a language so it should be paid much more attention to However, it seems that this skill is not really focused on in many high schools in Vietnam and the qualities of teaching and learning this skill not meet the avearage requirements Thus, this topic is chosen to study in order to find out some suggested solutions to partly improve this matter Secondly, although learning English listening skill is significant, the fact is that not many students are interested in studying listening because they have to struggle with a lot of difficulties which make them discouraged Thus, the purpose of studying this topic is to create some new and interesting listening activities to motivate students into listening skill as well as design or reform several listening tasks in the course book to stimulate the students during listening lessons Aims of the Study The study is conducted with the following aims: - to find out the problems and difficulties in learning and teaching English listening skill at high school - to suggest some solutions to these problems to partly improve the qualities of teaching listening skill and motivate students into listening lessons Scope of the Study This study is conducted among the 10th form students at Ngoc Lac high school during the school year 2017 -2018 Methods of the Study Both comparative and contrastive methods are used First of all, for the theoretical basis, a lot of reference materials on listening skills have been collected, analyzed and synthsizeded carefully with the due consideration for the students’ learning situations Secondly, a survey questionare has been conducted with the students to collect data Then, follow-up interviews have been carried out with students to gather the most reliable data for analysis to find the answers to the research questions mentioned above Part II: DEVELOPMENT Theoretical Background 1.1 What is Listening Skill? Listening skill is the language modality that is used most frequently Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, and television), a message, and a receiver (the listener) Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language Listening skill is integrated with the other skills in language use Like reading, listening is a receptive skill where the purpose is to comprehend or understand what someone might be saying or writing 1.2 Importance of Listening Skill In daily life, people spend a lot of time listening In language use, listening skill plays a very important role: it includes various kinds of listener’s knowledge Moreover, it decides his comprehension, content and attitudes in response to the speaker’s speech as well Therefore, if we are bad at listening, we will fail to communicate with others In addition, there is a close-knit relationship between listening and speaking skills: students cannot improve speaking skill unless they better their listening skill To have a successful conversation, they must understand what is said to them Listening is also an effective way of acquiring the language or enriching new words and structures 1.3 Types of Listening Generally, there are two main kinds of listening (Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007): The first kind is casual listening which is often used in entertaining activities The second kind is focused listening which is quite different from the first one: we listen to something with some particular purpose in mind and pay much attention to it so as to get as much information as possible However, we not listen to everything with equal concentration: we only focus on the important information for some purposes For example, students listen to an English text to the tasks given by the teacher or a customer listens to the instructions of the seller to use a computer.[1] In language learning, students usually use the second way of listening and casual listening is sometimes used for extra and further practice such as letting students listen to a song or a short story without any response required 1.4 Teaching English Listening in CLT Principles of Teaching English Listening Skill To teach any skill of a language, it is important for teachers to follow the principles for teaching that skill so as to teach it more effectively and methodically Forseth (cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007) suggests seven principles for teaching listening skill: First, the teacher should use authentic texts and present them as naturally and realistically as possible Second, it is better to include different kinds of texts: conversations, dialogues, jokes, lectures, news broadcasts… Third, the teacher should use primarily meaning- based tasks for students to The fourth principle is that the teacher states a specific purpose for the listening task Another principle is that the teacher introduces the listening task beforehand The next principle is to avoid pre-teaching vocabulary unless necessary Lastly, the teacher should let students listen to the text more than once.[2] Subskills in Listening Like the other skills, listening includes a number of different sub-skills : learners have to recognize differences between phonological sounds - the difference in a single sound makes a new word with a different meaning Another sub-skill of listening is comprehension of structures In addition, learners may guess the unknown words or recognize words which are unnecessary for understanding There are also some other sub-skills such as recognizing discourse markers and cohesive words which help hold discourse together, the ability to infer information that is learners by hiding the direct answers and learners have to search for the indirect answers carefully Furthermore, skimming is a sub-skill for which listeners not need to understand every word they hear but they only need to catch the main idea By contrast, for scanning skill, listeners have to look for the specific information For the summarizing skill, listeners should summarize what they have heard after listening or they have to decide what they are listening to is true or false or they agree with what they are listening or not- this is called critical listening and especially used for advanced learners Recognizing different styles, emotional tones and varieties of language is a quite challenging skill Two more sub-skills of listening are predicting and listening for total comprehension Real situation of learning listening skill at Ngoc Lac High school At Ngoc Lac High school, Students come from diffirent areas of Ngoc Lac district: Some are in the town with quite good English capacity, others from remoted areas often show their poor English However, it was realized that the teachers and students have made much effort to enhance the quality of teaching and learning English Besides, there are still some problems such as: the modern teaching and learning facilities have not been used frequently and effectively, some teachers not have really creative methods of teaching so they cannot attract their students to learning Therefore, they meet many difficulties in learning the skills especially listening skill They find listening the most difficult skill of all A large number of students cannot understand any thing in a listening text The result is that this skill is neglected In other words, it is ignored by many teachers and students Some teachers not teach this skill very carefully, they just let students listen to a listening text in the textbook for a few times and ask them to answer the questions without checking their understanding For students, most of them use reference books to answer the questions in spite the fact that they not really understand the lesson Some Suggested types of Exercises to Motivate Students into Listening A lot of listening games for teaching and learning this skill have been applied so far and the followings are some suggested games for teachers and students to consider: 3.1 Drawings Students listen to a simple short text or a conversation which describes something such as a place, an object, a picture or somebody After listening, students are asked to draw a picture about the thing or the person whose characteristics they have just heard The student who has the picture which describes the most exactly is the winner This activity is for individual work and it can be used for students of wide ranges of capacity This game is rather interesting but it may distract students from listening to the text: they may draw something else or they only draw according to their imagination without understanding the text Teachers have to pay attention to students’ drawings and their concentration on listening by checking their understanding carefully * Notice: - The description in the listening text must be clear enough for students to understand and draw more easily - To draw more exactly, while listening, students can remember or write down what is being described Example: (modified from “English 10” text book, Unit 1, part C- Listening, using this activity in “after-you-listen” section ) Listen to the following passage and draw the person which is described: “This is Mr Lam He is a cyclo driver He is a middle-aged man with short gray hair under an old brown cap He is sitting on a bench under a big tree during his short break at noon He is listening to the news on an old black radio Thhere is a red umbrella on the cyclo beside him ”.[3] 3.2 Cross-words The teacher divides students into small groups (each group may have five or six members) and gives them the instructions of playing the game: Students are given the list of the questions of the cross-word beforehand and they have to answer those questions while listening The answers for those questions are the words in the cross-word After each time of listening, the teacher can stop playing the tape so that students have time to check their answers After a few times of listening, the group who find the key word will be the winner This game is quite difficult for students who are not very good at English so it had better be used for good students This is a kind of comprehension exercises but to answer the cross- word puzzle, students will be more motivated It takes much time if the teacher does not arrange the time suitably * Notice: - The key word should be short and the questions should be rather easy for students to answer Example: Listen to the following text and answer these questions to fill in the cross-word below: * Listening text: Teenagers who listen to the same music often have a common look One hot style in music and fashion is hip hop Hip hop is a type of urban music with a heavy beat Hip hop fashions are large or loose-fitting street clothes The style includes baggy jeans, sweat shirts, hiking boots and base ball caps However, teens add other clothing items like flannel shirts, jackets with sports logos, and athletic shoes Africa American kids in Detroit and Chicago first made hip hop popular They wore baggy street clothes to dance clubs Hip hop is now a teen fashion from Britain to Japan In Japan, hip hop is replacing the usual outfit for teenage girls: blouses and skirts with cartoon characters on them And in US, teens spend a lot of money on hip hop fashions David Bowen, 17, of Evanston Illinois, has five pairs of hiking boots at 100$ each [4] * Questions: How many pairs of hiking does David Bowen have? Hip hop is a type of urban music with a heavy… What type of caps does the hip hop style include? What kind of shoes teens wear in the hip hop style? African American…in Detroit and Chicago first made hip hop popular What is hip hop replacing in Japan? Who spend a lot of money on hip hop in US? And these are the answers: B E F A B A S E B A L L A T H L E T I C K I D S O U T F I T N S T E E I T V E  The key word: FASHION 3.3 Lucky Listening Topics This activity is rather similar to lucky number game However, instead of using numbers, teachers will provide different topics such as family, friendship, hobbies for students to choose to listen For this game, students can work in group of six members Each group will choose a topic they like and after choosing the topic, they are given some questions about the topic to answer after listening The other groups also have to listen to answer those questions because if that group cannot answer the questions after listening, the others will have chances to answer them Each correct answer will bring the group mark ten The lucky topic may be a song and students have to nothing apart from enjoying it The group with the highest mark is the winner This activity is for group work and can be applied in any high school classes It requires much time so the teacher should choose short and easy topics for students to listen 3.4 Guessing the Content of the Lesson This activity is for pre- listening Some key words of the listening text are given before listening Students are asked to guess the content of the text and create a new text according to what they guess It can be a conversation, a story or a piece of news After that, they are allowed to listen to the original text to check their guessing This task is easier for students because they have known the key words and understood some things about the lesson beforehand It can be used for students at the average level For better students, the listening texts should be more difficult For example: Look at these words and write a short passage according to your understanding: Aladdin, an order, close his shutters, Princess, hide, peep, lift her veil, fall in love, ask her in marriage, magic fruits And here is the original listening passage: “One day Aladdin heard an order from the Sultan proclaimed that everyone was to stay at home and close his shutters while the Princess his daughter went to and from the bath Aladdin was seized by a desire to see her face, which was very difficult, as she always went veiled He hid himself behind the door of the bath, and peeped through a chink The Princess lifted her veil as she went in, and looked so beautiful that Aladdin fell in love with her at first sight He went home so changed that his mother was frightened He told her he loved the Princess so deeply he could not live without her, and meant to ask her in marriage of her father His mother, on hearing this, burst out laughing, but Aladdin at last prevailed upon her to go before the Sultan and carry his request She fetched a napkin and laid in it the magic fruits from the enchanted garden, which sparkled and shone like the most beautiful jewels She took these with her to please the Sultan, and set out, trusting in the lamp”.[5] 3.5 Rearranging the Order of the Conversation The teacher gives students handouts of a conversation which is in the wrong order and ask them to listen to this conversation again in the right order After listening, they have to rearrange the order of the conversation according to their understanding This exercise can be used for students at any level The degree of difficulty of the listening conversation depends on students’ levels Nonetheless, the teacher has to check students’ understanding so as to avoid their guess at the answer Example: Look at this conversation which is in the wrong order: Tom: - Oh where are you from in Brazil? Paulo: - My parents are here from Brazil They are on vacation Tom: - Pleased to meet you, Mr and Mrs Tavares Mrs Tavares: - Nice to meet you, Tom Paulo: - Mum and dad, this is Tom Hayes Tom, these are my parents Mr Tavares: - We are from Rio And now listen to the conversation in the right order: Paulo: - Mum and dad, this is Tom Hayes Tom, these are my parents Tom: Pleased to meet you, Mr and Mrs Tavares Mrs Tavares: - Nice to meet you, Tom Paulo: - My parents are here from Brazil They are on vacation Tom: - Oh where are you from in Brazil? Mr Tavares: - We are from Rio [6] 3.6.Choosing the Right Topics For this exercise, the teacher gives students a list of some topics and lets them listen to some texts or some conversations about those topics Students have to point out which topics in the list they have heard and give some key words to show their understanding This exercise is for individual work It can help students practice skimming skill but may take time so the teacher should choose short and not too difficult listening texts Example: Listen to some conversations and decide whether which one belongs one of the given topics below: Jobs Shopping Greetings Hobbies Music People in US often shop from catalogs There are special catalogs for almost every need- including clothing, furniture, health and beauty products, and things for the kitchen People also order about 40% of their music from music catalogs Sarah: Hi, Tom How is everything? Tom: Not bad How are you? Sarah: Pretty good, thanks Jason: Where you work, Andrea? Andrea: I work for Thomas Cook Travel Jason: Oh, really? What you there? Andrea: I am a guide I take people on tours to countries in South America like Peru Jason: That sounds interesting![7] 3.7 Making T/F Statements Students are allowed to listen to a text for some times and take notes After listening, each of them has to make some T/F statements relating to the text and use them to ask their partners The partners have to base on the information they get from the listening text to answer the questions of their friends After that, they are allowed to listen to the text again to check if the questions and the answers are right or wrong This activity is for pair work The good points of this activity are that it checks students’ understanding exactly and helps them get more specific information They have to listen carefully to make and answer the questions correctly But it is difficult for students at average level Hence, it may be more often used for good students If it 10 is used for average level students, the listening text must be easy enough for them to understand F or example: True – False Statements.( modified from listening text of Unit 11 National Parks This excercise can replace Task ( page 116 – English 10) Cuc Phuong belongs to provinces: Ninh Binh, Ha Tay and Thanh Hoa Cuc Phuong is about 160 kilometres south east of Hanoi Cuc Phuong National Park was established in 1960 Nguyen Hue defeated the Quing invaders in the spring of 1789 The Muong ethnic minority in Cuc Phuong live mainly on bee keeping and farming enemy There is no cave in Cuc Phuong National Park Nearly 10,000 visitors made their way to Cuc Phuong in 2002 Quen Voi is a historical place where Nguyen Hue’s army was stationed 3.8 Listening to Short English Songs After finishing the listening lesson in the textbook, teachers give students a song the content of which relates to the topic they have just studied While listening, students’ duty is to write down as many words they can hear as possible If possible, students can give the main message of the song This activity is usually for students to relax and getting them familiar with listening to English songs Example: Listen to the song and complete the missing words: Title : Hello Vietnam Tell me all about this name, that is 1…………………… to say It was given me the day I was 2……………… Want to know about the stories of the empire of old My 3…………… say more of me than what you dare to say (Chorus) All I know of you is all the sights of 4…………… A film by Coppola, the helicopter’s roar One day I’ll 5……………… your soil One day I’ll finally know your soul 11 One day I’ll come to you To say hello… Vietnam Tell me all about my 6………………, my hair and my little feet That have carried me every mile of the way Want to see your 7………………., your streets Show me all I not know Wooden sampans, 8……………… markets, light of gold (Repeat Chorus) And Buddha’s made of 9……………… watch over me My dreams they lead me through the fields of 10………… In prayer, in the light…I see my kin I touch my tree, my roots,my 11…………… [8] Key: Difficult Born Floating Eyes War Stone 10 Rice Touch Color 7.house 11 Begin Note: This song can be used as teaching aid in before or after you listen part of Listening lesson – Unit An Excursion ( English 10) Teacher may first have students guess form of words through part of speech and then, after they find all the missing words, teacher should give them some explanation related to some “strange” terms in the song, such as: “Coppola’s film, name, eyes, little feet, tree, root”, etc.which can enrich their background knowledge and raise their interest in listening as well Summary To conclude, my study suggests some solutions to deal with the problems and difficulties in learning listening skill and then recommends several activities used to motivate students and increase their interest in learning this skill such as retelling a funny story, rearranging the order of a conversation, choosing the right topics, making T/F statements Those activities can be used for not only 10th form students but also at different levels and they depend on the purposes of teachers as well as the teaching and learning conditions Part III: CONCLUSION 12 Facts and fingers After nearly year applying these above technichques in teaching listening skill, I have conducted a survey with a questionnaire consisting both open and closed questions so as to check students’ listening ability and their interests in this skill better It was given to 167 students of four classes which I am in charge of: 10A1, 10A2, 10A3, 10A4 and here are the results of the survey: Question Answer Number of students Percentage (%) a 30 minutes 55 33 b hour 32 19.2 c Less than 30’ 80 47.8 Figure Students’ amount of time for practicing listening skill Question s Answers No of sts % a.all of them are interesting 39 23.4 b.some of them are interesting 95 57 c.all of them are boring 33 19.6 a.too difficult 22 13.2 12 b.difficult 70 42 c.rather difficult 50 30 d.not difficult at all 25 14.8 Figure Students’ opinions about listening topics and exercises 11 Questions Answers a.always 14 b.often Number of students 24 19 % 14.4 11.4 13 c.sometimes 55 33 d.never 69 41.2 a.difficult 39 23.4 15 b.easy 22 13.2 c.interesting 63 37.8 d.boring 43 25.6 Figure Students’ opinions about extra listening activities 60 interesting topics interesting activities modern equipments method of teaching 50 40 30 20 10 Figure Motivating factors Apart from the survey, I give students regular listening tests to check out their improvements , so as to have feedback after teaching And here are the results: Class No of Sts 10A1 45 10A2 40 10A3 40 10A4 42 Excellent Sts % 21 47 20 17.5 17 Good SL % 12 27 17 42.5 13 32.5 18 43 Avarage SL % 10 22 10 25 13 32.5 13 31 Bad SL % 12.5 17.5 Conclusion Clearly, teaching and learning English listening skill in particular and a language listening skill in general are not easy at all It requires much effort from both teachers and students I myself with much help from my collegues and students investigates the real situations of teaching and learning listening skill in Ngoc Lac high school to search 14 for necessary information Therefore, a lot of useful information has been collected to come to a conclusion for many matters of teaching and learning this skill which need solving Thus, some suggested solutions about reforming teaching method and studying activities are given I also strongly recommend some listening activities and games for teachers and students to improve listening skill All in all, though English is a difficult subject for many students, it has been becoming more and more important in modern life Therefore, students had better pay much more attention to it Furthermore, in spite of the fact that listening skill is really a very difficult skill to teach and to learn well, it plays an important role in learning this subject and in communication in modern society so both teachers and students have to try to improve the quality of teaching and learning it “Rome is not built in a day” – no success can be achieved easily and in a short time so we should try our best to make the teaching and studying of this skill better and better Suggestions for Further Study The topic about listening skill has a large scope for study because the problems and the solutions for teaching and learning such a difficult skill are nearly limitless Moreover, the study about teaching and learning this skill is very necessary as the quality of teaching and learning it in many Vietnamese high schools is not high However, because of the limitations of my knowledge and experience, the study cannot cover all the matters relating to the topic There are still many more problems and solutions such as new interesting activities to change the boring and stressful atmosphere in many listening classes Therefore, I hope that someone who is interested in this matter will continue to develop this topic so as to find more useful and realistic solutions and activities for teaching and learning this skill better XÁC NHẬN CỦA THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ Thanh Hóa, ngày 15 tháng 04 năm 2018 Tơi xin cam đoan SKKN viết, khơng chép nội dung người khác 15 Lâm Thị Ngọc 16 REFERENCES English Teaching Methodology - Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong - Vinh University, 2007 English Teaching Methodology - Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong Vinh University, 2007 Tieng Anh 10 - Hoang Van Van - Education Publisher – 2014 New Interchange level – Student’s book – Jack C Richards - Cambridge University Press, 2007 English Funny Stories - L.A.HILL - The World Publisher, 1996 American File level Student’s Book - Paul Seligson - Oxford University Press , 2010 New Interchange level – Student’s book – Jack C Richards - Cambridge University Press, 2007 http://ebooks.edu.vn/hoc-tieng-anh-qua-bai-hat/hoc-tieng-anh-qua-bai-hat- hello-vietnam-pham-quynh-anh.html * Communicative Language Teaching: an Introduction and Sample Activities Ann Galloway - Retrieved May 5th 2009 from www.cal.org/resources/digest/gallow01.htm/ * Teaching by Principles - Brown, H.D - New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents, 1994 * Improving ESL Learners’ Listening Skills: at the Workplace and Beyond - Carol Van Dozer, Retrieved April 5th 2017 from www.improving-ESLlms.list.vanduzerdoc * The Challenge of Teaching Listening Skill - Kenneth Beare Retrieved April 4th 2017 from www.about.com * Active Language for the Classroom - Melissa Kelly Retrieved April 4th 2017 from www.about.com * Bringing Learners up-to-date on CLT classroom approaches - Robert Wyss, M.A Retrieved on May 2nd 2017 from www.eltnewsletter.com 17 ... For students, most of them use reference books to answer the questions in spite the fact that they not really understand the lesson Some Suggested types of Exercises to Motivate Students into Listening. .. Right Topics For this exercise, the teacher gives students a list of some topics and lets them listen to some texts or some conversations about those topics Students have to point out which topics... easy topics for students to listen 3.4 Guessing the Content of the Lesson This activity is for pre- listening Some key words of the listening text are given before listening Students are asked to