Students‘ improvement after they had been taught w- 123docz.net

3.1.3.3. Students’ opinion about the benefits of learning listening through the use of English songs

Note: 1: Strongly disagree 2: Disagree 3: Don’t know 4: Agree 5: Strongly agree Table 1: The benefits of learning listening through the use of English songs

Choices / Agreement 1 2 3 4 5

Make the listening lesson more relaxing 5 5,7 8 37,3 44 Make the listening lesson more enjoyable 1 9 7.3 42 40.7 Develop my confidence in listening to English 11 19 17 22 31 Help me to listen to English better 3.3 10 16.6 50 20

Develop my guessing skill 6 14.3 25.3 40 14.4

Help me to recognize key words while listening

5 3 35.6 44.3 12.1

Help me pay greater attention to word stress 7 9 25.6 36.7 21,7 Help me to discriminate English sounds better. 13.3 22.3 39 13.4 12

(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.Study.on.Using.English.Songs.in.Teaching.Listening.Skill.to.Improve.the.Efficiency.and.Motivation.for.First.Year.Non.English.Major.Students.at.Hai.Duong.Medical.Technical.University(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.Study.on.Using.English.Songs.in.Teaching.Listening.Skill.to.Improve.the.Efficiency.and.Motivation.for.First.Year.Non.English.Major.Students.at.Hai.Duong.Medical.Technical.University(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.Study.on.Using.English.Songs.in.Teaching.Listening.Skill.to.Improve.the.Efficiency.and.Motivation.for.First.Year.Non.English.Major.Students.at.Hai.Duong.Medical.Technical.University(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.Study.on.Using.English.Songs.in.Teaching.Listening.Skill.to.Improve.the.Efficiency.and.Motivation.for.First.Year.Non.English.Major.Students.at.Hai.Duong.Medical.Technical.University

These numbers illustrates students‘ awareness of the effectiveness of English songs to their listening lessons. Firstly, it can be clearly seen that most of the students agreed that English songs make their lessons more relaxing. 81,3 % of the students agreed with the first choice, and 44 % expressed their strong agreement. The number for the second choice, which is that songs make the listening lesson more enjoyable is 82,7%. This is really important as it means the class is no longer covered with the feeling of anxiety and unwillingness but joy and fun. This marks a raise in students‘

motivation for the skill as when they find the lesson enjoyable, they will like to learn it more and more and when they feel relaxed in it, they will do it better and better.

Especially, more than half of the students approved that they felt much more confident in doing listening skill, which never happened before. As much as 53% of them stated strongly that they were no longer nervous or stressed when doing listening task. This positive result reassures that English songs do a great help in raising students‘

motivation in learning listening skill. However, there still exist 17% of them showing no concern about this question. When being asked for reasons, they explained that they felt excited to solve the tasks with songs but this excitement could not erase the feeling of nervousness when they dealt with the real listening exercises.

In addition to that, 70% of the respondents claimed that thanks to English songs, their listening skill is better than before. Of the rest, 16.6% made no decisions, and 13.3% found no progress in their study of the skill.

Guessing skill seems to be the most progressive one as 54.4 % students said that their guessing skill was improved through songs.

Word recognition stands at the second place with the number of 56,4% and it is followed by the skill of awareness of word stress which is illustrated by 58,4%.

Surprisingly, sound discrimination skill is put at the bottom of the list with only 25,4%

of the learners who claimed that songs helped them discriminate sounds better. Most of the students found this sub-skill quite difficult to do, so they either showed no concern for it (39%), or disagreed with the statement (35,6%).

The thing should be noted here is that the number of students who had no idea on these points seems to be high. 35.6% and 25.6% are the respective number of students who did not know whether songs help them to recognize key words while listening or pay greater attention to word stress. For guessing skill, it is 25.3%. These

people, perhaps, neither saw any progress in their skills nor paid much attention to them.

Regardless of these things, it can be concluded that songs can help students improve some bottom-up listening skills such as word recognition, awareness of word stress, and enhance their attention while listening.

3.1.3.4. Students’ favorite activities while they are listening to English songs

Options Result (%)

Arranging jumbled lines 97,3%

Gap- filling 91%

Tick True or False sentences 55%

Finding the words appeared in the song 52%

Correcting mistakes 43%

Discussing about the meaning of the song 33%

Dictation 12%

Multiple choice questions 6.3 %

Table 2: Students’ favorite activities while they are listening to English songs From the table, it can be seen that the students‘ most favorite activity is arranging the jumbled lines, counting for 97,3 %. This maybe due to the fact that this kind of task was the easiest and it did not require much their attention. Listening to the songs and fill in the blank with a missing word is at the second position of their choice, which makes up 91%. Perhaps, this type of activity was quite difficult but very interesting as it took a lot of their concentration while listening and they felt excited about the words they wrote down. Nothing was more wonderful if those words were correct answers.

Besides, 55% of the respondents regard listening and ticking True or False sentences is the third of their most favorite activities. In fact, this task was not too difficult and they could practice concentration while listening.

Another type of task would attract students a lot is listening to the song and circling the words appeared in the song, which was chosen by 52%. Besides, many students also like listening to the songs and correcting mistakes in the songs such as

finding out the extra words or wrong words in the lyrics. This is realized with the portion of 43%.

The next activity that students show their concern is discussing about the meaning of the songs. 33% of the students were eager to know about the content of those songs because it could make them understand more about the songs they were listening to.

At the bottom of their choice, only 12% of the students show their interest to dictation, even a smaller number of them (6,3%) think that doing the multi-choice questions while listening is interesting. It is understandable because these tasks are often too difficult and take them a lot of time and sub-skills to fulfill.

3.1.3.5. Reasons that students listen to English songs

Table 3: Reasons that students listen to English songs

A large amount of the informants (over 80%) share the same opinion about their aim of listening to songs is for relaxation and pleasure. Listening to songs really make them feel comfortable and relaxed after hours of working or studying hard.

Meanwhile, there is 59% of students saying that their main purpose is to improve listening skill. Only 1% or 2% of the students listen to English songs to stay awake or for other reasons.

3.2. Questionnaire for teacher 3.2.1. Aims

The aim of questionnaire for teacher is to find out teachers‘ frequency of using songs and kind of tasks they designed to teach with the use of songs and teachers‘

comment on advantages and disadvantages of using songs to teach listening skill, criteria for choosing appropriate songs.

Options Results (%)

For relaxation 89%

For pleasure 80%

For improvement in listening skill 59%

For staying awake 2%

Other reasons 1%

3.2.2 Participants

The participants of this survey questionnaire are 11 teachers at HMTU. All of them are quite young, well – trained and energetic which is the very good condition for HMTU. Five of them had an M.A degree. Eight are in their thirties with more than 7 years of teaching experience. Three others are in their forties with over 15 years of teaching experience. Their duties at the university are the same, and they all have to teach four skills: listening, writing, reading and speaking.

3.2.3 Data analysis

3.2.3.1 The frequency of using songs to teach listening skill

70%

18%

12%

Always Usually Sometimes Realy Never

Students‘ improvement after they had been taught with the use of songs

Major findings from the research