VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LISTENING PRACTICE ACTIVITIES USED BY FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT VNUA ĐIỀU TRA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG LUYỆN NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI HỌC VIỆN NÔNG NGHIỆP VIỆT NAM Student: VŨ THANH VÂN Student code: 621218 Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Supervisors: NGUYỄN THỊ KIM QUẾ, M.Ed - LÊ THỊ HỒNG LAM, MA Hanoi – 2021 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LISTENING PRACTICE ACTIVITIES USED BY FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT VNUA ĐIỀU TRA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG LUYỆN NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI HỌC VIỆN NÔNG NGHIỆP VIỆT NAM Student: VŨ THANH VÂN Student code: 621218 Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Supervisors: NGUYỄN THỊ KIM QUẾ, M.Ed - LÊ THỊ HỒNG LAM, MA i CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled An investigation into the listening practice activities used by first-year English-majored students at VNUA submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor in English Linguistics. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi, 2021 VŨ THANH VÂN Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Date:…………………… ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the four years studying and training at the Vietnam national university of Agriculture up to now, I have received a lot of attention and help from teachers and friends. With the deepest and most sincere gratitude, I would like to send to the teachers of the Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages at the Vietnam national university of Agriculture for their knowledge and dedication to convey valuable knowledge valuable to us during our time at school.
And especially, this term, the Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages organized us access to a subject that I think is very useful to students of the Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages as well as all students of the majors English Lingustics. That is the topic " An investigation into the listening practice activities used by first-year English-majored students at VNUA ". I would like to sincerely thank Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Que and Ms.
Le Thi Hong Lam for their dedicated guidance through each classroom session as well as talks and discussions on creative fields in scientific research. I would also like to express my gratitude to the leadership of the Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages and functions for directly and indirectly helping me through this learning and practice process. Given the limited time and experience of a practitioner, the shortcomings cannot be avoided in this report. I look forward to receiving the instructions and comments of the teachers so that I have additional conditions, improve my awareness, and better serve the practical work in the future.
Thank you sincerely! iii ASTRACT Listening skills play an important role in communication. Applying appropriate activities when practising the listening skills may help to boost students’ listening comprehension. This study was designed to find out the listening practice activities commonly used by first-year students at VNUA. A survey questionnaire was used to gather information about their listening practice habits.
The data collected was then analysed with the help of SPSS. Results show that most of the students surveyed practise listening every day and they apply the proper activities to practice their listening skills. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY .iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. v LIST OF TABLES.vi LIST OF FIGURES.
vii Part 1: INTRODUCTION. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY. SCOPE OF THE STUDY.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY. DESIGN OF THE STUDY. 4 Chapter 1 - LITERATURE REVIEW .1 REVIEW OF THE PREVIOUS STUDIES (AT HOME & ABROAD). Related research studies at home.
Related research studies abroad. REVIEW OF THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Definition of listening. Types of listening .Factors affecting English listening skills.
Suggested in-class activities. Listening activities outside classrooms. RESEARCH SETTING/CONTEXT. Data collecting instruments.
20 Chapter 3 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. MOTIVATIONS FOR LISTENING PRACTICE. STUDENTS PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES. STUDENTS WHILE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES.
Students’ focus during their first time listening. The number of times of listening to a recording. Time spent on listening practice per day. Students’ while-listening activities.
Students’ sources for listening practice. POST-LISTENING ACTIVITIES. LIMITATION OF THE CURRENT RESEARCH. 39 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.
1: Students’ motivations for listening practice. 2: Students pre-listening activities .2: Students’ focus during their first time listening .: Time spent on listening practice per day .5: Frequency of listening practice outside classroom .6: Students’ while-listening activities .7: Students’ sources for listening practice .1: Students’ post-listening activities .2: Students’ focus during different times of listening. 30 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Teachers giving instructions on listening practice or not (page 23) Figure 2: The number of times of listening to a recording (page 25) Figure 3: Time spent on listening practice per day(page 26) Figure 4 : Frequency of listening practice outside classroom(page 27) vii Part 1: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY Nowadays English has become a very competitive matter for getting a good job in our country.
Those who have a good command in English can easily get a good job. Today various types of organizations often ask for a good command of English. These organizations give priority to those employees who can speak fluently and write a standard form of English. Moreover, we need to learn English to communicate with people from other countries.
A person with good English skills can easily exchange his ideas, thoughts, and viewpoints with foreigners. He can easily acquire the customs, culture, and manners of people of other countries. Therefore, equipping students with good communication skills is considered a fundamental goal of the process of teaching and learning English, in which all the four language skills (Listening - Speaking - Reading - Writing) are almost equally focused. Of the four language skills that all language learners are supposed to learn, listening is considered to be the most challenging by many students due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language.
Listening is the ability to recognize and understand what is being talked about. This process involves being aware of the voice, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and content conveyed. Listening is not easy at all when we, the English learners, have many difficulties in comprehending the information due to the unfamiliarity with the pronunciation of the target language and a lack of listening skills. To overcome those difficulties, it is necessary for students to practice listening to English regularly.
Listening is an important component of learning. A student’s ability to effectively listen has a major impact on building the communication skills needed both inside and outside of school. If a student does not understand what 1 the other person is saying, then he/she will not know how to respond. Listening is no longer a passive language skill but has become a proactive skill in which the student plays an active role of attendees in the process of information being heard and processed, until then can he/she understand the content in order to finally respond to that information probably (Steil, Barker &Wakson, 1983).
Only when the listener can respond, will the listening process be completed, the communication process will achieve the desired result. Communication may fail due to poor listening skills. Therefore, listening comprehension is considered the basic factor in the communication process. Listening is the gateway to understanding and communicating and, therefore, is absolutely crucial for any learners of English.
At VNUA, many English-majored students find listening skills more difficult than the other skills or than grammar and vocabulary. This is quite easy to understand. The majority of them come from rural areas where teaching and learning English mainly mean working with words (normally the meanings of words only) and grammar. Therefore, listening to English is new for them and many of them find it very hard.
Meanwhile, the training period at the university according to the program distribution per semester of 120 lessons (10 lessons / week), for 12 weeks 1 semester, the duration of use for listening comprehended skills is too little. The duration of students' self-study is less, with few students admitting to practicing listening more in dormitories or staying at home for about 1 hour to 2 hours a week. Another concern is that most students read tape scripts before performing listening skills. Therefore, it is a bad habit that makes the listening process not meet the requirements, purposes and can be a waste of time.
In addition, every student wants to hear and remember 100% of the information and understand in Vietnamese every word without identifying the central content, not grasping the core information in the listening process. Therefore, it makes students tired and show fear during listening lessons. The 2 situation of winter class and uneven qualifications also makes it difficult for teachers to handle situations in class. On the other hand, in a class where 20 teachers and students are not native speakers, students are less likely to hear the right native English, leading students to react slowly whenever placed in specific communication situations.
Some students have a passive and rejoicing attitude during classes and practicing listening skills. For English- majored students, listening is extremely important. It affects your pronunciation. For first-year English- majored students, it's even more important.
Because with the level up to level B2, C1 is extremely difficult. That's why practicing listening is indispensable. With a desperate hope to help English-majored students at VNUA to improve their listening skills, I would like to carry out “An investigation into the listening practice activities used by first-year English-majored students at VNUA”. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The aim of the study: This study aims to find out the listening practice activities used by First-year English-majored students at VNUA.
Research objectives: To investigate the listening practice activities used by first-year English- majored students at VNUA 3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS What listening practice activities are used by first-year English-majored students at VNUA ? 3 4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of this study is limited to surveying 100 first-year English- majored students at VNUA. A semi-structured interview to 10 participants is carried out after the survey to get in-depth information.
Subjects of study: Listening practice activities of first-year English- majored students at VNUA. Research guests: English language learning activities of First-year English-majored students at VNUA. Scope of study: First-year English-majored students at VNUA ( 100 students) 5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This study is of great significance to English-majored students at VNUA because of the following reasons: It raises students’ awareness of the importance of the listening skills in learning English.
It helps to find out the activities that are used the most frequently and suggest them to other students to assist them with their English listening practice. DESIGN OF THE STUDY Apart from the abstract, references and appendices, this study consists of three main parts: PART 1 - INTRODUCTION presents the rationale of the study, aims and objectives of the study, research questions, the scope as well as the significance of the study. PART 2 - DEVELOPMENT is divided into 3 chapters: Chapter 1 - LITERATURE REVIEW – provides theoretical background for the study including definition of listening, types of listening, factors affecting 4 English listening skills, suggested in-class activities, and listening activities outside the classroom Chapter 2 – METHODOLOGY describes the methodology used in the research including the research methods, research setting/ context, data collection, and data analysis. Chapter 3 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS - reports and discusses the findings of the study.