TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 LIST OF ABBREVIATION .5 LIST OF TABLES .6 LIST OF FIGURES.7 LIST OF APPENDICE. Background of the research. Purposes of the research. Significance of the study.
Scope of the study. The organization of the thesis .13 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Prior studies related to the research. Listening skill and its features.
Definition of listening. The roles of listening in foreign/ second language acquisition. Sub-skills involved in listening. The listening stages.
The pre-listening stage. The while-listening stage. The post-listening stage. The principles for teaching listening.
The top-down and bottom-up strategies. Factors affecting EFL learners‟ listening skill. Textbooks and the role of textbooks in a language program. What is a textbook?.
The role of textbook in a language program. What is textbook adaptation?. Why adapt a textbook?. Techniques of adaptation .31 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
Kinds of research and research approaches. Data collection methods. Procedures of collecting data. Data analysis methods .40 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
Teachers‟ and students‟ responses on the difficulties in teaching and learning listening skill. Teachers‟ and students‟ responses on the importance of listening skill in comparison with other skills. Learning listening skill from teachers‟ perspective. Teachers‟ thinking about learning listening skill.
Teachers‟ attitude towards learning listening skill. Learning listening skill from students‟ perspective. Students‟ thinking about learning listening skill. Students‟ attitude towards learning listening skill.
Teachers‟ perspective on factors influencing students‟ motivation and interests in listening lessons. Difficulties in teaching listening skill from teachers‟ perspective. Difficulties in learning listening skill from teachers‟ and students‟ perspective. Difficulties in learning listening skill from teachers‟ perspectives.
Difficulties in learning listening skill from students‟ perspectives. Teachers‟ and students‟ evaluation on the listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12. Teachers‟ evaluation on the listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12. Students‟ evaluation on the listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12.
The realities of implementing listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 at high schools in Huong Tra district. The support of teaching aids in listening classes. Students‟ perception for using teachers‟ teaching aids in teaching listening. The frequency of using teachers‟ teaching aids in teaching listening.
Teachers‟ implementation of listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12. Activities carried out in listening periods. Activities in the pre-listening stage. Activities in the while-listening stage.
Activities in the post-listening stage. Adaptation that teachers make to motivate students in learning listening skill. Adaptation that teachers make to motivate students in learning listening skill. Adaptation that the students want to have in listening classes.65 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMLICATIONS.
For the Educational Authorities. Suggestions for further research .74 APPENDICE 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATION EFL: English as a foreign language 5 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Students‟ Background Information Table 3.2: Teachers‟ Background Information Table 4.1: Teacher‟s attitude towards learning listening skill Table 4.2: Students‟ attitude towards learning listening skill Table 4.3: Difficulties in teaching listening skill Table 4.4: Difficulties in learning listening skill from teacher‟s perspectives Table 4.5: Difficulties in learning listening skill from students‟ perspectives Table 4.6: The support of teaching aids in the listening classes 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: Teachers‟ thinking about learning listening skill Figure 4.2: Students‟ thinking about learning listening skill Figure 4.3: Factors influencing students‟ motivation and interests in listening lessons Figure 4.4: Teachers‟ evaluation on the listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 Figure 4.5: Students‟ evaluation on the listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 Figure 4.6: The frequency of using teachers‟ teaching aids in teaching listening Figure 4.7: Teachers‟ implementation of listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 Figure 4.8: Activities in the pre-listening stage Figure 4.9: Activities in the while-listening stage Figure 4.10: Activities in the post-listening stage Figure 4.11: Adaptation made to motivate students in learning listening skill Figure 4.12: Adaptation that the students want to have in listening classes 7 LIST OF APPENDICE Appendix 1A: Research questionnaire (for students) Appendix 1B: Bảng câu hỏi điều tra (Dành cho học sinh) Appendix 2: Research questionnaire (For teachers) Appendix 3A: Interview (For students) Appendix 3B: Câu hỏi phỏng vấn (Dành cho học sinh) Appendix 4: Interview (For teachers) Appendix 5: Observation sheet 8 ABSTRACT The project “An investigation into how English teachers implement listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 to develop students‟ listening skill at high schools in Huong Tra district, Thua Thien Hue province” has been carried out with a view to providing the effectiveness of teaching and learning listening skill for twelfth graders. It aims at finding out (a) difficulties that teachers and students meet in teaching and learning listening skill with the textbook Tieng Anh 12, (b) the evaluation of teachers and students on listening parts and activities designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12, (c) the teachers‟ implementation of listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 to improve listening skill for their students and (d) possible solutions as well as suggestions to overcome the difficulties and improve the results of listening teaching. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect and analyze the data of the questionnaires, interviews and class observation from 200 twelfth graders and 8 teachers at four high schools in Huong Tra district.
The findings contain: (1) the biggest difficulty that both teachers and students meet in learning listening is due to students‟ lack of the background knowledge and ability of English; (2) most of listening parts designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 were evaluated acceptable except for the content and topic of listening texts; (3) the implementation of listening activities are different in listening classes; (4) some adaptation of listening activities has been made to make them suitable to the students‟ levels. Based on the findings, some suggestions are drawn out not only for students and teachers to have better results in listening learning and teaching but also for educational authorities for more appropriate consideration into listening issue. Much effort is put forth by the research with the hope of contributing to the improvement of the process of learning and teaching listening skill at high schools. 9 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter provides an overview of the thesis including the background of the research, the purpose and significance of the study.
In addition, the research questions and the overall organization of the thesis are also stated in this chapter. Background of the research The society is more and more developing and the international communication becomes more and more necessary. Therefore, the need of the second language acquisition is put to learners. Together with many great developments that are visible in almost every aspect of today‟s increasingly changing world, so far there have also been a lot of innovative approaches to language learning and teaching in general and second language acquisition in particular.
Indeed, there goes the time when the proficiency level of second language learners was mainly measured by their grammatical competence. Nowadays, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice. Thus, in their research on factors that contribute to success in English teaching, Davies and Pearse (2000) stated, “The main test for real success in teaching and learning should be whether or not the learners can communicate at all in English”. To achieve a second language completely, learners have to master all four skills, including: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
As a result of the change in attitude and mindset, in comparison with the other language skills, the skill of listening has growingly been considered an especially important aspect of English communication. However, to many second language learners, listening has also been a difficult and boring subject. It takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill. According to language teachers, the reasons for this consist of both extrinsic factors (such as teachers‟ instruction before listening, tape quality or noise, etc…) and intrinsic ones (for example, lack of motivation or background knowledge of the target language, and so on).
For listening teachers, it is a real challenge to get students involved in their listening lessons. Is listening skill a difficult one to master? Do we have any 10 solutions to help learners overcome their problems in listening lessons? They, therefore, have been searching for ways to improve students‟ listening ability, as well as to plant and nurture students‟ motivation in learning English. The search for better listening skill, as a result, remains an ongoing process. At high schools in Huong Tra District, teaching listening is really a challenging job.
Most of the teachers are novice ones. Although they have access to new language teaching methodology, they lack experiences in teaching listening skill. But the real problem is students‟ low levels of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so on. Moreover, the textbook Tieng Anh 12 has been officially used at high schools in Vietnam since the school year 2006 – 2007.
It was set up by the Ministry of Education and Training. This textbook was designed with theme-based approach including 16 units and 6 tests. In each unit, there are five main parts which are reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus. However, some contents and tasks designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 seem to be rather difficult for students to do.
In order to gain insight into how Grade 12 English teachers have implemented listening activities in listening classes to overcome these briefly mentioned difficulties, I myself conduct a research entitled, “An investigation into how English teachers implement listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 to develop students’ listening skill at high schools in Huong Tra district, Thua Thien Hue province”. Purposes of the research Within the constraint of time, this research only focuses on how English teachers implement listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 in teaching listening skill. From the aforesaid reasons, the specific aims of the research are as follows: (1) To find out difficulties that teachers and students meet in teaching and learning listening skill with the textbooks Tieng Anh 12. (2) To investigate how teachers and students evaluate listening parts and activities designed in the textbook Tieng Anh 12.
11 (3) To discover how teachers implement listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 to improve listening skill for their students. (4) To draw out some possible solutions and suggestions to overcome the difficulties and improve the results of listening teaching. Research questions This research aspires to answer these following questions: 1. What are the difficulties in teaching and learning listening skill with the textbook Tieng Anh 12? 2.
How are the listening parts in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 evaluated by teachers and students? 3. How have teachers implemented listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12? 4. How to implement listening activities in the textbook Tieng Anh 12 effectively? 1. Significance of the study There will be at least three kinds of benefits; they are for the schools concerned, English teachers and the researcher.
For the schools, the result of the research will inform English teachers of difficulties that students meet when learning listening and what the teachers have done to minimize those obstacles. This can be used to anticipate whether it is necessary to have listening activities adapted from the textbook to use for the schools. For the English teachers, the results will also be advantageous for the English teachers to have some ways to adapt listening activities in listening learned from their colleagues. In addition, they can have plans to design listening activities suitable to their students‟ level.
From that, their teaching of listening will achieve better results.