VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES Ph¹m ThÞ YÕn A sutudy on Teaching Listening Comprehension to the 10th form students at Ly Thuong Kiet high school – Bac Giang. Nghiªn cøu vÒ viÖc d¹y kü n¨ng nghe hiÓu cho häc sinh líp 10 trường THPT Lý Th-êng KiÖt – B¾c Giang M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 HA NOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES Ph¹m ThÞ YÕn A sutudy on Teaching Listening Comprehension to the 10th form students at Ly Thuong Kiet high school – Bac Giang. Nghiªn cøu vÒ viÖc d¹y kü n¨ng nghe hiÓu cho häc sinh líp 10 trường THPT Lý Th-êng KiÖt – B¾c Giang M.
MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 SUPERVISOR: Ph¹m ThÞ h¹nh, MA. HA NOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iii Table of contents Acknowledgements Page Abstract Table of contents List of abbreviations List of tables and pie charts Chapter 1: Introduction. Aims of the Study. Methods of the Study.
Scope of the Study. Design of the Study. 3 chapter II - Literature review 1. The definition of listening and listening comprehension.
Definition of listening. Definition of listening comprehension .3 Listening Comprehension Process. Types of Listening .1 Listening in real-life.2 Listening in classroom. The importance of listening comprehension.
Listening as the final goal of learning a language. Listening as a mean of acquiring language. What makes listening difficult. The linguistic factors.
The type of language input .14 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation. The non – linguistic factors. Listener’s ability to concentrate.
Listener’s background knowledge. The procedure of teaching a listening lesson. Pre-listening stage. While-listening stage.
Post-listening stage .18 chapter III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1. The course book. The 10th form students. The teachers of English.
The data collection instrument. Data collection and analysis .24 chapter IV: data analysis and discussion. Questionnaire for the students. Students’ views on the aims of learning English at school 25 (Question 1).
The difficulties encountered by 10th form students when learning listening. The importance of learning listening of the students at Ly Thuong Kiet High School. The students’ difficulties when learning listening at school ( Question 4, 5,6). Listening difficulties encountered by 10th grade students at Ly Thuong Kiet High School.
The expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Students’ attitude after listening lesson. Students’ need in learning listening. The students’ effort (question 9).
Teachers and their teaching methods (Question 10). The things that school can do to help students in their learning English. The teachers’ questionnaire. Teachers’ views on the aims of teaching English at school.
Teachers’ opinion about the aspects of language taught at school. Teachers’ opinion of teaching listening comprehension (question 3,4,5 and 6). Teachers’ difficulties in teaching listening. Teachers’ activities to help students overcome the difficulties in learning listening process.
Teachers’ attitude toward class-listening activities (Question 7, 8,9,10, 11 and 12). Teachers’ opinions about three-listening stages (Question 7). Teaches’ comments on the pre-listening activities in the textbooks and their suggestions (Question 8,9). Listening exercises teachers often have students practice in a listening lesson and their effectiveness (Question 10,11).
Students’ achievement from a listening text (Question 12). Teachers’ suggestion in teaching listening .40 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. The teachers’ effort (Question 13). Teachers’ need in having effective listening lessons (Question 14) 5.3 Teachers’ suggestion to the administrators in order to have 41 effective listening lessons.43 chapter v: recommendations and conclusion.
Findings and suggestions .Limitation and suggestions for the further study .46 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vii list of abbreviations CLT :Communicative Language Teaching LCT :Listening Comprehension Teaching LTK HS :Ly Thuong Kiet High School N :Number ESL :English as a Second language Ss :Students Ts :Teachers TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com viii list of tables and pie charts A. list of tables Table 1: Students’ views on the aims of learning English at school (N = 380) Table 2: Why is listening skill difficult? Table 3: The expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill Table 4: Teaching techniques help students listen better and more effectively Table 5: Teachers’ views on the aims of teaching English at school (N=7) Table 6: Overall ranking of the aspects of the language taught at school Table 7: Teachers’ activities to help students overcome the difficulties in learning listening process. Table 8: Teachers’ opinions about three- stage process Table 9: Listening exercises used Table 10: What those students can get after listening lessons Table 11: Teachers’ effort to have effective listening lessons Table 12: Teachers’ need in having effective listening lessons B. list of pie charts Pie chart 1: Students’ attitude towards listening skill Pie chart 2: Teachers’ attitude towards listening skill TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.
Rationale In the recent years, English language is described as an international language and the need for communication between groups of people. It is not only the main language spoken by native speakers but also the official language in many countries as well as an important language in a lot of nations throughout the world. In Vietnam, where people are carrying out the modernization and industrialization, English has become more popular and important. Thus, Ministry of Education in Vietnam has considered English as a compulsory subject at most upper secondary schools.
However, how to teach and learn English effectively and how to popularize it are not simple matters. For most of students, English is always considered a difficult subject which has four skills: Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing. In these skills, listening skill seems to be the most difficult and weakest skills among students’ four language skills. The difficulties which hinder students from developing their listening skills are various.
Moreover, most high school students have had listening practice in their classroom, but they may find themselves bored with the listening tasks For listening teachers, correspondingly, it is a difficult task to get students involved in listening lessons. Nonetheless, just as other teachers do, listening teachers should create an interesting and motivating learning environment on one hand; and on the other hand, they must become aware of difficulties and problems facing their students, then, select the best techniques to help them. My school is Ly Thuong Kiet High School (LTK HS) in Bac Giang, which is a mountainous province in the Northeast of Ha Noi. Teaching and learning listening there is really a challenging job.
In addition to the lack of well-equipped facilities, teaching listening methods are quite new and unfamiliar to teachers. Another problem is students’ low levels of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so forth. It is the reason TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 why students find it difficult and tough to listen and they are not confident enough to do listening tasks successfully. Moreover, learning habits do not help much to improve their listening in classroom.
The students often get bored, tired and indifferent in listening lessons because of the quality of teachers’ voice and pronunciation, uncreative tasks and activities, topics, and so on. Being a teacher of English, I am aware of the teachers’ important task in increasing students’ knowledge of English, and improving their listening skills. Therefore, I would like to study to know more the ways to help my students to improve their listening skills. So that is the reason why I chose the theme: “A study on Teaching Listening Comprehension to the 10th form students at Ly Thuong Kiet high school – Bac Giang.
Aims of the Study The new “ TiÕng Anh 10”, which has four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening, is first introduced in Vietnam. Thus, there are a number of problems facing both the teachers and the students. The main purposes of this study are to find out the real situation of teaching and learning listening skill at LTK HS, the areas of difficulties in listening encountered by 10th grade students and their needs in learning listening to English. Therefore, the teachers could find out the way to teach listening English effectively.
The study aims to find the answer to the following questions: 1. How is listening comprehension taught and learnt in Ly Thuong Kiet high school? 2. What difficulties do the teachers and 10th form students face in teaching and learning listening comprehension? 3. What do teachers and students need in teaching and learning listening comprehension? 4.
What techniques can teachers and students use in order to teach and learn listening skill more effectively? 3. Methods of the Study To achieve the aims mentioned above, the reseacher chose the survey reseach, qualitative TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 approach, which involves two survey questionnaires, is employed to collect the data for the study. The first survey questionnaires are for students, which dealt with students’ needs and difficulties in learning listening. The second survey questionnaires are for teachers, which aims to find out the real situation and the difficulties that teachers face in teaching listening skill at LTK HS.
Scope of the Study This minor study is conducted at LTK HS in order to perceive the real teaching and learning listening skills of both teachers and 10th form students. The study focuses on describing the problems and factors causing such challenges, for instance, facilities, students’ English listening proficiency and teachers’ methodology. The thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to better the current context. It was my intention to examine all the seven teachers of the school and 8 classes with 380 students.
Design of the Study The study is divided into five chapters which are summarized as follows: The first chapter is introduction including a rationale for study, the aims, and the methods, scope of the study as well as the design of the study.The second chapter is literature review discussing the theoretical background, which is relevant to the purposes of the study.The third chapter is on the study which gives a detailed description of how the study was implemented. The fourth chapter is to report the data analysis. Discussion about the results is also made in this chapter. The final chapter gives the conclusion as well as some recommendations for the teaching and learning activities at LTK HS.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 Chapter II - Literature review 1. Introduction In this chapter, I would like to provide a theoretical background to the study to know more and deeply about Listening Comprehension Teaching. It is composed of four sections. The first section is to examine different views on the definition of listening.
The second section is the importance of listening comprehension. The thirdth section is designed to look at the factors that make listening difficult. The finally section is the procedure of teaching a listening lesson 2. The definition of listening and listening comprehension 2.
Definition of listening : It is believed that listening is a significant and an essential area of development in a native language and in a second language; therefore, there are different point of views on the definition of listening, which present different views of scholars towards the concept. As Celce-Murcia (1991:88) puts it, “Listening can be defined broadly as everything that impinges on the human processing which meditates between sound and the construction of meaning”. Listening, as Mary Underwood simply put it, “is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear” (Underwood, 1989:1).