QUANG NAM UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES. GRADUATION PAPER A STUDY ON THE USE OF ENGLISH SONGS IN TEACHING LISTENING FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT QUANG NAM UNIVERSITY Student: LE THI THUY OANH Student code: 1117005633 MAJOR: ENGLISH Academic Course: 2007 - 2011 Supervisor: PHAN THI DIEU HIEN, M.A Quang Nam, May 2011 ACKNOWLEGEMENT I most acknowledge the contribution of many people. However, I have to say that this research would not be as it is without the careful observation by Ms Phan Thi Dieu Hien, M. It is her who has given me helpful advice, useful references and constant support through the study.
1 am grateful to the teachers of the Department of English, Quang Nam University for their valuable suggestions and helping me complete the questionnaire and interview. I also would like to sincerely thank to all first-year students of English at Quang Nam University for their enthusiastic cooperation in the data collection. Finally, and most important, I am deeply indebted to my family and my friends for their helps and encouragements during the process of doing this paper. Tam Ky, May 2011 Le Thi Thuy Oanh LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 4.1: Student’s attitudes toward learning listening Table 4.2: Students’ attitudes toward English songs and using English songs to teach listening Table 4.3: The frequency of using English songs to teach listening Table 4.4: Kinds of English songs used by students and teachers Table 4.5: The purpose of using English songs to learn listening Table 4.6: The purpose of using English songs to teach listening, Table 4.7: Students’ limitations in using English songs to learn Table 4.8: Suggestions for Teachers of students and teachers FIGURES Figure 1: Teachers’ attitudes toward teaching listening Figure 2: Students’ benefits in using English songs to teach listening Figure 3: Teachers’ Limitations in using English songs to teach listening TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.4 Significance of study CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE, 2.1 An overview of Listening skill.2 Listening teaching Strategies.2 Kinds of songs.2 Benefits of employing English songs to teach listening.3 New grammar structures.3 Limitations employing English songs to teach listening.1 The Common difficulties in listening English songs .2 Factors affecting the improvement of the ability of listening.
CHAPTER Ill: METHODOLOGY.3 Procedures of data collection .4 Data analysis CHAPTER IV: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4. Students and teachers’ attitudes toward learning and teaching listening. Students’ attitudes toward learning listening .2, Teachers’ attitudes toward teaching listening .3 Students’ Attitudes toward English songs and using English songs to learn listening .2 The frequency of using English songs to teach listening 4.3 Kinds of English songs used by students and teachers .4 The purpose of using English songs to learn and teach listening.1 The purpose of using English songs to learn listening 4.2 The purpose of using English songs to teach listening .5 Students’ Benefits in using English songs to teach listening 4.6 Limitations of using English songs to learn listening .7 Teachers’ Limitations in using English songs to teach listening .8 Suggestions for Teacher. CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION: 5.
Suggestions and implications .1 Implications for teachers 5.2 Implications for students 5.4 Recommendation for further studies. REFERENCES APPENDICES Appendix 1: Questionnaire for students Appendix 2: Questionnaire for teachers Appendix 3: Interview questions for teachers Appendix 4: Interview questions for students Appendix 5: Transcription of interviewing teachers Appendix 6: Transcription of interviewing students Transcription of interviewing teachers CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale In the age of integration and globalization, English is an important tool for operating on the world stage. The ability of speaking and listening is mandatory in certain fields, professions and occupations. Therefore, teaching English as a foreign language and especially teaching listening effectively is more and more complicated today.
For learners of English, listening is vital because it is through this sense that they receive information on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spoken word order, as well as the stress patterns of words, phrases and sentences. Added to these is the effect that different accents, voice tone and pitch can have on their comprehension of the message. Through listening the learners pick up vital clues, some consciously, others subconsciously, about what constitutes idiomatic spoken English. The learners may also register and retain words and phrases which having heard them from a native speaker or their teachers, they know to be acceptable for their own use later on.
The importance of listening to English, as a result, is being increasingly recognized in course books. However, teaching listening is not an easy task. This is agreed by the ideas of Nauman, G. (2002) that listening is one of the most important and difficult skill among the four core skills of language teaching.
In fact, listening in a foreign language is a challenging task requiring the appropriate use of a variety of different approaches, skills, strategies, and responses. For fulfilling these requirements, a lot of specific activities and effective teaching methods that have been suggested. Among of them, English songs seem to be the most effective one. Until now, there have been many studies about English songs and the benefits of applying songs to teaching English.
According to Nauman, G. (2002) listening to English songs has three main benefits. /t helps us to improve our language skills, gives us a topic of common conversation starter and gives us cultural insight. (2009) also states the songs are part of authentic materials required for studying about the foreign language directly from the native speakers.
There are a lot of English expressions and culture in the songs, so that students can learn and expand their knowledge, not only now the words written. Students can also know how to pronounce them especially after listening to such songs. Moreover, learning English through songs can be effective to assist pronunciation, since the students can directly get the knowledge on how to pronounce the word from the. song they hear, when students learn in an enjoyable situation, they will digest the lesson easily.
It seems a natural progression that gradually English songs make their way into people's hearts. In short, songs can bring students great interest and strong motivation, instead of boredom, during the lesson. Although many researchers in the world have agreed the benefits of learning a language through songs, they have not been used popularly for teaching English, especially listening at Quang Nam University. This can be explained by Hans’s viewpoint (2009): “It will be a big challenge if the vocabulary loaded for songs are inappropriate to the proficiency level”.
It is certain that employing English songs to teach listening provides teachers and students with both benefits and limitations. Therefore, this research is primarily conducted to help teachers and first-year students at Quang Nam University in terms of using English songs appropriately to promote teaching and learning listening.2 Objectives This study is expected to gain an insight into how English songs employed in English classes for the first-year students. It also aims at finding out the benefits as well as limitations of using songs to teach ‘listening at Quang Nam University. In addition, the research seeks to offer some pedagogical techniques that make better use of English songs in the same context.
In brief, these objectives can be summarized into the following “ research questions. What are the attitudes of the teachers and the first-year students at Quang Nam University to using English songs in teaching English listening? 2. What benefits do the first-year students at Quang Nam University get from learning listening through English songs? 3. What limitations do both teachers and students meet while using English songs in teaching and learning listening? 4.
What are suggestions to make better use of English songs in teaching listening to first year students at Quang Nam University? 1.4 Significance of study The author of the study hopes that this research can help the first-year students become more aware of the benefits and limitations of using English songs to learn listening. In addition, it will encourage teachers to use English songs more often in listening class to create an interesting, relaxing classroom atmosphere. CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter which deals with the background to my study includes the related studies, definitions of terms, the benefits of using songs in teaching listening and the limitation of using English songs in teaching listening.1 Related studies Using songs in language teaching and learning is not a new idea. The exploitation of songs has been widely researched.
Related studies abroad There is some literature on the usefulness of songs in a language class as reviewed in the previous part. Besides, the use of songs in teaching listening can be found in some of the books about techniques to teach listening., British Council Cameroon suggested some activities based on songs’ rhymes to focus learners on particular sounds in their article named “Developing pronunciation through songs”. Besides, “Using Music in the Adult ESL Classroom” of Lems, Kristen (2011) gives some benefits of songs in teaching listening.2 Related studies in Vietnam In Vietnam, although there are a lot of researches have been conducted to investigate the exploitation of songs in language classrooms, for example, to teach listening comprehension, few have been conducted to find out the situation of using songs to teach listening in general and teach listening to the university students. “Using songs in teaching sounds and words at Nguyen Trai high school” (2008-2009) and “using songs to teach English sounds to two 11thform classes at Nguyen Gia Thieu high school” (2008-2009) are the related study the researcher of this research can find in Vietnam.
In conclusion, using songs in teaching listening is familiar with foreign language teachers abroad; it is quite new to Vietnamese teachers.1 An overview of Listening skill Listening skill is one of the four important and difficult skills in teaching and learning foreign language. It can be seen that listening in a foreign language is a challenging task requiring the appropriate use of different approaches skills, strategies and responses. According to David Peaty(1999), beside knowing grammar, lexis and basis phonology, learners need to know about contraction, elision, assimilation, and reduction, intonation and stress patterns, and so on. In Jony Linch’s view (1997), it is important for you to build up your listening ability gradually.
However, listening has always been one of the most challenging skills for students to develop and for teachers to teach. It is especially demanding in our context of resource-poor condition. We however, recognize the great importance of developing listening skills in Vietnam. Le Thi Lan (2002), a teacher of English in Hanoi, shares the same view that her students could not do the listening task presented to them.
They were overwhelmed by the fast speed, the varying accents and the difficulty of the tasks themselves. Vu Thi Kieu (2003), another lecturer of English, comments that listening seems to be the most challenging of all the four skills in English. Her students’ complaints are that they cannot recognize the words, and even when they can understand all the words, they cannot understand the meaning of the sentences, especially when they have to listen to long conversations. “Of all the four skills, my students fear listening skill most.
Whenever I brought the cassette player to class, I would see the disappointment on their faces. “Listening again, teacher?” they would ask in a tone that revealed the pain of past struggles to master this skill”. Moreover, listening is decisive for career success. In fact, in any job recruitments or interviews, English always comes first as the foremost criterion for selecting candidates, and in most job performance reviews or appraisals, English competence is considered one of the most important factors for promotion.
Richards (2002) agrees that proficiency in English is needed for employees to advance in international companies and improve their technical knowledge and skills. Yet, expatriate managers in Vietnam often complain about their Vietnamese staff who fail to communicate with them freely and comfortably due to their poor command of English.