A study on the effects of digital stories on students listening comprehension at elementary level

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN MAI LIÊN A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL STORIES ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL Nghiên cứu ảnh hưởng việc sử dụng câu chuyện kỹ thuật số khả nghe hiểu sinh viên trình độ sơ cấp M.A Minor Program Thesis Major: Theory and methodology in teaching English Code: 11045226 HANOI - 2018 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN MAI LIÊN A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL STORIES ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL Nghiên cứu ảnh hưởng việc sử dụng câu chuyện kỹ thuật số khả nghe hiểu sinh viên trình độ sơ cấp M.A Minor Program Thesis Major: Theory and methodology in teaching English Code: 11045226 Supervisor: Nguyen Thu Hanh, Ph.D HANOI - 2018 Declaration I certify that the work presented in this research report has been performed and interpreted solely by myself I confirm that this paperis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the M.A Degree and has not been submitted elsewhere in any other form for the fulfillment of any other degree or qualification Hanoi, 2018 Trần Mai Liên i Acknowledgements This M.A thesis could not have been accomplished without the invaluable help, encouragement and support form a number of people who I would like to show my sincerest gratitude and appreciation To begin with, I would like to express my greatest and deepest thankfulness to Mrs.Nguyễn Thu Hạnh, my supervisor, for her enthusiastic and precious guideline and advice throughout the duration of my thesis Without her instruction and supervision, this thesis could not have reached the fulfillment Moreover, my honest thanks also come to studentsat Military University of Culture and Arts, especially students in experimental and control group who participated in my quasi-experimental research Last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my familyand relatives who have always supported me and supplied the best conditions for me to complete this thesis ii Abstract Among the four skills of the English language, listening has been claimed to be the most difficult English language skill to a majority of Vietnamese students Particularly, many students have trouble catching main ideas or dealing with listening comprehension tasks in their exams, especiallylistening A2 level is a really challenging test for university students This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of Digital stories on helping students summarizing events and recognizing main ideas in doing listening tasks On the basics of a quasiexperimental research, two groups of first-year students at Military University of Culture and Arts, who were learning English as a non-major subject, participated in this research in the role of the experimental group and control group Student‟s diary, semi-structured interview and listening tests were employed to collect data for the research Before the treatment, no significant difference was founded between both groups in their descriptive writing ability Due to the restricted schedule, the researcher could only pilot eight Digital stories in listening lessons for the experimental students, and the same two to teach students in the control group using traditional method Interestingly, the post-test results indicated that experimental students who are taught with Digital stories attained higher in scores when doing listening tasks in terms of summarizing events and recognizing main ideas Besides, via results gathered from diary and semi-structured interview, it revealed that although participants encountered with various problems related to their attitudes and engagement, the higher levels they had, the more they were interested in the innovation iii Table of contents Declaration Acknowledgements Abstract List of tables List of graphs INTRODUCTION Rationale Significance of the study Aims and objectives of the study Scope of the study Research questions Research method Structure of the study CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of listening and listening comprehension 1.1.1 Definition of Listening 1.1.2 Definition of Listening comprehension 1.1.3 Teaching Listening Comprehension 1.2 Theoretical background of Digital stories 1.2.1 Definition of Digital stories 1.2.2 Types of Digital Stories 1.3 Digital Stories in Teaching Listening Comprehension 1.4 1.5 How to make a digital story Summary CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Population and sample iv 2.2 Research method 21 2.3 Data collection instruments 23 2.3.1 Semi-structured interview 23 2.3.2 Students‟ diaries 24 2.3.3 Listening comprehension Test 26 2.4 Data collection procedure 27 2.5 Data analysis procedures 28 2.6 Summary 28 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 29 3.1 Data collected from diaries and semi-structured interview .29 3.2 Data collected from listening tests 35 3.2.1 Pre-listening test 35 3.2.2 Post-listening test 39 3.3 Summary 45 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 46 4.1 A summary of the major findings 46 4.2 Limitations of the study 47 4.3 Suggestions for further study 47 REFERENCES 49 APPENDIXES I v List of tables Table 3.1 Test of normality of data of the pre-test 36 Table 3.2 Group statistics of pre-test 37 Table 3.3 Independent samples test of pre-test 37 Table 3.4 Pre-test cross tabulation 38 Table 3.5 Test of normality of data of the post-listening test 39 Table 3.6 Group Statistics of the post-listening test 40 Table 3.7 Independent samples t-test of the post-listening test 40 Table 3.8 Post-test cross tabulation 41 Table 3.9 Effect size value 44 vi List of graphs Graph 3.1 Mark frequency in the pre-test of both groups 38 Graph 3.2 Mark frequency in the post-test of both groups 41 Graph 3.3 Students‟ mean score in the pre-test and post-test .43 vii INTRODUCTION Rationale Listening is considered as a key role in communication In fact, listening skills are acquired and developed naturally at pre-school An effective mother tongue education at school makes it possible to raise students who can comprehend, synthesize and evaluate what they listen to Despite its critical role in language acquisition and effective communication, listening in educational environments does not get enough emphasis and is generally neglected Wacker and Hawkins (1995) stated that listening skill is the most commonly used skill at a rate of 45% in daily life Listening is the only comprehension skill used by individuals during their preschool period, and also in school, before they learn to read and write However, the teaching of listening comprehension seems to be neglected and poorly taught aspect of English in many EFL programs (Mendelsohn, 1994) EFL learners have serious problems in English listening comprehension due to the fact that universities pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary Moreover, the progress made in English training and learning in Vietnam is behind the shift in ideology Obstacles such as overcrowded classes and the ongoing overuse of traditional grammar-translation methods prohibit the country‟s language education from achieving its goal In recent years, with the development of media and computer technology, educators have begun to make use of multimedia and technology to improve their teaching and consequently students‟ language learning as Chang (1991) put it the vast majority of the published research on the effectiveness of media and technology in language instruction is encouraging With the increase of more sophisticated multimedia technology, there is renewed interest in the complementary relationship of visual and auditory channels in listening comprehension (Brett, 1995; Felix, 1995) According to Brett (1995), digital storytelling for foreign language learning can provide a more realistic picture of the REFERENCES Abidin, M J Z., Pour-Mohammadi, M., Souriyavongsa, T., Da, C &Ong, L K (2011) Improving 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