VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Hanoi university of languages and international studies Department of postgraduate studies ---------- NGO THI THANH THUY EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION-TRANSFER ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING LISTENING FOR THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT BACNINH SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL (HIÖU QU¶ HO¹T ®éng chuyÓn ®æi th«ng tin trong viÖc d¹y nghe cho häc sinh líp 10 kh«ng chuyªn TIÕNG anh t¹i tr-êng thpt chuyªn b¾c ninh) MA MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 HANOI, 2009 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Department of Postgraduate Studies NGO THI THANH THUY EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION-TRANSFER ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING LISTENING FOR THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT BACNINH SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL (HIÖU QU¶ cña ho¹t ®éng chuyÓn ®æi th«ng tin trong viÖc d¹y nghe cho häc sinh líp 10 kh«ng chuyªn TIÕNG ANH t¹i tr-êng THPT chuyªn b¾c ninh) MA MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 SUPERVISOR: PHAN THI VAN QUYEN, MA Hanoi, 2009 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality. iii Table of contents. iv Lists of abbreviations .v List of tables and charts. vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Aims and research questions of the study. Method of the study.
Design of the study .3 PART 2: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Background concepts of listening. Definition of listening. Bottom-up process.
Top-down process. Stages of a listening lesson. Pre-listening stage. While-listening stage.
Post-listening stage. Pre-listening activities. While-listening activities. Post-listening activities.
Background concepts of Information-transfer activities. 12 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Definition of Information-transfer activities. Why should we employ Information transfer-activities.
When should we employ Information transfer-activities. 16 Chapter 2: THE STUDY. Background of the study. Data collection instruments.
Data collection procedures. Analysis of the Survey questionnaire for teachers. Analysis of the Survey questionnaire for students. Analysis of the researcher’s class observation.
36 Chapter 3: MAJOR FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS. Teachers’ and students’ attitude toward IT activities. How teachers of English at BnSHS employ IT activities. Difficulties teachers and students at BnSHS encounter in employing IT activities.
Suggestions for more effective employment of IT activities. Using some soft-wares to edit listening materials. Making the visual aids more attractive. 44 References Appendices LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BnSHS : Bacninh Specialized High School IT : Information-Transfer MOET : Ministry of Education and Training LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS TABLES Table 1 : Johnson’s classification of a sample ………………………………………………….
20 Table 2 : Aspects of a listening text students pay attention to …….…………………………… 27 Table 3 : Students’ preferences for activities in while-listening stage ………………………… 28 Table 4 : Problems students encounter in IT activities …………………………………………… 30 Table 5.1 : Teachers’ preferences for activities in while-listening stage ……………………….2 : Common tendency of Teachers’ preferences for activities in while-listening stage……………………………………………………………………………………………. 31 Table 6 : Aims of employing IT activities ……………………………………………………………. 34 Table 7 : Teachers’ comments after employing IT activities …………………………………… 34 Table 8 : Teachers’ difficulties when employing IT activities …………………………………… 35 Table 9 : Teachers’ suggestions ………………………………………………………………………… 35 CHARTS Chart 1 : The place students come from ……………………………………………………………… 24 Chart 2 : The time students have been learning English …………………………………………… 25 Chart 3 : Students’ evaluation on language skills …………………………………………………… 25 Chart 4 : Students’ interest in listening skill ………………………………………………………… 26 Chart 5 : The necessity of improving listening skill at high schools …………………………… 27 Chart 6 : Students’ evaluation on IT activities in their current textbook……………………… 29 Chart 7 : Students’ preferences for participation in IT activities ………………………………… 29 Chart 8 : Teaching-years of teachers at BnSHS …………………………………………………… 30 Chart 9 : Listening aspects ……………………………………………………………………………… 32 Chart 10 : Teachers’ evaluation on IT activities in their current textbook ……………………… 33 Chart 11 : Frequency of IT activities in teaching listening ………………………………………… 33 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale The real need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching and learning around the world.
Millions of people today want to be able to master English to a high level of accuracy and fluency. Employers too insist that their employees have good English language skills. The demand for an appropriate teaching methodology is therefore as strong as ever. Currently with the entry into the WTO and opening markets to the outside world, language policies of Vietnam put more emphasis on communication skills in English than ever.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) of Vietnam made reforms in national education system. In 2006 the MOET introduced a new high school curriculum. This lead to a significant change in English teaching and learning methods: from deep-rooted grammar-translation method to communicative one. English 10 designed by a group of authors: Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong, Nguyen Quoc Tuan consists of 16 teaching units.
Each unit contains five 45-minute periods corresponding to five parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language focus. Among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), listening is considered to be the most difficult and challenging for both teachers and students, which leads to the fact that non- English major students, at Bacninh Specialized High schools are afraid of learning listening. They seem to neglect listening skill during their language learning process. As a result their listening skill is often weak.
Information- transfer (IT) activities have now become commonplace in language teaching. However the application of these activities in teaching Listening for non-English majors at high schools has not got much concern. This fact has encouraged the author to investigate into the effectiveness of Information- transfer activities employed by teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School. Hopefully, the study will be helpful for the author and other teachers to find out appropriate ways to handle Information-transfer activities effectively to develop students‟ listening skill.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study Listening is a broad and complex field that many linguists take much time to study. There have been many activities designed to improve learners‟ listening skill. Therefore my study focuses mainly on Information-transfer activities employed by teachers of English in teaching listening for the 10th non- English major students at BnSHS.
Significance of the study The study highlights the important role of listening skill in general and Information- transfer activities in particular. The findings of this study reinforces the value of IT activities in teaching listening. Moreover, the author hopes that the suggestions of this study can help high school teachers employ IT activities effectively in teaching listening for non- English major students. Aims and research questions of the study The main purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of Information-transfer activities employed by teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School.
The specific aims of the research are: To investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude towards Information-transfer activities. To find out how teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School employ those activities. To give some suggestions for employing IT activities more effectively to develop listening skill of non- English major students at BnSHS. The investigation has been carried out to answer the following research questions: (1) What are teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward IT activities? (2) How do teachers of English at BnSHS employ those activities? (3) What are difficulties facing teachers and students at BnSHS in employing IT activities in teaching and learning listening? 5.
Methods of the study In order to accomplish the study, the author used Survey Research method which is a study of a large group through direct study of a subset of that group. These research methods are widely used to gather data at a particular point in time to: • Describe the nature of existing conditions LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -3- • Identify standards against which existing conditions can be compared • Determine the relationships that exist between specific events Survey methods have been used by second language, bilingual education and foreign language researchers to study a wide variety of issues that impinge on language learning: (1) The policies affecting learning and teaching (2) Program administration (3) Attitudes of teachers / learners toward a teaching method (4) Classroom practices (5) Target language norms (6) Responses of people toward a language phenomenon (7) Sociolinguistic studies of language use (8) The institutional settings The specific aims of the author are to investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude towards IT activities and how teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School employ those activities. These aims match with ones of Survey Research method (3- Attitudes of teachers / learners toward a teaching method and 4- Classroom practices). Therefore the author used Survey Research method.
Design of the study The study consists of 3 parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion. The first part, “Introduction”, describes the basic information such as rationale, scope, significance, aims and research questions as well as methods of the study. The second part, “Development”, comprises 3 chapters: • Chapter 1, Literature Review, provides theoretical background of listening and information-transfer activities. • Chapter 2, The study, presents the settings to the study, target population, sample, instrumentation and data analysis.
• Chapter 3, Major findings and suggestions, offers some main findings and recommendations on how to make IT activities more effectively. The last part, “Conclusion”, is a review of the study, the limitations and directions for future study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -4- PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter involves different issues in the theories of the listening in a foreign language and Information-transfer activities. Two main features will be presented: background concepts of listening and of IT activities.
Background concepts of listening: 1. Definition of listening It seems to be difficult to define what listening is. People in different professions such as applied linguists, anthropologists, psychologists define listening in many different ways. That‟s because there is no universally accepted definition for the term “listening‟.
Howatt and Dakin (1974) define listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker‟s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Thomlison's (1984) definition of listening includes “active listening”, which goes beyond comprehending as understanding the message content, to comprehension as an act of empathetic understanding of the speaker.
Furthermore Gordon (1985) argues that empathy is essential to listening and contends that it is more than a polite attempt to identify a speaker‟s perspectives. Rather more importantly, empathetic understanding expands to “egocentric prosocial behavior”. Thus, the listener altruistically acknowledges concern for the speaker‟s welfare and interests. According to Ronald and Roskelly (1985) listening is an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and reading demand; and these authors present specific exercises to make students active listeners who are aware of the "inner voice" one hears when writing.
Significance of listening Listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning and teaching (Nunan, 1997). For most people, being able to claim knowledge of a second language means being able to speak and write in that language. Listening and reading are therefore secondary skills. However, listening comes into fashion.
In the 1960s, the emphasis on oral language skills LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -5- gave it a boost. It became fashionable again in the 1980s, when Krashen's (1982) ideas about comprehensible input gained prominence.