VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ************************* VŨ QUỲNH ANH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF USING LISTENING STRATEGIES ON LISTENING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: AN EXAMPLE OF SECOND BACHELOR’S DEGREE STUDENTS IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, HANOI UNIVERSITY NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ SỰ ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA ỨNG DỤNG CHIẾN LƯỢC NGHE TRONG KỸ NĂNG NGHE TRONG VIỆC PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN VĂN BẰNG HAI KHOA TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60 14 0111 HA NOI - 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ************************* VŨ QUỲNH ANH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF USING LISTENING STRATEGIES ON LISTENING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: AN EXAMPLE OF SECOND BACHELOR’S DEGREE STUDENTS IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, HANOI UNIVERSITY NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ SỰ ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA ỨNG DỤNG CHIẾN LƯỢC NGHE TRONG KỸ NĂNG NGHE TRONG VIỆC PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN VĂN BẰNG HAI KHOA TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY Code: 60 14 0111 Supervisor: DR.NGUYỄN THỊ MINH TÂM HA NOI - 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATIONS I, Vũ Quỳnh Anh, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “An Investigation into the Influence of Using Listening Strategies on Listening Skills Development: An Example of Second Bachelor’s degree Students in English Department, Hanoi University ” is the result of my own research in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post Graduate Studies — University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, Hanoi and this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution. Vũ Quỳnh Anh Hanoi, September 2015 i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my special gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Tam for her valuable advice and insightful guidance at every stage of the completion of this thesis. I am also grateful to my lecturers at the Department of Post-Graduate Studies- University of Foreign Languages and International Studies-National University, Hanoi for their useful and interesting lectures which laid the foundation for this thesis.
Last but not least, my special thanks also go to second bachelor’s degree students at 7VB13, Hanoi University who participated in this study. Without them, this research would not have been possible. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT In the past, listening was viewed as passive process which could come along naturally without assistance. In fact, listening is active process which involves a variety of mental processes.
This study was designed to investigate the influence of using listening strategies on students’ listening skills development. The participants in the study were 24 first year students who were attending the second bachelor’s degree course at Hanoi University. The participants went through an eight-week listening strategy instruction section in metacognition which focused on planning, monitoring, evaluating. From data collected through Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), pre-test and post test, semi-structured interview, the study yielded results indicating that the work carried out had an impact.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Page Figure 1: Cycle of Action Research 14 Figure 2: The model of action research proposed by Kemmis & 15 McTaggart Table 1: Records of students’ score in the previous final test 21 Table 2: Explicit Listening Strategy Instruction Sections 23 Table 3: Planning and evaluation strategies 27 Table 4: Directed attention strategies 28 Table 5: Person knowledge 29 Table 6: Mental Translation 30 Table 7: Problem Solving 31 Table 8: A detailed lesson plan of a listening strategy instruction 31 section Table 9: Comparison of the means and standard deviation between 35 pre-test and post-test 36 Table 10: The results of paired sample t-test for pre-and post-test iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declarations……………………………………………………………………………….iii List of charts .iv Table of contents .vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Background to the study and statement of problem.Statement of problem…………………………………………………………. Aim of the study……………………………………………………………………. Scope of the study …………………………………………………………….
Significance of the study ………………………………………………………. Organization of the study ………………………………………………………….4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Models of Listening comprehension………………………………………. Listening Comprehension Strategies……………………………………………….
Classification of Listening Strategies………………………………. Listening Strategies used in the study…………………………………………9 1. Framework for Strategy Instruction………………………………………………. Empirical studies on the use of Listening Strategies………………………………10 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Rationale for the use of Action research.
The Action Research Process……………………………………………. Context of the study……………………………………………………………. Pre-test and post-test………………………………………………………. Semi-structured interview………………………………………………….
PHASE 1: Pre-action…………………………………………………………. The findings from the questionnaire …………………………………………. PHASE 3: Post-action…………………………………………………….34 CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3. The findings of the pre-test and post-test…………………………………………35 3.
The findings from the semi-structured interview…………………………………. Limitations of the study …………………………………………………………. Suggestion for further studies…………………………………………………….44 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.I ABBREVIATIONS L2: Second Language SLA: Second Language Acquisition EFL: English as a Foreign Language IELTS: The International English Language Testing System Hanu: Hanoi University CALLA: Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach MALQ: Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Background to the study and statement of problem 1.
Theoretical background In the past, listening was considered as a passive activity and merit little classroom attention (Thompson & Rubin, 1996; Vandergrift, 2004). However, a large proportion of the L2 research findings indicate that "listening is an important skill through which language learners internalize linguistic information without which they cannot produce language" and it is the first step in the process of language communication (Brown, 2001, p. Listening is also now regarded as one of fundamental language skills in EFL classrooms and gains more attention in SLA research. Developing listening skill becomes a significant goal in many language teaching courses.
However, listening has always been perceived to be the most challenging skill which commonly causes anxiety and frustration among L2 learners. Listening is now viewed as an active and conscious process, in which listeners engage in a variety of mental processes in an effort to comprehend information from oral texts. They draw their attentions to the important information from the aural input, comprehend the meaning of the input, and relate them to the contextual information and background knowledge to produce output (O‘Malley, Chamot & Küpper, 1989). As stated by Byrnes (1984, p.318), listening is a “highly complex problem-solving activity”.
However, a perfect match between input and knowledge hardly could exist. As a result, comprehension gaps occur and special efforts to 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com acquire the meaning of oral message are required, especially for second language learners. The mental processes that are activated by listeners to understand and retain new information from oral input are referred to as listening comprehension strategies. Since listening is a complex process in which learners decode and construct the meaning of the received information by drawing on their prior background knowledge as well as their linguistic knowledge, there seems to be many difficulties that learners face during their listening process.
Statement of problem In English language institutes in Vietnam, the process of listening skill has received only slight emphasis despite a wide access to listening materials with accompanying audiovisual technology in the classroom such as CDs or videos. The inadequate competence or the linguistic difficulty of stimulus texts may prevent students from improving their listening skills. Besides, it is somehow obvious that listening strategies are missing in most of language teaching program, in which most language learner complain about not being able to listen effectively and appropriately. As listening comprehension has emerged as an important and distinct foreign language skill (Byrnes, 1984; Dunkel, 1991), it is essential for teachers to look for ways to facilitate improvement of learner in listening skills and make EFL learners become more effective listeners not only to pass final exam with high scores but also to perform well in real life communication.
Having been teaching listening skills for more than eight semesters, the researcher has had many opportunities to observe students’ task-solving processes in listening practice tests. In addition, the researcher has long been interested in issues related to the listening skills. For these reasons, the researcher is motivated to explore to what extent listening strategies have influence on students’ listening performance. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Aim of the study The study aims to find out how listening strategies have impact on listening skills development. Research question The present study is an attempt to recognize the role of using strategies in improving listening comprehension and investigate the following questions: To what extent does teacher’s explicit strategy instruction have effect on the listening performance of the EFL students? 4. Scope of the study The research was carried out on the first year second bachelor’s degree students in English Department, Hanoi University. It would be challenging for this minor thesis to cover all the aspects of listening.
Therefore, the study only focuses on the influence of using the strategies for exploiting listening tasks in section 1 and 2 of IELTS Listening Practice Tests. Significance of the study By bringing out the result of the influence of using listening strategies on listening skills development: An example of second bachelor’s degree students in English department, Hanoi University and some given suggestions, the study hopefully will somehow make the following contributions. First, the finding of the study may be served as reference to EFL teachers to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach to the teaching of listening. Second, the dissemination of findings could help me and my colleagues to improve our own teaching at Hanu, as well as those who are 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com teaching English listening skills to second bachelor’s degree students at other universities and colleges in Vietnam with the same situation as at Hanu.
Organization of the study The study is organized into three parts as follows: Part one: Introduction: presents background to the study, statement of problem, the scope of the study, the method as well as the organization of the thesis. Part two: Development: consists of three chapters Chapter 1 discusses the literature review which is relevant to the research topic including the models of listening comprehension, listening comprehension strategies, empirical studies on the use of listening strategies. Chapter 2 presents the research methodology of the study, which focuses on the context of the study, the participants, the instruments, data collection procedure, analytical framework, and data analysis. Chapter 3 provides major findings and suggestions.
Part three: Conclusion: summarizes the findings of the study, presents implications and limitations for the study as well as some suggestions for future studies. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter discusses the theory and research into the areas which form the underpinnings for the present study. The first section provides various models of listening comprehension. The second section presents the strategies for listening.
The third section provides framework for strategy instruction and the chapter concludes with a discussion of empirical studies on the use of listening strategies. Models of listening comprehension Cognitive psychology, the most developed model in accounting for comprehension processes, has proved us with a better understanding of listening comprehension process. According to the cognitive comprehension theory, schemata are the guiding structure in the comprehension process. Schemata are described as “a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory.
It can be used to represent our knowledge about all concepts: those underlying objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions and sequences of actions” (Rumelhart, 1980, p.