VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THỊ HỒNG HẠNH DEVELOPING COMPENSATION STRATEGIES IN LISTENING FOR 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT NGUYEN VAN CU UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL, GIALAM, HANOI (Phát triển chiến lược bù trong kỹ năng nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Nguyễn Văn Cừ, Gia Lâm, Hà Nội) M. Minor Programme Thesis Major: English Methodology Code: 60 14 10 HANOI, 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THỊ HỒNG HẠNH DEVELOPING COMPENSATION STRATEGIES IN LISTENING FOR 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT NGUYEN VAN CU UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL, GIALAM, HANOI (Phát triển chiến lược bù trong kỹ năng nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Nguyễn Văn Cừ, Gia Lâm, Hà Nội) M. Minor Programme Thesis Major: English Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: VŨ MAI TRANG, M. HANOI, 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration …………………………………………………………………………………….iii Table of contents……………………………………………………………………………….iv List of abbreviations………………………………………………………………………….vii List of tables………………………………………………………………………………….viii List of figures………………………………………………………………………………….ix PART A: INTRODUCTION.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study.
4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of listening comprehension. Listening comprehension process. Possible problems in listening comprehension.
Language learning strategies. Definitions of language learning strategies. Classification of language learning strategies. The importance of language learning strategies for students…………………….
Compensation strategies in listening. Definition of compensation strategies. The importance of compensation strategies in listening. Guidelines on applying compensation strategies in listening.13 CHAPTER 2: DATA COLLECTION, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Setting of the study. Subjects of the study. Methods and instruments.16 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Findings and discussions.
Teachers’ perception and evaluation of compensation strategies in listening. Students’ perception and evaluation of compensation strategies in listening. The current situation of applying compensation strategies in listening. Students’ difficulties and preferences in applying compensation strategies in listening.
Students’ difficulties in applying compensation strategies in listening. Students’ preferences in applying compensation strategies in listening .27 CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DEVELOPING COMPENSATION STRATEGIES. Raising awareness of compensation strategy training. Integrating strategy training into the lessons.
Teaching basic grammatical rules and phonological rules. Teaching discourse marker clues. Exploiting background knowledge. Recalling key words and structures.
Making full use of visual aids. Providing pairwork and groupwork. Providing a variety of listening tasks. Limitations and suggestions for further research .I Appendix 1: Interviews for teachers………………………………………….I Appendix 2: Survey questionnaires for students.
III Appendix 3: A sample of an interview transcript.XI Appendix 4: A sample of a class observation.XIII Appendix 5: A suggested lesson plan of integrating strategy instruction.XVI TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language LLS: Language Learning Strategies NVC School: Nguyen Van Cu Upper-secondary School TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Classification of language learning strategies Table 2: Classification of compensation strategies Table 3: Descriptive statistics for frequency of compensation strategy use Table 4: Students’ difficulties in applying compensation strategies in listening Table 5: Students’ preferences in applying compensation strategies in listening TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Frequency of use for strategy “using titles and visual clues” Figure 2: Frequency of use for strategy “using background knowledge clues” Figure 3: Frequency of use for strategy “using contextual clues” Figure 4: Frequency of use for strategy “writing sound transcript” Figure 5: Frequency of use for strategy “using background noise clues” Figure 6: Frequency of use for strategy “using grammatical clues” Figure 7: Frequency of use for strategy “using discourse marker clues” Figure 8: Frequency of use for strategy “using phonological clues” TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English language teaching in the recent years has moved from traditional approaches, involving the explicit teaching of grammar and translation, to various versions of communicative methodology. Consequently, a greater emphasis has been placed on learners and what strategies they adopt to be successful. Well-known researchers such as Cohen (1988), O‟Malley and Chamot (1990), and Oxford (1990) have pointed out that learning strategies are among the main factors that help determine how well students learn a second or foreign language.
Therefore, it is the role of the teacher to help students discover and apply appropriate learning strategies in their learning. The necessary to equip students with listening strategies to help them develop their listening skill at upper-secondary schools in Vietnam can be seen clearly. The new series of English textbooks for students have been used in schools in Viet Nam for some years and it seems that listening skill is the most difficult one for our students to master. Listening is also the skill that causes a lot of difficulties for teachers to prepare and carry out the lesson because the old textbooks do not have a separate part for teaching and learning listening skill.
The students who are using the new kind of textbooks often find it hard to catch up with the listening text and as a result they fail to comprehend what is spoken. Besides, they come to listening activities with little knowledge of how to listen effectively and successfully. The situation at Nguyen Van Cu Upper-secondary School is the same, if not to say it is more serious. We have many weak students who lack vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and have poor pronunciation.
Listening lessons are really hard for them. There is a variety of strategies that can be employed in listening skill such as memory strategies; cognitive strategies; compensation strategies; metacognitive strategies; affective strategies; and social strategies (Oxford, 1990). However, compensation strategies which involve in the ability of guessing intelligently from linguistic clues and other clues are of great help to weak students. These strategies help students to overcome their limitations to guess what is heard.
The facts above explain the reasons why the researcher conducts the study “Developing compensation strategies in listening for 10th form students at Nguyen Van Cu TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com upper-secondary school, Gialam, Hanoi”. It is hoped that this study can be of some help to teachers and students in listening lessons. Aims of the study First of all, the study aims at investigating the perception of compensation strategies in listening by teachers and 10th form students at Nguyen Van Cu Upper-secondary School; the target students‟ frequency of use of these strategies; and their difficulties and preferences in applying these strategies. Secondly, the author intends to propose pedagogical implications and suggestions for developing the target students‟ compensations strategies in listening.
To achieve these aims, four research questions have been presented as follows: 1. How do teachers and 10th form students at NVC School perceive compensation strategies in listening and their importance? 2. How often do 10th form students at NVC School apply compensation strategies in listening? Which specific strategies do they use? 3. What are the difficulties and preferences of 10th form students at NVC School in applying compensation strategies in listening? 4.
What recommendations should be made for teachers to help 10 th form students at NVC School develop compensation strategies in listening? 3. Scope of the study Firstly, this study only focuses on compensation strategies used in listening (guessing intelligently) although the new kind of textbook covers all of four skills, namely reading, speaking, listening and writing as well as there are a lot of English language learning strategies that can be employed. Secondly, due to the small scale of the study the subjects are restricted only to 10 th form teachers and students at Nguyen Van Cu upper-secondary school, who are using the new kind of textbook. Methods of the study The author has applied the following methods in this study: Data collection results from interviews (for teachers), survey questionnaires (for students) and class observations.
Data analysis is done through coding, classifying, and reporting the information. Design of the study The study is divided into three parts. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Part A Introduction shows the research problem and the rationale for the research. Subsequently, it presents the aims, the scope, the methods and the design of the study.
Part B Development consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides a summary of theoretical background which covers a review in key concepts relating to the research topic as well as the literature in the field. Chapter 2 deals with the setting of the study and the data collection process. The results obtained are also analysed and interpreted in this part, so that major findings are revealed and discussed.
Chapter 3 is concerned with recommendations for developing 10th form students‟ compensation strategies in listening at the target school. These recommendations are drawn from the literature review and from the findings in Chapter 2. Part C Conclusion reviews the main findings of the study and provides suggestions for further studies. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Definitions of listening comprehension Language is the tool of communication, while listening is the most important part of language communication and it is the basic path to understand others. Listening is more than merely hearing words and comprehension is often considered to be the first-order goal of listening, and the highest priority of the listener. During the last few decades, scholars have been trying to find out the nature of listening comprehension and as a result different definitions of listening comprehension have been proposed. Underwood (1989: 1) puts a simple and easy-to-understand definition.
According to her, listening “is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear.” Underwoord emphasizes the consciousness of listeners by using the phrase “paying attention”. Besides, listening here is not stressed the word level but the meaning of the whole utterance. She clarifies that “ to listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, and not simply understand the words themselves. ” In Rubin‟s point of view, “listening is conceived of as an active process in which listeners select and interpret information which comes from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express.” (Rubin, 1995: 7 as cited in Helgesen & Brown, 2007: 3) The author emphasizes the activeness of listeners in the listening process and also identifies two distinctive features of listening comprehension which are selecting and interpreting.
Selecting means listeners use only part of the incoming information whereas interpreting means listeners make sense of the input from their background knowledge as well as the new information. More specifically, Richards and Schmidth (2002: 313) as cited in Helgesen & Brown (2007: 3) views listening comprehension as “the process of understanding speech in a first or second language. The study of listening comprehension in second language focuses on the role of individual linguistic units (e., phonemes, words, grammatical structures) as well as the role of the listeners’ expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and topic.” In this definition, the writers mention the role of non-linguistic units such as the context, the background knowledge. These things are often neglected in traditional points of TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com views which regard the listeners as tape recorders.
I agree most with this definition because it covers all of the necessary factors relating to listening comprehension. Besides the controversies over the definition of listening comprehension, there also exist the concerns about the process of listening comprehension. Listening comprehension process Listening is different from hearing in the aspect of listeners‟ paying attention. Paying attention results in the fact that listeners actively process what they hear.
According to Underwood (1989: 4) the aural process has three stages.