VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHÍ THỊ BÍCH APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL – A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AT VAN XUAN – HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL ÁP DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC GHI CHÉP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG – NGHIÊN CỨU BÁN THỰC NGHIỆM TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VẠN XUÂN – HOÀI ĐỨC M. Minor Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60.111 HANOI – 2013 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHÍ THỊ BÍCH APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL – A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AT VAN XUAN – HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL ÁP DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC GHI CHÉP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG – NGHIÊN CỨU BÁN THỰC NGHIỆM TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VẠN XUÂN – HOÀI ĐỨC M. Minor Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60.111 Supervisor: Trần Xuân Điệp, Assoc. HANOI – 2013 z DECLARATION I, Phí Thị Bích, declare that the thesis entitled “Applying note-taking strategies to develop high school students‟ listening skill: A quasi-experimental research at Van Xuan – Hoai Duc high school” reports the result of the study conducted by myself.
The minor thesis is submitted to Department of Post-graduate studies, ULIS, Hanoi for Degree of Master in TESOL. It has not been published anywhere. Phí Thị Bích i z ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc. Trần Xuân Điệp, for his valuable guidance, helpful advice, recommendation, and encouragement during the time I tried to complete this minor thesis.
Without his supervision, this work would never have been possible. My deepest thanks also go to Ms Trịnh Thị Nhung – an English teacher at Van Xuan high school and her 40 students in class 12 D1 (2012 - 2013) who were so generous and willing to help me during six weeks of conducting my research. I would like to thank all the teachers of Post-Graduate Department for their valuable lectures, whose knowledge is the foundation for my thesis. Finally, I would like to express my biggest love and thanks to my family for their unconditional contributions during the time I conducted my research.
It was my parents and my husband who gave me the will to complete this challenging work. Phí Thị Bích ii z ABSTRACT The effectiveness of note-taking in listening comprehension was investigated in many previous studies. This quasi-experimental study conducted upon forty students of class 12D1 at Van Xuan high school aimed at finding out the note- taking strategies used by high-school students, the difference in students‟ listening performance after using note-taking strategies as well as the students‟ opinion of applying note-taking strategies in listening lessons. The results of pre-test, post-test and students questionnaire revealed that the use of note-taking strategies had facilitative effect on students‟ listening comprehension and high-school students appreciated the application of note-taking strategies in their listening lessons.
These findings could be used as relevant reference for further studies. iii z LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Factors influencing Listening Comprehension Table 2: Background about participants Table 3: The pre-test and post-test results of the two groups Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test of control group and experimental group Table 5: The relationship between experimental and control group‟s test scores Figure 1: The difference in gain values obtained by both groups after experiment Figure 2: Students‟ opinion of the importance of listening skill Figure 3: Student‟s difficulties in studying listening skill Figure 4: Students‟ frequency of noting down information while listening Figure 5: Students‟ ways of note-taking while listening Figure 6: The benefits of note-taking to students‟ listening Figure 7: Students‟ opinion of the note-taking facilitative effect on listening comprehension Figure 8: Factors affect students from taking good notes Figure 9: Students‟ opinion of the application of note-taking in listening lessons Figure 10: Students‟ opinion to the teacher‟s help to get the best effect of note- taking in listening lessons Figure 11: Students‟ activities to improve their note-taking in listening lessons iv z LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as Foreign Language ESL English as Second Language SD Standard Deviation SLA Second Language Acquisition TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language ULIS University of Language and International Studies VNU Vietnam National University v z TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE Declaration. iii List of tables and figures. iv List of abbreviations.
v Table of content. vi PART A: INTRODUCTION. Rationale for the Research. Objectives of the Research.
Scope of the Research. Significance of the Research. Design of the Research. 3 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .1 The nature of listening comprehension .2 Listening comprehension process.3 Types of listening .4 Factors affects listening comprehension .5 Definition of note-takin .6 Note-taking methods .2 Review of related works.
Data collection methods. Questionnaire for students. Data collection procedure. Data analysis methods.
17 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Research question 1: Do students of class 12D1 improve. 21 their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using note-taking strategies? 3. Research question 2: What are students‟ opinions.
27 and attitudes towards note-taking and the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons? vii z PART C: CONCLUSIONS. Recapitulation of main ideas. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further studies.
I viii z PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the Research Listening clearly plays an important role in communication. There has been a number of researchers who investigated the ways to improve listening skill for EFL learners. Among those, the impact of note-taking was also investigated for a long time.
Crawford (1925) began his study in the 1920s, centering on whether note- taking could improve students‟ performance. Over the years, researchers have tried to verify that note-taking help students “encode” the information involved. Nowadays, it is very common for teachers to implement the note-taking strategies in the EFL listening class because they think that taking notes can help students catch the main points easily, so they can effectively promote their listening comprehension. However, this situation causes some researchers‟ great concerns about whether taking notes is effective for students to enhance their listening comprehension or not.
Some researchers disagree with note-taking strategy because of lack of vocabulary capacity (Lin 2004; Hsu, 2005); in addition, students cannot concentrate on the text because they have to spend much time on taking notes (Zheng, 1996; Lin, 2004); on the other hand, there are still some scholars who agree that note-taking can effectively promote students‟ listening comprehension because they think that students can pay more attention by the process of taking notes (Yeh, 2004), and students can recall the content of listening passages easily from their notes (Hale & Courtney, 1994). Since the effects of note-taking strategies on students‟ listening comprehension is still a controversial issue, this study was conducted to apply note-taking strategies in listening lessons in class. It aimed at finding out the effectiveness of note-taking on high school students‟ listening skill as well as the students‟ opinion of applying note-taking strategies at Van Xuan High school, Hanoi, Vietnam. Objectives of the research This study was intended to investigate the followings: 1 z - the improvement in students‟ listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as designed in the textbook after practicing taking notes while listening; and - students‟ opinion of note-taking strategies as well as the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons.
Research questions The following questions were made to achieve the aims above: 1. Do students of class 12D1 improve their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using note-taking strategies? 2. What are students‟ opinions and attitudes towards note-taking and the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons? 4. Scope of the research The study cannot cover the whole issue of applying all note-taking strategies for high school students within the framework of a minor thesis.
Therefore it only puts emphasis on some note-taking strategies which are instructed to use while doing listening tasks designed in the textbook. Furthermore, this study only focuses on listening comprehension, not all aspects of listening skill. The number of participants of the research is only 40. They are students of class 12 D1 (2012 – 2013) who are at the same age and have the same total years of learning English – 9 years with the same curriculum.
Significance of the research This study will look at a number of issues. These include the use of note-taking strategies in listening lessons, the students‟ attitudes towards and their perceptions of note-taking strategies in the light of developing their listening skill, and the effect of note-taking strategies on high school students‟ listening performance. Therefore, the author hopes this research will be able to find out the strong points of note- 2 z taking strategies as well as the feasibility to apply them to teaching listening skill at high school in the future. It could also be the suggestions and implications for other English teachers in Vietnam who are searching for the better ways to improve their students‟ listening skill.
Design of the research There are three main parts in this study, namely Introduction, Development, and Conclusions. The Introduction begins with the rationale, objectives, research questions, scopes, signification, and the design of the study. The second part includes three chapters namely Theoretical Background, Methodology, Findings and Discussions. In the first chapter, Theoretical Background, presents definition of major terms used in this study, including overview of listening comprehension, types of listening comprehension, factors affect listening comprehension, overview of note-taking strategies, note-taking methods; as well as the review of related works concerning advantages and disadvantages of note-taking, and the relationship between note-taking and listening comprehension.
The second chapter provides the methodology including settings, participants, data collection methods, data collection procedure, data analysis methods. The findings and discussions are clearly presented in the next chapter which deals with three research questions. The last part - Conclusions - includes the summary of the findings, implications, limitations and recommendations for further studies. PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the re- examination of concepts most relevant to the thesis‟s topic.
Firstly, the listening comprehension are presented with the definition, process, types of listening, and the factors affect listening comprehension. Secondly, the writers review the theory of note-taking in terms of its definition and types. Finally, some related studies are presented as the background for this study. The nature of listening comprehension Research has shown that listening is not a passive process, and it requires full participation and undivided attention of the learners.
168) rejected the treatment of listening comprehension as a passive skill and states: “Listening comprehension is anything but a passive activity. It is a complex, active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the large sociocultural content of the utterance. Coordinating all of this involves a great deal of mental activity on the part of the listener. Listening is hard work, and deserves more analysis and support”.
According to Nation and Newton (2009, p.40), listening comprehension is an interactive process which requires the listeners to use top-down and bottom-up processing simultaneously. While he/she is listening to a passage, the listener needs to apply knowledge of sound, grammar, conversational mechanisms, cohesion, discourse structure, discourse type, and social relationships, all at the same time. Previous researches have identified a number of factors as determinants of proficiency in a second or foreign language. According to Richards and Schmidt (2002, p.
