Diversification of pre listening activities to improve students’ listening skill action research at industrial economics technology college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -* - NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (Đa dạng hóa hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ nghe sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ Kinh tế Công nghiệp.) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 HANOI – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -* - NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (Đa dạng hóa hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ nghe sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ Kinh tế Công nghiệp.) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Assoc Prof Dr LÂM QUANG ĐÔNG HANOI – 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof.Dr Lam Quang Dong for his patient guidance, stimulating suggestions and encouragement throughout my research I wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for providing me the best environment to fulfill my graduate program My sincere gratitude also goes to my colleague Mrs Nguyen Mai Linh The support that she gave me truly helped with my progress and completion of the research project Especially, I would like to express my special thanks to my family who offered me their love, care, support and encouragement so that I could accomplish my study Last but not least, I would like to express appreciation to my students in Industrial Economics Technology College who were very enthusiastic to support me by participating in the research and providing me with the needed data without which the study could not have been completed i ABSTRACT Although listening skill, one of the four core language competences fostered in Industrial Economics Technology College (IETC)‟s English curriculum, has always been promoted, students‟ performance in this aspect of proficiency still remains low Through practice, the researcher realized that the main reason for this problem is the lack of good preparation for students from the pre-listening stage Therefore, it is extremely necessary to conduct an action research with the aim of improving students‟ listening comprehension by diversifying pre-listening activities In the study, a pre-test and post-test were employed to check the students‟ listening comprehension and the questionnaires to gauge students‟ attitudes when the teacher used varied pre-listening activities The findings of this study suggest that students‟ listening skill was much boosted after they were exposed to various pre-listening activities The results also showed that the students had improved attitudes towards learning listening skill after the introduction of varied pre-listening activities Hopefully, the thesis can be considered a practical contribution to more effective teaching practices at IETC and the ongoing process of renovation for teaching and learning listening ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims and scope of the study 1.2.1 Research Aims 1.2.2 Scope of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Summary of Chapter CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical background of listening skill 2.1.1 A brief overview of listening 2.1.2 Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process 2.2 2.2.1 Factors affecting students‟ listening comprehension Unfamiliar topics 2.2.2 Cultural Differences 2.2.3 Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation 2.2.4 Listeners‟ limited vocabularies 2.2.5 Length and Speed of Listening 2.2.6 Inability to concentrate 2.3 2.3.1 Listening Comprehension in EFL Classrooms Pre-listening stage 2.3.2 While-listening stage and post-listening stage 2.3.3 The roles of pre-listening activities 2.3.4 Pre-listening activities iii 2.4 Previous research 14 2.8 Summary of chapter 17 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 19 3.1 Research methodology 19 3.1.1 Definition of action research 19 3.1.2 Characteristic of action research 20 3.1.3 Process of action research 20 3.1.4 Benefits of Action Research 23 3.2 The research questions restated 23 3.3 The participants 23 3.3.1 Students 24 3.3.2 Observers 24 3.4 Data collection instruments 24 3.4.1 Detailed description of tests 24 3.4.2 Questionnaires 25 3.5 Action research procedures 25 3.5.1 Identifying a problem 25 3.5.2 Collecting the data 26 3.5.3 Analyzing data and generating hypothesis 26 3.5.4 Planning action 26 3.5.5 Implementing the action plan 27 3.5.6 Collecting data to monitor change 28 3.5.7 Analyzing data and evaluating the change 28 3.6 Summary of chapter 28 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 29 4.1 Results from the pre-test 29 4.2 Results from the post-tesst 29 4.3 Comparison of the pre-test and the post-test 30 4.4 Data collected by questionnaire part 32 iv 4.5 Data collected by questionnaire part 33 4.6 Data collected by observation 34 4.7 Discussion 36 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 38 5.1 Summary of the Result of the Study 38 5.2 Limitations of the Study 39 5.3 Implications for Further Research 40 5.4 Implications for Teaching and Learning Practice 41 5.4.1 Implications for Teachers 41 5.4.2 Implications for Students 42 5.5 Final remarks 42 REFERENCES 44 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: The pre-test I Appendix 2: The post-test .VI Appendix 4: Observation sheet XIII Appendix 5: Result from the pre-test and post-test XVI Appendix 6: Result from observation sheet XIX Appendix 7: Results from learner questionnaire XX Appendix 8: Action plan implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment XXI Appendix 9: a lesson plan of implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment .XXII v LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 The pre-test result 29 Table 4.2 The post-test results 29 Table 4.3 Comparison of the pre-test and post-test 30 Table 4.4 Students‟ comments about pre-listening activities 32 Table 4.5 Students‟ comments on the diversification of pre-listening activities that the teacher applied 33 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 Simple Action Research Model adapted from MacIsaac (1995) 21 Figure 3.2 Detailed Action Research Model adapted from Susman (1983) 22 Figure 4.1 29 Figure 4.2 The post-test results 30 Figure 4.3 Comparison of the pre-test and post-test 31 Figure 4 Students‟ comments on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied 32 Figure Students‟ comment on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied 33 Figure Students‟ on-task behavior 34 ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Listening is an important skill in acquiring a language and it can be defined as the process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language Listening is the most frequently used in communication It is stated that during conversations, people spend 50 percent of time on listening, 25 percent on speaking, 15 percent on reading, and 10 percent on writing (Richards, 2008) Moreover, according to Morley (1984), listening is the key to all effective communication Indeed, without the interlocutors‟ ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood However, generally, students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something they understand very little It is also harder for them to concentrate on listening if little or no interest in a topic or situation is developed before The initial pre-listening phase should prepare students by helping them activate their background knowledge and clarify their expectations and assumptions about the listening text by, for example, initiating some discussion about a picture involved in the listening text or discussion of some questions related to the listening passages An ideal pre-listening task is the one in which the teacher, through carefully constructed questions, helps students activate their background knowledge and language components needed to comprehend the text In general, pre-listening activities play a critical role and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention on the following while-listening stage, to build confidence and to facilitate comprehension As cited in Medley (1977), pre-listening activities can be divided into readiness activities and guidance activities Readiness activities focus on motivating students‟ preliminary knowledge through asking students to read the title, make predictions or guesses what they are going to hear, explore new and/or key words that may appear in the listening text, look at accompanied pictures, interpret the listening tasks, and providing them with scaffolding support before listening Guidance activities S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17 S18 S19 S20 S21 S22 S23 S24 S25 S26 S27 S28 S29 S30 S31 S32 S33 S34 S35 XIV S36 S37 S38 S39 S40 Categories: 1: student on-task (pay attention to the task) 2: student off-task (lack of attention to the task) XV Appendix 5: Result from the pre-test and post-test No Name 1.0 Nguyễn Phương Anh 2.0 Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh 3.0 Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Anh 4.0 Trịnh Thị Hải Anh 5.0 Phạm Thị Ngọc Ánh 6.0 Lương Thị Hồng Bích 7.0 Đinh Thị Kim Dung 8.0 Hà Tiến Dũng 9.0 Đỗ Thị Duyên 10.0 Liêu Văn Đại 11.0 Đặng Thị Điệp 12.0 Ngô Xuân Đông 13.0 Nguyễn Thị Thu Hà 14.0 Nguyễn Văn Hiếu 15.0 Lương Thị Thu Hoài 16.0 Trần Thị Minh Hồng 17.0 Ngô Việt Hưng 18.0 Lê Thị Hương 19.0 Lê Thị Lan Hương 20.0 Nguyễn Thị Kiều 21.0 Lê Quang Lâm 22.0 Trần Thị Liễu 23.0 Mai Thị Diệu Linh 24.0 Nguyễn Thị Lương 25.0 Ngô Thị Mai 26.0 Nguyễn Văn Mạnh 27.0 Đỗ Thị Thúy Mây XVI 28.0 Nguyễn Tiến Nam 29.0 Đặng Thị Kim Ngân 30.0 Đàm Đức Ngiêm 31.0 Hoàng Thị Thanh Nhàn 32.0 Lò Thị Nhan 33.0 Dương Tuấn Ninh 34.0 Lê Thị Phương 35.0 Bùi Xuân Quý 36.0 Nguyễn Thị Vân 37.0 Trần Văn Việt 38.0 Dương Thị Thời Xuân 39.0 Nghiêm Thị Tuyến 40.0 Nguyễn Ngọc Tuấn Descriptive Statistics Pretest Valid N Descriptive Statistics Posttest XVII Descriptive Statistics Posttest Valid N (listwise) One-Sample Statistics Pretest Posttest Pretest posttest XVIII Appendix 6: Result from observation sheet Data table about student‟s on-task behavior collected from observation sheet Lessons XIX Appendix 7: Results from learner questionnaire Part 1: students‟ opinions about the teachers‟ use of varying pre-listening activities in listening lessons in the future Number Question They are suitable knowledge They are interesting They vocabulary and stru They in many fields They are effective f complete the well XX Appendix 8: Action plan implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment Week Units Unit period Unit period Unit period Unit period Unit period Unit period Unit period Unit period XXI Appendix 9: a lesson plan of implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment UNIT 6: SALES Period 2: LISTENING Multi-channel retail I Aims of designing pre-listening to start teaching in this listening lesson: The pre-listening activities the teacher used were designed from the pre-listening activities in the textbook The aim of this stage was to get students motivated and familiar with the topic and vocabulary of the listening lesson II OBJECTIVES By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop their listening comprehension skill and give opinion about something basing on the topic selling online II MATERIALS Book, CD, screen, projector, handout, board III PROCEDURE Stages Pre- Game: C listening - T expl (15 minutes) - T divi delive - T show group - After lesson There is a the key w words co unlock You will work in groups to find out the key word Groups has the fastest and right answer will be the winner Crossword Clues If you want to buy a thing with lower price, you have to………with the seller You need a menu when you are in a restaurant to… dish There is a big…….in supermarket so people come there to buy cheaper things This fridge has been run out of……so you need to pay money to repair it Many company gets big……from “sale-off” strategy You should come to a ………agent to get some advice before you visit some where Key B D G I T While- A listening yo 30 A minutes - in B H se - S - T asks some Ss to give answer if they have filled all - T plays the tape record the second time After that, call some Ss to give answer If the answer is wrong, asks other Ss - T plays the tape record the third time and pauses after each sentence, explains any difficulties in this XXIV listening Key: online websit enquir run/int C Here a selling, i part of th order in - T expla - T has S understa - T plays listen onc again to - T has so Key: 1d 2c D Work statemen - T asks S - T divide discuss o - After di to give th E Listen statemen XXV experien - T expla - T plays views, tel speech, a questions - T asks S if they Key true Post- - T revie listening - T may minutes check - T asks XXVI ... formulated: To what extent does diversification of pre- listening tasks help students at my college improve their listening comprehension? What are these students‟ attitudes towards diversification of pre- listening. .. Scope of the study The study concentrated on the effects of alternating pre- listening activities on improvement of students‟ listening skill in Industrial Economics Technology College Participating... students at IETC whose English is at pre- intermediate level The aim of this study was to access how much diversification of pre- listening activities can help to improve students‟ listening skill