Sử dụng tài liệu trên mạng làm tài liệu bổ trợ giảng dạy kỹ năng nghe cho sinh viên năm thứ 2 tại trường đại học ngoại ngữ

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ THỊ THANH VÂN USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON WEBSITES AS SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR TEACHING LISTENING TO 2nd YEAR STUDENTS AT VNU-ULIS SỬ DỤNG TÀI LIỆU TRÊN MẠNG LÀM TÀI LIỆU BỔ TRỢ GIẢNG DẠY KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ-ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA, HÀ NỘI M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY MAJOR CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN THU LỆ HẰNG, M.ED HANOI, 2010 DECLARATION I hereby state that I, Vu Thi Thanh Van from K14, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature: Date: Hanoi, December 10th 2010 ABSTRACT This study's objective was to outline possible prospects to use authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials to teach listening skills for second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU In order to analyze how listening skills are taught for second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU; to be more specific, what materials lecturers are using as supplementary listening materials for their students and what they expect from using online listening materials, I employed both quantitative and qualitative methods Results indicate that while it is a realized need for students to be supplemented with real-life listening by using online listening materials, the development of this kind of materials is still primitive Therefore, teachers lack a reliable resource to depend on if they want to use online materials As well, it is at the early stage so not much has been done to incorporate such materials into the current listening syllabus for second year students, which results in a lot of difficulties for teachers in finding time and opportunity to use them This study's conclusions indicate that better cooperation among the second year teaching staff, between them and the Multi-media Center and a slight shift of teaching methodologies should be put in practice However, further studies must be done to discuss in details the establishment of an online listening material data-base for better application of online materials in language teaching and learning TABLE OF CONTENT Acceptance i Abstract ii List of figures v PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the problems and the rationale for the study Aims and objectives of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study An overview of the rest of the paper PART B CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Communicative view on teaching listening 1.1.1 The importance of listening 1.1.2 Characteristics of listening 1.1.3 Types of Listening and Listening Tasks 1.1.3.1 Types of Listening 10 1.1.3.2 Types of Listening Tasks 13 1.2 Authentic materials used for teaching listening 15 1.2.1 Traditional sources 15 1.2.2 New sources 16 1.3 The needs to vary the sources 17 1.4 Suitability of the present study in the research field 18 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 20 2.1 A qualitative and quantitative study 20 2.2 Selection of participants 21 2.3 Methods of data collection 22 2.4 Data analysis 25 2.5 Limitation of the study 25 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS 26 3.1 Description of the survey (questionnaire & interview) 26 3.2 Findings analysis 26 3.2.1 Findings 26 3.2.1.1 Findings from questionnaires 26 3.2.1.2 Findings from interviews 41 3.2.2 Interpretations of the findings 46 3.2.2.1 Situation 46 3.2.2.2 Benefits of using online materials 47 3.2.2.3 Ways of using online materials 48 3.2.2.4 Problems 49 CHAPTER 4: USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON WEBSITES AS 51 SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS TO 2nd YEAR STUDENTS 4.1 Ways to exploit online materials for teaching listening skills 51 4.1.1 Working Group Establishment 51 4.1.2 Students‟ Support 53 4.1.3 Multi-media Center‟s Support 54 4.1.4 Time management 54 4.2 Sample designed listening tasks using online material 55 4.3 Some recommendatory websites 55 4.4 Incorporating online materials into the listening syllabus of the second year 64 PART C: CONCLUSION 71 REFERENCES 73 APPENDICES I List of Figures Figure 1: Top-down vs Bottom-up Listening Process…………………… 10 Figure 2: Seniority in teaching listening………………………………… 27 Figure 3: Popular materials in use………………………………………… 28 Figure 4: The use of online materials…………………………………… 28 Figure 5: Reasons for not using online sources…………………………… 29 Figure 6: Reasons for using online sources……………………………… 30 Figure 7: Ways of using online materials………………………………… 31 Figure 8: Prospects of utilizing online materials………………………… 32 Figure 9: Types of speech normally used with online materials………… 33 Figure 10: Problems when using online materials……………………… 33 Figure 11: Frequency of online materials using in class………………… 34 Figure 12: Evaluation of students‟ progress after using online materials… 35 Figure 13: Supplementary materials in use……………………………… 36 Figure 14: The use of online materials…………………………………… 36 Figure 15: Frequency of online materials using………………………… 37 Figure 16: Types of speech normally used with online materials………… 37 Figure 17: Ways of using online materials……………………………… 38 Figure 18: Students‟ attitude towards the application of online materials 39 Figure 19: Students‟ expectation of ways online materials should be used 40 Figure 20: Students‟ self-evaluation of progress after using online 41 materials………………………………………………………………… Figure 21: http://www.esl-lab.com 57 Figure 22: http://www.englishlistening.com 58 Figure 23: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml 59 Figure 24: http://www.voanews.com 60 Figure 25: http://www.discovery.com 60 Figure 26: http://abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish 61 Figure 27: http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/education/education.html 62 Figure 28: http://www.eviews.net 63 Figure 29: http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/sall.htm 64 PART A: INTRODUCTION Statement of the problems and the rationale for the study In the light of the communicative approach for language teaching and learning, “communicative competence” is a stressed element or in other words, it is the “goal” of the teaching and learning process (Richards & Rodgers, 1995: 67) In order to master the communicative competence, second language learners are supposed to study the four skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing Among these four skills, listening is often claimed to be the most important skill to be acquired as “in the foreign environment, the ability to make sense of these messages is often crucial for survival” (Hood: 65) As a result, listening has taken much attention and efforts of language researchers and teachers Much research has been conducted on how to teach and learn listening skills effectively For instance, on the web site www.abax.co.jp/listen, an article named “Teaching Listening Better: Is listening being taught as well as it could be?” provides readers with a thorough overview of how listening should be taught; Penny Ur (1992) dedicated a nearly-two-hundred-page book on “Teaching Listening Comprehension” and Gillian Brown (1984) also wrote “Listening to spoken English” All these contributions are very useful for enhancing the listening skills However, as far as I have investigated, most of the research focuses largely on methods of teaching and learning rather than exploring new sources of authentic materials for teachers to make use of Meanwhile, nowadays, together with the already diversified published materials for teaching listening, there co-exists a new abundant source of listening materials on the World Wide Web The Internet was given birth not long ago, in the 1960s, but its presence has changed the world dramatically The Internet is said to be the information highway, which host almost every data available Therefore online resource for teaching listening is no exception If we just put into consideration the television and radio programs, it is a greatly rich source available for every listening teacher to utilize Let us count how many English-speaking countries there are in the world, how many media stations there are in each of those countries and how many media stations in the non-English speaking countries that offer English version for their programs there are Then most of them have their own websites, on which they upload their broadcast programs with various topics These programs are available in many forms convenient for different categories of Internet users People can listen to them online or download them to their computers for later listening Exploiting this new electronic source has been a hot topic among the education circle worldwide Yet in Vietnam, where Internet was not known until more than 20 years after its birth, it is still fresh and teachers are hesitant to use it Bearing in mind the two aforementioned reasons, I decided to choose “Using authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials for teaching listening skills to second year EFL students at VNU-ULIS” the topic of my thesis with a view to filling in the pointed gap in the research field and bringing about some benefits for EFL teachers who teach listening skills Aims and objectives of the study Conducting this study, my aim is to address two main issues: (1) How listening skills are taught to second year EFL students at ULISVNU; to be more specific, what materials lecturers are using as supplementary listening materials for their students 10 (2) Outline possible prospects to use authentic materials on websites as supplementary materials to teach listening skills to second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU I hope that this study will be beneficial not only to lecturers who teach listening skills for second year EFL students; to the students in their selfstudy but also to the students who are becoming teachers in the near future since it would, hopefully, serve as a useful resource they can refer to Conducting this thesis, I also wish that in applying these materials in teaching listening to the second year EFL students, teachers could familiarize their students with the current language in use and at the same time help them enhance their social background knowledge, which is said to be poor among today students Scope of the study Due to time constraint, my thesis would only be narrowed to a small scale Firstly, its subject is specifically second year EFL students at ULIS-VNU Studying at university for two years would equip students with more selfstudy skills, which is a factor that can facilitate the use of online listening materials Moreover, it is time their English reach proper level of intermediate and upper-intermediate, which is suitable to use these materials to supplement their listening Secondly, the paper would focus mostly on ways to develop the use of online supplementary listening materials for second year students I am aware that this study could cover only a small part of the teaching process if teachers want to use these online materials as supplementary ones for their students Therefore, I believe further research is necessary to fulfill this gap 68 Figure 26: http://abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish/ Interactive learning resources: http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/education/education.html The Interactive Learning Resources website was created by the California Department of Education and supplies learners with audio-based interactive listening lessons This site contains over 70 lessons and the content focuses on contemporary news and current affairs in the United States After downloading a short audio clip of a native-speaker dialogue, users may then test their comprehension by selecting from several interactive multiple choice activities that focus on the areas of vocabulary, sequencing and inference An example of an exercise interface is reproduced in the following screen capture: 69 Figure 27: http://www.otan.dni.us/cdlp/education/education.html Library: http://www.eviews.net This website offers over 40 interviews with a wide range of accents and subject material, and a new eView is added every month It has been designed for students of English as a Second Language at intermediate to advanced level to hear authentic English speakers in 'normal' conversations Teachers will get a prepared lesson plan with each of the recorded interviews Lesson plans are designed by an ESL teacher with over 18 years teaching experience and are tailored to fit a one hour lesson The audio material is in MP3 format and the printed material is in Word The audio can be downloaded and transfered to a cassette, or played directly from the website 70 Below is the screen capture of the site: Figure 28: http://www.eviews.net Resource site: http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/sall.htm This resource site is similar to a link library It provides links to other websites of famous television channels like CNN, Discovery and famous radio programs like VOA, BBC and CBC, etc Accessing this site, users are open to a vast pool of listening materials Screen capture of the site is reproduced below: 71 Figure 29: http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/sall.htm The sites reviewed here represent a part of the ESL-focused multimedia content available on the Internet As technology continues to improve, increasing numbers of language educators will use multimedia content and online learning environments designed to meet learners‟ needs The design of these environments will soon become a major focus in language education worldwide The challenge for the future lies in the way teachers make the most of the opportunities technology provides 4.4 Incorporating online materials into the listening syllabus of the second year In order to incorporate online materials into the current listening syllabus of the second year, the first thing to is to analyze the syllabus Below is the Listening Syllabus for the second year students, term 72 LISTENING SYLLABUS-TERM  Course books: New First Certificate Masterclass-Simon Haines & Barbara Stewart Countdown to First Certificate-Michael Duckworth & Kathy Gude  Time: periods/week  Note: Teachers are free to choose listening tasks in each unit in accordance with each class‟s level  Syllabus Week Week Week New First Certificate Countdown to First Masterclass Certificate Unit 1: Description of places Unit 2: Expressing feelings Unit 2: Story about British weather and Extracts about the weather Week Week Unit 3: Artist and opinion on Unit 7: A guided tour of the art museum Unit 4: Interview about men‟s Unit 10: Extracts about and women‟s abilities human relationships Week Unit 5: News Report on caving Week Unit 6: A discussion about air Unit 3: Extracts on holiday problems and experiences 73 pollution People talking about lying Week Week Week 9: Week 10 Week 11 Unit 7: Description of someone in different contexts Unit 8: Views on tobacco Unit 9: Interviews about advertising animals Unit 9: Advice phone-in Unit 10: Extracts about clothing and Fashion Unit 15: A radio program about new invention Unit 1: Part of a radio program about London Fashion Week Unit 11: Radio game show Unit 11: Strange but amusing “Follow that” stories; a new television show Unit 12: Radio broadcast on Week 12 Bonfire Night Extracts about Bonfire Night Week 13 Unit 13: Extracts about cinema Unit 4: A radio program about the arrival of television on the island of St Helena 74 Unit 12: History and origins Week 14 of Caribbean music; a radio Unit 14: Extracts about music interview with a person who writes film soundtracks Unit 13: Extracts about Week 15 different problems; why people choose their career Unit 14: A radio report on the accident Looking at this syllabus, it is obvious that there is hardly any room for students‟ creativity and enrollment in constructing the lesson It is suggestible that this syllabus should function as a guideline for teachers only It is advisable that individual teachers produce a more detailed syllabus for their own use The individual syllabus should show clearly the objectives of each lesson and the foundation on which the choice of lesson is laid To be more specific, in a particular lesson, what the lesson is about and which skills are practised It may serve a certain purpose of the teacher, whether it is a themebased or a skill-based syllabus or even a combination of both theme-based and skill-based ones It is also advantageous to establish a syllabus which promotes learners‟ autonomy and enable the use of online materials at the same time It is best if the syllabus can outline specific work to for every week during the semester A sample of syllabus for two weeks may be envisioned as follows: 75 Week Topic: Human Relation Skills practised: Listening for specific information Teacher: Check difficult tasks of homework if any Deliver supplementary listening tasks Week Topic: Holiday Skills practised: Listening for specific information Listening and taking notes Coping with background noises Teacher: - Check homework - Attend student‟s facilitating section - Give feedbacks for them Students: - Facilitate their self-designed listening tasks - Comment on peer‟s facilitating section Due to the limit of time and small scale of this research, it is impossible for me to introduce a complete set of supplementary listening online materials to insert in the current listening syllabus of the second year However, to the best of my ability, I would like to put forward five samples of listening tasks that can be incorporated in the current syllabus Unit 4: Interview about Week men‟s and women‟s abilities Sample 1+ Sample Unit 10: Extracts about human relationships 76 Week Unit 5: News Report Unit 3: Extracts on on caving holiday problems and experiences Sample Unit 12: History and Week 14 Unit 14: Extracts about music origins of Caribbean music; a radio interview with a person who writes film soundtracks Sample Unit 13: Extracts about different problems; why people choose Week 15 their career Unit 14: A radio report on the accident Sample For samples, refer to Appendix Sample 1: Women in business Sample 2: A short news report on a book on how to say thank you Sample 3: Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park Sample 4: A short news report on famous Jazz singer Diana Krall Sample 5: Immigration So far, in this chapter, I have gone through four main parts:  Ways to exploit online materials for teaching listening; 77  Sample designed listening tasks using online materials;  Some recommendatory websites  Incorporating online materials into the current listening syllabus of the second year I hope that these suggestions would help facilitate and encourage the more effective use of supplementary online listening materials for second year EFL students at ULIS -VNU 78 PART C: CONCLUSION In the process of studying the matter of using online materials as supplementary materials to teach listening for second year students at VNUULIS, I have investigated the purposes for teachers to use supplementary online listening materials, how they are using them, what problems they are facing and finally, presented some possible recommendations to the problems It could be seen that though teachers are aware of the advantages online listening materials can bring about to learners, though they really want to promote the use of such materials, difficulties in finding suitable online listening materials and time limit are major factors blocking the intensive and extensive application of online listening materials to supplement the skills These issues may be settled as better cooperation among the second year teaching staff, between them and the Multi-media Center is carried out as suggested in the previous chapter Additionally, a slight shift of teaching methodologies which allows more roles for students may, as well, be an effective solution In this paper, I also try to include some samples of studentdesign listening tasks based on online recordings to fill in possible space in the current syllabus There have been few studies conducted on the matter of developing online listening materials in general and in University of Languages and International Studies in particular On the other hand, this current research is of small-scale; therefore, it cannot cover all or investigate deeply into all aspects of the matter, especially the aspects concerning technology It cannot give out specific ways of how to search for suitable materials effectively, how to download or record the listening passage, etc Hence, there are still many places left for further research, such as detailed instructions of how to 79 retrieve such materials and procedures of designing a listening task using online recordings so that it can enhance learners‟ motivation Most desirable is that further research can be on building a data-base of online listening materials for teachers to make use of as they want to supplement learners‟ listening Since studying material, beside appropriate methodology, has always been one of the most important factors for the success of the teaching and learning, and it is a common expectation that it keeps developing for the sake of both teachers and students, I believe the present study is worthwhile for everyone who has concern about the quality of teaching and learning, especially about students‟ communication competence as the target to reach I hope this research would make some modest contribution to the prospects of a more effective and favourable online supplementary listening material source 80 REFERENCES Allen, R.V (1976) Language Experiences in Communication Houghton Mufflin Co Bouma, G.D (1996) The Research Process Oxford University Press Australia Brett, P (1995) Multimedia for listening comprehension: The design of a multimedia-based resource for developing listening skills Retrieved April, 26th 2005 from http://faculty.web.waseda.ac.jp Broughton, G., Brumfit, C., Flavell, R., Hill, P and Pincas, A (1978) Teaching English as a Foreign Language London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Brubridge, B (1986) Looking at Volcanoes and Listening Comprehension in TESOL Newsletter 8:7-11 Burnes, A (1999) Quantitative and Qualitative Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers Cambridge University Press Burns, P.C and Lowe, A.L (1966) The Language Arts in Childhood Education Rand McNally and Co Duzer, C.V Improving ESL Learners’ Listening Skills: At the Workplace and Beyond Retrieved April, 7th 2005 from http://www.cal.org Fraenkel, J R and Wallen, N.E (1996) How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education US: McGraw-Hill Inc 10 Gillian, B (1984) Listening to spoken English Longman 11 Helgesen, M and Brown, S (1994) Active Listening Cambridge University Press 12 Higgins, J (1995) Computers and English Language Learning Oxford: Intellect 81 13 Hood, W.L (1994) Communicative Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 14 Hoven, D (1999) A model for listening and viewing comprehension in multimedia environments Retrieved April, 26th 2005 from http://llt.msu.edu 15 Krashen, S.D (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning Oxford: Pergamon 16 Larsen-Freeman, D and Long, M.H (1991) An introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research Longman 17 Listening: Are We Teaching It, and If So, How? 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Retrieved October, 28th 2004 from http://www.abax.co.jp 34 Urr, P (1996) A Course in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 35 Urr, P (1992) Teaching Listening Comprehension Cambridge University Press 36 Verma, G.K and Mallick, K (1999) Researching Education: Perspectives and Techniques Falmer Press 37 Wilkinson, AL Stratta and Dudley, P (1974) The Quality of Listening Macmillan Education Ltd ... 26 3 .2 Findings analysis 26 3 .2. 1 Findings 26 3 .2. 1.1 Findings from questionnaires 26 3 .2. 1 .2 Findings from interviews 41 3 .2. 2 Interpretations of the findings 46 3 .2. 2.1 Situation 46 3 .2. 2 .2. .. quantitative study 20 2. 2 Selection of participants 21 2. 3 Methods of data collection 22 2. 4 Data analysis 25 2. 5 Limitation of the study 25 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS 26 3.1 Description... the latter gets a full 100 percent Reasons for using online sources 37 82 81.81 80 78 76 74 72. 72 72. 72 72. 72 Percent 72 70 68 A B C D A to update your students with what is going on around them