The use of songs to improve listening skills for students at ITC Foreign Language Centre in Haiduong

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ************ TRẦN THỊ OANH THE USE OF SONGS TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT ITC FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTRE IN HAI DUONG ( SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN TẠI TRUNG TÂM NGOẠI NGỮ ITC, THÀNH PHỐ HẢI DƯƠNG) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 HÀ NỘI - 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ************ TRẦN THỊ OANH THE USE OF SONGS TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT ITC FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTRE IN HAI DUONG ( SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN TẠI TRUNG TÂM NGOẠI NGỮ ITC, THÀNH PHỐ HẢI DƯƠNG) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Trần Hiền Lan, M.A HÀ NỘI - 2011 vi TABLE OF CONTENT Certificate of originality…………………………………… ………… ……… …… i Acknowledgements………………………………………… …… ………………… ii Abstract…………………………………………………… …………………………….iii List of abbreviations………………………………………… … … …………………iv List of tables and charts………………………………………………… ………….… v Table of contents…………………………………………………… ………………… vi PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale …………………………………………… …… ………… …… ………1 Aims of the study…………………………………………… …… …… ……… Research questions……………………………………………… ………… …… Scope of the study…………………………………………… …………….…… Methodology ……………………………………………….…… .….……… … Design of the study………………………………………………… … … .3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW a The definition of listening skill ……………………………………….……… … b Listening skill in learning a foreign language teaching…………………… ……5 i The importance of listening skill in foreign language teaching…… ……5 ii The difficulties in learning listening skill ………………………… ….….6 iii Teaching listening skill according to CLT…………………………… c Teaching listening skill through English songs……………………….…………… i The importance of songs in foreign language teaching ………… ii Using songs as a motivator for students to learn listening skill… ……… .10 iii Tasks designed for listening texts……………………………………….…… 11 d Summary ………… …………………………………………………….……….….12 Chapter 2: USING SONGS TO TEACH LISTENING FOR STUDENTS AT ITC FOREIGN LANGUAGE 2.1 Hypothesis ……………………………………………… …… ……………….…13 2.2 The setting of the study ……………………………………………… … ………13 2.2.1 Students’ background information ………………………………… ……….13 2.2.2 The teachers and teaching methods …………………………………….……13 2.2.3 Materials and facilities ………………………………………… 14 vii 2.3 The subjects …………………………… ………………………………… …… 14 2.4 Methods of data collection …………………………………………… 14 2.5 Procedures and methods of data analysis ………………………… …… … … 15 2.6 Data analysis and discussion …………………….………………………… …… 15 2.6.1 Teachers’ attitude towards listening skill ……………………… 15 2.6.2 Students’ attitude towards listening skill ………………….………… …….16 2.6.3 The reasons cause students’ difficulty in listening skill …………………… 17 2.6.4 Teachers’ attitudes towards using songs to teach listening skill ……….… 18 2.6.5 Students’ attitude toward using songs to learn listening skill ……… …….18 2.6.6 The situation of using songs to teach listening skill …………… 19 2.6.7 Reasons that students listen to English songs………………………… … 20 2.6.8 Teachers’ opinion about advantages and disadvantages of using songs to teach listening skill…………………………………………… 22 2.6.9 Students’ opinion about advantages and disadvantages of using songs to learn English …………………………………………… 25 2.6.10 Favorite activities while students listen to English songs……………… .25 2.7 Discussion of the findings…………………………………………………… …26 2.8 Summary ……………………………………………………………… 28 Chapter 3: IMPLICATIONS 3.1 Criteria of song selection………………………………………………………… 29 3.2 Problems to be faced with by students ……………………………………………30 3.3 Some suggested tasks designed from songs ……………… ………………….…32 PART III: CONCLUSION Summary of the study ……………………………………………………………….33 Limitations and suggestions for further study …………………… 33 References …………………………… ………………………………….…….… 35 Appendix 1………………………………………………………… ……….……… i Appendix 2…………………………… …………………………… …….……… xiii PART A: INTRODUCTION I Rationale The Vietnam’s participation in World Trade Organization in 2007 has given us good chance to integrate in the global development We can see changes in all fields of life such as cultural, social, economic and educational ones Many foreign companies have recently invested in Vietnam, which has boosted our economy to develop remarkably; it is the reason why English has played a very important role in our society nowadays As we know, in 2008 the Ministry of Education and Training made a decision on approval of the project “Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education system period 2008 – 2020” Its main purpose is to reform the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the national education system at all levels so that students will have been able to achieve a remarkable improvement in learning foreign languages by 2015 Also, students at colleges and universities will be able to use the foreign language confidently in communication in an environment of integration, multi – languages, multi – cultural variables to serve the cause of industrializating and modernizating of the country In the past, most textbooks paid more attention to reading and grammar, but recently they have been reformed to develop the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) equally Despite the innovation in textbooks and teaching methods, we can see a little change in students Among the four language skills “listening, speaking, reading and writing”, listening skill seems to be the most difficult to be mastered by the students and be far more difficult than many people can imagine (Mee, 1990 cited in M Fadlij, 2000) During an observation at an extra – curriculum activity at ITC foreign language center in Hai Duong, students at level A could not understand what the native speaker said When asked, most of them said that they felt tired at the end of the lesson and that they had no mood for listening to English on the tape As a teacher of English, how to make the students understand spoken English during the listening lesson is of my first concern I decided to study English songs to teach listening skill to my students so that they want to learn the listening skill and therefore they can improve their listening abilities in English II Aims of the study Aims of the study are:  To investigate the effectives of using songs in teaching listening skill to the students at ITC foreign language center  To suggest some methods on how to use English songs to teach listening to students II Research questions What is teachers and students’ attitudes to teaching and listening skill? What are teachers’ and students’ attitudes at ITCFLC to using songs in teaching listening skill? III Scope of the study In this study, the author intended to use songs to help level A students at ITCFLC improve their listening skill without using other activities such as stories, games, or poems IV Methodology To fulfill the above aims, qualitative and quantitative method was chosen for the study All comments, remarks, assumptions and conclusion of the study were based on the observation, data and analysis Data collections for analysis in this study were gained though the following resources: - Survey questionnaires; - Interview; - observation; The questionnaire was designed for both students and teachers However, sometimes interviews were also applied if the author found that the answer of respondents were not clear enough V Design of the study The minor thesis consists of three parts: Part I is the introduction in which the author presents the rationale, hypothesis of the study, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology and design of the study Part II is the development which is divided into chapters: o Chapter set up theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study o Chapter investigated the learning situation at ITC Foreign Language Center, difficulties in teaching and learning listening skill and find out the students’ point of view about using songs in classes o Chapter emphasizes the implications of the study in which discusses about the problems when applying in classes and suggests some criteria of choosing songs and some suggested tasks designed from songs Part III is the conclusion, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations and provides some suggestions for further study Chapter I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 The definition of listening skill Listening is one of the fundamental language skills, and crucial in the development of the second language competence so there are many definitions of listening which present different views of scholars towards the concept Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), listening is really a receptive skill along side with reading skills and the role of listeners is no longer passive but active Rost (1994) says that “listening is referred to a complex process that enables us to understand spoken language.” It is an invisible mental process, so it is very difficult to describe This involves understanding the speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin, 1974) 1.2 Listening skill in foreign language teaching 12.1 The importance of listening skill in foreign language teaching It cannot be denied that we spend a large portion of our time listening because it is a key element of the verbal communication It has been estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of their in – school information through listening to instructors or to one another However, in the past, reading and grammar skills were paid much attention to while speaking and listening skills were taken for granted As a result, language learners did not recognize its importance in developing language skills Rost (1994) emphasizes the importance of listening for several reasons below:  Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin  Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner Since the learners must interact to achieve understanding, access to speakers of the language is essential Moreover, learners’ failure to understand the language they hear is impetus, not an obstacle, to interaction and learning  Authentic spoken language presents a challenge for the learner to attempt to understand language as it is actually used by native speakers  Listening exercises provide teachers with a means for drawing learners’ attention to new forms (vocabulary, grammar, interaction patterns) in the language Moreover, listening is also an important condition for developing other skills, especially speaking skill as Doff (1988) suggests that we cannot develop speaking skill unless we develop listening skill Indeed if we want to speak well, we firstly must listen to what others say and understand them clearly To sum up, listening skill has taken a very important part in learning English It is the most communicative and practiced skill that needs to be developed as much as possible 1.2.2 The difficulties in learning listening skill Of the four language basic English language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), listening skill seems to be the most difficult skill to be acquired by students Many authors have mentioned this problem such as Underwood (1989), Ur (1996), Rost (1994) or Lynch (2005) in their writings According to Underwood (1989), there are seven problems in listening skill that students may encounter: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (2) not being able to get things repeated; (3) the listener’s limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate and (7) established learning habit She explains that these problems of students relate to students’ different backgrounds such as their culture and educations Students whose “culture and education includes a strong storytelling and oral communication tradition are generally “better” at listening than those from a reading and book-based culture and education background” Furthermore, “students for whom the stress and intonation which occur in English are reasonably familiar have less trouble than those whose own language is based on different rhythms and tones” (Underwood, 1989) From that point of view, students in Vietnam whose language is made of different tones face a great deal of difficulties in learning listening skills 1.2.3 Teaching listening skill according to CLT Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), derived from the late 1970s and early 1980s, can be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction It can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom According to Richards (2002), “CLT was an attempt to operationalize the concept of communicative competence and to apply it across all levels of language program design, from theory, to syllabus design, to teaching techniques.” In other words, CLT makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication The Teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life As a part of communication, listening can be taught in a communicative way According to Rost (1990), listening is given a new role in language learning in CLT: communicative approach views listening as an interactive functional basic mode of communication on rather than a skill to be learned and tested CLT emphasizes the use of extensive listening to material taken from “authentic” L1 situations where learners are expected to select the language they need to use in order to perform language tasks It can be said that listening plays an important role in CLT It can enable the listeners to select a function of language from the presented listening model and to apply it in communication activities Besides, it could stimulate communication by creating the need for social interaction through simulation of real-life situations CLT regards listening as a procedure in language learning not as a target of learning by itself 1.3 Teaching listening skill through English songs 1.3.1 The importance of songs in foreign language teaching No one can deny that music has played a very important part in our life Every one likes music It accompanies with us very time we feel happy or sad Music is at everywhere, every time we need it: “when we exercise, when we work, when we play, when we worship and even when we die, music is there to reinforce or alter every mood and emotion” (Lynch, 2005) Studies have shown that music can improve concentration, improve memory, bring a sense of community to a group, motivate learning, relax people who are overwhelmed or stressed, make learning fun, help people absorb material Due to its great value, music and songs have been taken into consideration as a method to teach language as Medina (1993) says “it is currently a common practice to use songs in the classroom to support second language acquisition” because music can stimulate and motivate students to learn a new language It is really a language package that bundles culture, vocabulary, listening, grammar and a host of other language skills in just a few rhymes (Inggris, 2008) 1.3.2 Using songs as motivator for students to learning listening skill Songs can be used to show our emotions, it makes us happy, helps us ease the pain in the best way Besides, songs can be utilized in foreign language teaching for many purposes According to Eken (1996), songs can be used:  To present a topic, a language point, lexis, etc  To practice a language point, lexis, etc  To focus on common learner errors in more direct way  To encourage extensive and intensive listening  To stimulate discussion of attitudes and feelings  To encourage creativity and use of imagination  To provide a relaxed classroom atmosphere  To bring variety and fun to learning  Tasks designed for listening texts There are various kinds of listening tasks According to Ur (1984), possible and applicable listening tasks should be: - Dictation exercise: This is common listening exercise which is usually practices in the earlier years of school education It requires students an integrative knowledge of the phonological, syntactic and semantic systems of a language To this task, teacher gives students handout, omitting some sentences of the text, then plays the tape and asks students to listen to the text and write the missing sentences down - Ticking off items: Learners tick beside the items: Learners tick beside the items that they hear in the listening - True/False: Identify whether the statement is true or false based on the listening - Detecting mistakes: Some fact is mentioned with intentional mistakes for students to point out - Gap-filling: Students are given a passage with several gaps in it, they have to listen and fill in the missing words in the gaps - Pictures: one picture or a series of pictures may be used Sts are then asked to identify pictures or components as they are referred to, either naming or ordering them in the order in which they are mentioned - Answering questions: based on the content of the listening, students are required to give longer and full answer to the questions 1.4 Summary This chapter has presented the relevant literature, which has helped to form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study Firstly, a number of concepts about listening comprehension are given based on some authors’ ideas in which listening has been considered as a vital role in communicative language teaching Secondly, the importance of listening in second language learning and some problems that students may cope with when they learn this skill are discussed Lastly, there are some discussions about the advantages of songs and it should be taken into consideration to be applied in teaching and learning foreign language PART B : METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS 2.2 The setting of the study 2.2.1 Students’ background information ITC Foreign Language Centre (ITCFLC), part of Thinh Phat Company, was established years ago From the beginning of its establishment, there have been 82 classes of English opened of level A, 70 classes of level C and 33 classes of level C Most of the students at the centre are students and workers at all age ranging from 18-35 They come from all parts of the country, so their learning background varies a lot, most of them were learning at universities and colleges in Hai Duong, but the workers did not learn English for a long time This caused a lot of difficulties for both teachers and students in teaching and learning English 2.2.2 The teachers and teaching methods Up to now, there are seven teachers of English at ITCFLC Four of them graduated from University of Languages and International Studies, two from Hanoi University, and one from Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2 None of them had ever been trained in an English speaking country The oldest had over ten years experience in teaching English, the youngest had three years Most of them were aware of the importance of listening skill and tried hard to improve their teaching of listening, motivate students and help them over come those difficulties However, not all of the teachers choose the same techniques to teach listening Some chose to use giving background information and new words, while others chose authentic materials or some extra activities that were suitable for their students 2.2.3 Materials and facilities The materials for the whole course were New Headway textbook, workbook, and CDs In this series of book, all four language skills were equally developed The centre also supplied teachers and students with some other books to improve their listening skills such as sheep or ship, etc Besides, facilities are also an important factor in teaching and learning process ITCFLC was well-equipped with good facilities for teaching and learning English There were classrooms in which each of them is equipped with an air-conditioning, a cassette, a television, a DVD player, and a computer connecting with the internet Thus, the teachers had good chances to make use of these things to make the lessons more interesting and stimulate their students to study 2.3 The subjects The subjects of the research were ten classes of level A chosen randomly and teachers at ITCFLC This helped to provide reliable results and generalize the findings of the research Seven names of each class were written in a piece of paper Each class had an equal chance to be selected as the participants of the research The similar process was used for the selection of four teachers as the subjects of the survey By doing so, they could be representative the whole teachers and students at ITCFLC 2.4 Methods of data collection The research was conducted according to qualitative and quantitative methods, mainly using questionnaire and interview Along with questionnaires and interview, observations were done during the experimental listening lesson by the researcher After an experimental lesson, some students were asked to attend in the discussion All of which were for further information needed for the study In addition, formal and informal discussions and small talks with teachers and students to collect more data for this study were also carried out 2.5 Procedures and methods of data analysis The aim of the two questionnaires was to collect data relating to teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards listening skill, the reasons that caused students’ difficulties in learning listening skill, teachers and students’ attitudes towards English songs and using songs in teaching and learning listening skill, and the situation of using songs to teach 10 listening skill at ITCFLC Basing on categories established, data was then analyzed by using descriptive statistics (percentage) and qualitative statistics (informal discussions, interview) Pie chart, graphs and tables were mainly employed to analyze and compare figures The information was gathered from two questionnaires were presented and analyzed as follows: PART C: CONCLUSIONS Summary of the study Being a teacher of English at ITCFLC, the researcher can see clearly the situation of teaching and learning English at this centre It is the fact that both teachers and students have considered listening skill as the most difficult skill among the four skills Bearing this in mind, the investigator has conducted this research with a view of situation of teaching and learning listening skill and applying English songs to improve students’ listening skill To gain the theoretical background, relevant literature on the listening was review The study was carried out with the data for the analysis collected from two questionnaires which were completed by teachers and students, interview and informal discussions The result collected from questionnaires showed that students at level A at ITCFLC have encountered a lot of difficulties in listening skill This is the reason why the researcher suggested applying English songs as an extra material to teach listening skill The result from the experimental lesson showed that they had a positive attitude to the using of English songs in class The students themselves agreed that they felt like listening much more than before It could help them reduce tension and pressure as well as motivate them to study during the lesson a lot Beside a lot of benefits that they can gain, there are some problems that students may encounter from using songs in class Therefore, the researcher has proposed several recommendations for teachers in choosing and using suitable songs class so that they can make the lesson more interesting and help students enjoy the lesson Limitations and suggestions for further study 11 In this paper, the scope of the study was limited only in one foreign language centre, ITC foreign language center The research was restricted to only a small number of objects and the researcher could only look at the situation of using songs to teach listening skill to students at level A at ITCFLC Hence, the results could not be generalized to all the schools, colleges, or universities in Vietnam Moreover, because of limited time, the researcher did not have many opportunities to apply songs in more listening lessons at a larger scale The researcher, therefore, really hopes that this paper will be a starting point evoking in the readers and relevant people some more ideas for further study and new applications 12